Marketing materials for the civic center Wi-Fi advertise a 1.2 Gbps PHY rate. Stakeholders expect every visitor tablet to see that speed in a file download. What should the CWNE-level explanation emphasize?
Select an answer to reveal the explanation.
Short Explanation
Marketing loves the speedometer’s redline; networks live in traffic. A 1.2 Gbps PHY number is a best-case link rate, not what a crowded civic tablet actually downloads. MAC overhead, ACKs, contention, and TCP keep real goodput well below the sticker.
Full Explanation
PHY (data) rate describes the modulation and coding used for a transmission opportunity under given SNR and width—not application throughput. 802.11 MAC overhead, interframe spaces, acknowledgments, retries, OBSS contention, and upper-layer protocol behavior routinely cut TCP goodput far below the advertised PHY. Aggregation improves efficiency but does not make TCP exceed the PHY. Stakeholder education should separate marketing PHY figures from validated application tests.