Indeed. It's fun to look at the MCS table for something like 802.11ac. a lot of different rates are actually the same underlying modulation, but with varying am

Indeed. It's fun to look at the MCS table for something like 802.11ac. a lot of different rates are actually the same underlying modulation, but with varying amounts of overhead from forward error correction. 802.11 data frames also have an acknowledgement at the MAC layer. The radios dynamically ramp up the MCS rate until packets start dropping, then ramp the rate back down.