Work out wi fi airtime utilisation instantly with clear inputs, formula shown and shareable results.
Wi-Fi is a shared medium where the scarce resource is airtime, not bandwidth. A client transmitting at 24 Mbps takes eight times the airtime of one at 200 Mbps to move the same data, so a handful of distant clients can consume the channel. Utilisation above 80 percent means contention delay dominates and adding capacity is the only fix.
Airtime utilisation
demand = clients x per-client rate; airtime = demand / (data rate x 0.5 efficiency); slow-client case uses the lowest data rate
Also called the performance anomaly: because airtime is shared, one client at a low data rate consumes disproportionate airtime and drags down throughput for everyone on the radio.
Airtime fairness scheduling, disabling the lowest data rates so distant clients must roam, and denser AP placement so clients are always near one.