City leadership cites a client's peak PHY data rate from a vendor slide, but capture statistics show much lower MSDU goodput during a council livestream. What distinction should the CWNE present?
Select an answer to reveal the explanation.
Short Explanation
PHY rate is the speedometer's fantasy highway number; MSDU throughput is what actually arrives at the livestream. Capture stats keep leadership honest when the slide deck oversells the air.
Full Explanation
PHY data rate describes the instantaneous modulation rate of PPDUs, not end-to-end application throughput. Contention, interframe spaces, acknowledgments, retries, encryption overhead, and aggregation efficiency reduce MSDU/goodput far below peak PHY. Experts use analyzer throughput and retry statistics to educate stakeholders and to tune the WLAN rather than accepting marketing MCS headlines as delivered capacity.