III. Wireless LAN

Airtime Fairness on Vigor access points allows the access point to distribute the transmission time, or Downstream throughput i.e. a client downloading a file, more equally between clients of different speeds.

This can help with wireless networks that have a mixture of clients connecting at different data rates, by sharing the airtime more fairly between the clients, instead of simply sharing equally based on the number of packets sent, which gives a larger proportion of airtime to slower clients due to the slower transmission speed.

This could be multiple 802.11n clients with different data rates due to interference or their relative location from the access point, or a mix of 802.11ac (866mpbs), 802.11n (300mbps), 802.11g (54mbps) and 802.11b (11mbps) devices.

Firmware Requirements:

• DrayTek Vigor AP-910c - 1.1.6 and later
• DrayTek Vigor AP-900 - 1.1.5 and later
  
• DrayTek Vigor AP-810 - 1.1.4 and later
  
• DrayTek Vigor AP-710 - 1.1.4 and later
  

To enable Airtime Fairness on a DrayTek Vigor access point that supports the feature, go to [Wireless LAN] > [Airtime Fairness]:

Tick Enable Airtime Fairness then click OK to enable the feature on that wireless interface. If the access point is dual band, enable it for the 5GHz interface by going to [Wireless LAN (5GHz)] > [Airtime Fairness] and enable it in the same way.

Triggering Client Number is the threshold controlling whether airtime fairness will activate. If the number of connected clients is below the trigger the access point will not apply airtime fairness.

Once Airtime Fairness is enabled, it will take effect immediately.

To check the status of Airtime Fairness, go to [Wireless LAN] > [Airtime Fairness] and select Airtime Status:

That will show which clients are connected, the percentage of time that each client is using for both Downstream (TX) and Upstream (RX):

The Tx Controlled Packets value shows which clients have been made to wait by the access point so that other clients can receive data, this effectively slows down those clients so that it can send data more quickly to other clients, giving a better overall balance between all users. The Tx controlled packets are packets that have been dropped by the access point, to reduce the airtime of the individual client in favour of other clients.

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