

The benefit of higher multicast rate is to lower the amount of wireless collisions that your wifi data may have. The multicast rate determines how big that jumbo message can be. Without the tech speak and mumbo jumbo, it basically means that your router combines multiple messages and instead sends 1 jumbo message to multiple devices. You can check for more details at the wikipedia for IP multicast. The common multicast rate options in router refers to IP multicast. Now we will go into what multicast rate actually means and how it can impact your home wireless network. A high multicast rate can however “lower” the effective area coverage of your wireless network, when the router is serving multiple devices at the same time. This is what multicast rate does, it will however improve the overall performance of your network when used at the right time and right places. Changing multicast setting will not affect any of those wireless characteristics. Second, multicast rate will not affect the level of wireless noise nor interference, nor your wireless signal strength, quality, maximum speed, or minimum speed. In a nutshell, multicast rate does not extend or shrink your router’s network range by itself. The reverse is true, having higher multicast rate will NOT shrink the range of your wireless network. For example, if you have 1 devices that are outside the range of your router, having lower multicast rate will NOT magically extend the wireless range of your router. They are either outright wrong, or misphrased in ways that can be considered as wrong and be misunderstood easily by most average users.įirst, multicast rate options by itself does NOT affect the actual range of your router and wireless network. Please note that many of the existing articles written or forum discussions about multicast can be a little deceiving with how they are written. However, they do not really do a good job at explaining the best way to set it up. In general, the multicast rate in router settings is the same with most of the major brand routers such as Motorola, Asus, netgear, airport, and more. We have written an easy to use and understand guide of how multicast tx rate works so that you can have a better understanding of when and how to use it. Multicast Rate is usually an often talked about “advanced” router option that can seriously hinder your wireless use experience if you misconfigure it.
