Do Current Domestic Gigabit Wireless Technologies Fulfill User Requirements for Ultra High Definition Videos?

We present the results from a measurement-based performance evaluation of wireless networks based on IEEE 802.11n and IEEE 802.11ac standards in an indoor environment, with the aim to analyze their performance under high definition streaming video applications. We focus our study on analyzing the highest performance of these standards using off-the-shelf equipment, both with synthetic TCP and UDP traffic to measure the saturation throughput as well as high definition video streams. The measurements have been conducted in the student labs of our university and show good performance for streaming purposes in high definition and also ultra-high definition from a subjective video quality point of view. IEEE 802.11ac performance is very sensitive to the channel conditions. According to our experiments, these results heavily depend on the implementation of the IEEE 802.11ac standard of the commercial access points.