Applicable versions: 5.11.0 and above
Applicable platforms: AX
Station Selection
The Station Selection feature improves performance by allowing the access point (AP) to prioritize which station (STA) is served first, based on the priority of the traffic that station is waiting to receive.
Without Station Selection, all stations are effectively placed into a single queue. This means a station waiting for low-priority background data can be scheduled before a station waiting for time-sensitive traffic such as voice or real-time applications. This can cause:
- Voice call interruptions
- Delays for interactive applications
- Unfair airtime distribution in dense deployments
Station Selection fixes this by giving the AP awareness of traffic priority per station.
Feature Operation
Each station can have multiple types of traffic queued for it. The AP places the station into one or more priority queues, depending on the highest priority of the traffic it needs to receive:
- Special Priority – critical control traffic (management, beamforming/sounding, etc.)
- Voice Priority – real-time voice
- High Priority – interactive applications
- Low Priority – background data
A station appears in the queue(s) that correspond to the traffic waiting for it.
The AP then selects the next station to serve using a Weighted Round Robin approach:
| Priority | Quota | Behavior |
|---|---|---|
| Voice | 5 | Served most frequently |
| High | 3 | Served regularly |
| Low | 2 | Served least frequently |
This ensures stations waiting for important traffic are scheduled sooner and more often, while stations with low-priority data still receive fair airtime.
Key Benefits
-
Better performance for real-time and interactive applications
Stations waiting for voice or high-priority traffic are served first. -
Fairness is preserved
Low-priority stations still get airtime—they just don’t block more important traffic. -
Smarter scheduling in dense networks
Ideal for multi-subscriber deployments, TDD networks, and high-density APs. -
MU-MIMO aware
When MU-MIMO frames are used, all participating stations are properly re-queued after transmission.
This feature is especially beneficial when:
- Many subscriber modules (SMs) are connected to the same AP
- Stations generate mixed traffic (voice, video, and bulk data)
- Consistent latency for critical applications is required
Configuration
No additional configuration is required.
QoS rules should be configured as before.
Improvements
- Stations with voice traffic experience noticeably lower latency
- High-priority applications achieve smoother performance
- Background traffic continues normally without disruption