(a “client” is called a “station” in wifi speak).
Strictly untrue
But yes, slow clients suck, think of it this way…, there’s only a 1000ms in a second.
Let’s say you have 10MB of data you want to transfer to each client and you have 5 clients, let’s say that normally that would take 100ms each. Your access point is done in 500ms, and other 500ms is just idle/not doing much.
Let’s say 1/5 clients is slow, and 10MB takes 600ms instead of 100ms. Are you slowing down other clients… no they’ll be fine, everything still fits inside 1000ms.
Let’s say 1/5 clients is really slow, and 10MB takes 800ms instead of 100ms… all of a sudden you can’t fit 5x50MB, … so, you have to reduce demand for air time, and transfer less than 50MB/s, which I guess is some form of slow clients slowing down the fast ones maybe, if you’re looking at it from a fast client perspective.
With WiFi there’s also various overheads that you can’t get around, and you need to reserve air time for these. Also, there’s this RTS/CTS thing with wifi, where access point gets to coordinate which station gets to speak at any given time, which improves efficiency when there’s lots of stations (as opposed to each station opportunistically waiting for a quiet period trying to transmit, hoping it doesn’t collide/overlap with another station and then backing off).
I’d ask the sales guy how does their solution compare with a comparable bunch of Mikrotik access points, which are probably cheaper.
Ok, here’s the deal, my 2c. To get wifi running, you need to power the nodes. If you’re stretching cables for power, stretch Ethernet alongside too. Mikrotik in particular has various power over Ethernet solutions for extending Ethernet (gper for example) and poe powered switches and directional wifi antenas for cheap, and some of their stuff is in rugged boxes, if you want “industrial” feel for “mining” and things. You’ll need to have an MSP / contractor maintain either system, they can deal with configuring hardware remotely on short notice easily, and if something doesn’t like being reconfigured/needs a spare, well - MSP can figure out what you need so you get to minimize both downtime and effort - it’s their job. For longer distances you can do fiber, but that requires someone who’s not going to plug it in backwards and would keep it relatively clean on site, where as rj45 cat6 is easier for random on site dude to deal with and does the job
And if you really want wireless backhaul, nv2 between Mikrotik nodes actually isn’t that bad when configured right, but you can mix and match those point to point links, whatever.
Go for cheap gear, pay/hire a smart dude to make sure your network runs 24x7 and is easy to maintain.