| Connection Quality KPI | Benchmark | Description |
| RSSI or Signal Strength | > -65 dBm | To achieve the fastest performance, clients need a strong signal. Expressed as a negative number, the closer to zero you are, the better. |
|
Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) |
> 25 dB | Some environments are crowded with other signals we call “noise”. For a good connection, your signal should be “louder” than the noise by this margin. |
| Client Count per AP | < 30 | Too many clients sharing the airwaves will lead to slowdowns. |
| Channel Utilization | < 40% | Like cars sharing the highway, there are only so many lanes with only so much capacity. When those lanes or channels begin to fill up, Wi-Fi traffic slows down. |
| Data Rate | > 12 Mb/s | Denotes the transmission speed, or the number of bits per second transferred. The actual throughput speed for the user is usually less than the reported data rate. Low data rates may be due to legacy clients, networks or interference. |
| Retry Rate | < 40% | When the transmission can’t get through the first time due to interference or congestion, clients and access points will retry until they do. Rather than disconnect you, Wi-Fi will automatically slow down the transmission in its attempt to get it through. |
| MCS | >5 | The Modulation Coding Scheme (MCS) index is an existing industry metric based on several parameters of a Wi-Fi connection between a client device and a wireless access point, including data rate, channel width, and the number of antennas or spatial streams in the device. |
| 7MCS | >5 | 7MCS tells you if your Wi-Fi experience is the best it can be on a simple 0 to 11 scale. A higher score represents higher data rates and better RF conditions. |
| Wi-Fi Experience KPI | Benchmark | Description |
| Throughput | > 5 Mb/s | This will depend on what you are trying to accomplish. As a point of reference, Netflix suggests 5 Mb/s of Throughput for a good viewing experience. |
| Packet Loss | < 1% | Refers to the failure of packets to reach their destination, most often due to interference or low signal level. The result is a network retry (see above). |
| Ping (Latency) | < 150 ms | Time it should take for some packets to reach a server and come back. High latency typically points to network congestion. |
| Jitter | < 10 ms | Measures the latency between voice packets. When the latency increases in the form of jitter, voice over Wi-Fi sounds “choppy”. The increase in Jitter is also reflected in a lower MOS score (see below). Both interference and network congestion lead to an increase in Jitter. |
| Web Page Download Time | < 5000 ms | Time it should reasonably take to load a typical web page, like google.com. Beyond 5 seconds, the experience begins to feel slow, which may be caused by either local network or Internet congestion. |
| Mean Opinion Score (MOS) | > 3.6 | Based on a 4 point scale, MOS is a score that characterizes the quality of a voice conversation over Wi-Fi. Interference and congestion will lower the score. |