Wireless networks today have gained a lot of weight compared to cable. In recent years there has been an increase in the number of devices that connect to the network without using cable, and this is also due to the improvement of this type of network. There are many standards behind all this and they serve to use the different services and tools available. In this article we are going to talk about what is WMM or Wi-Fi Multimedia .
What is WMM or Wi-Fi Multimedia
WMM stands for Wi-Fi Multimedia. It is certified by the Wi-Fi Alliance and is based on the IEEE 802.11e standard. It is present in what is known as 802.11 N or also known as WiFi 4. It came with the aim of improving previous wireless standards, thus providing better speed and greater stability.
It is responsible for providing basic quality of service (QoS) characteristics to these types of networks. The goal is to deliver great network performance. WMM allows to prioritize traffic through four different AC categories, such as AC_VO (voice), AC_VI (video), AC_BE and AC_BK.
This is very useful to use certain applications that will need a good connection to emit voice and sound. For example, we are talking about VoIP messaging programs or those that serve to make video calls. We already know that this is something that is increasingly present in our day to day, so we must make sure to use a router capable of offering the best performance.
If our router does not have WMM or it is not activated, we could have speed and stability problems that would affect the use of these types of programs that we mentioned. This could slow down the connection and cause continuous outages, especially when our network is saturated or we have a limited connection.
Energy saving certification
It should also be noted that WMM or Wi-Fi Multimedia achieved certification by the Wi-Fi Alliance with energy saving. This is known as Power Save and it uses 802.11e mechanisms to save power.
This is very important for battery-powered equipment . For example we can think of a laptop or a mobile device. Wireless connections can weigh on autonomy and considerably reduce the time in which they will work without having to charge them again.
Thanks to this standard we will also be able to save energy and extend the time available for a device without the need for charging. This certification will indicate that this product is specially designed to save energy when we connect to Wi-Fi.
Have WMM enabled on the router
Modern routers are certified with WiFi N. This means that by default it is normal for them to bring this function enabled. It is important that it is like this, since otherwise we will have a worse performance that can affect the devices that we connect and certain applications.
In this article we run tests with different routers to check the sync and file transfer speed . It should be noted that if this function is not enabled, the synchronization will be limited to 54 Mbps. We could not take advantage of the speed beyond that limit.
In testing we used a TP-LINK TL-WN821N . In this case, with the WMM function enabled, the sync speed reached 300 Mbps and the file transfer exceeded 6 MB / s. On the other hand, that same router without this function enabled did not exceed a synchronization of 54 Mbps, in addition to 1 MB / s of file transfer, with unstable uploads and downloads.
Something similar happened with the Intel 4965AGN adapter. With the WMM function activated it achieved a synchronization of 130 Mbps and a file transfer of 10.2 MB / s, while without having this feature activated it was limited to a file transfer of 2.5 MB / s, although stable without ups and downs.
With an Intel 5100AGN Wi-Fi adapter we could also see a considerable reduction. In this case, it goes from 150 Mbps synchronization and 13 MB / s file transfer to 54 Mbps and 1 MB / s, respectively.
To activate the WMM function we will have to access the router. Of course, as we have indicated, it is normal that it is already enabled, unless we have changed the configuration of the device. To do this we have to enter through 192.168.1.1 (or the corresponding gateway), go to Advanced Options (may vary depending on the model), Wi-Fi / Wireless and there search for the WMM function.
In case we see that it is not enabled, we must activate it. Otherwise, as we have seen in the article, we will have a considerable limitation and we will not achieve good performance when browsing the Internet and especially connecting our devices.