Gigabit Wi-Fi: 802.11ac is here: 5 things you need to know

Gigabit Wi-Fi, 802.11ac is not really going to give you gigabit speeds - and there are other factors you need to consider before adding it to your wireless network.

Gigabit Wi-Fi, 802.11ac, is officially here, but what does that really mean? Here's my list of the five things you need to know before you invest in this new wireless technology.

Read more at: Gigabit Wi-Fi: 802.11ac is here: Five things you need to know | ZDNet
 
Interesting reading.

Thanks for posting Shawn !

:)
 

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I have a helluva enough bad time getting my Router to deliver N speeds. which my iPhone is supposed to be able to use, but the highest speed is still 54mbps. My experience has been, that my router will deliver full N speed only when all of my WiFi devices are set up for N. But it is an older WRT110 router.
 

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Same Here

I have a helluva enough bad time getting my Router to deliver N speeds. which my iPhone is supposed to be able to use, but the highest speed is still 54mbps. My experience has been, that my router will deliver full N speed only when all of my WiFi devices are set up for N. But it is an older WRT110 router.

My friend and I have the same problem with our Billion (BiPAC 7800N) router.

It will not run faster than 15 Mb/s even if the only wireless devices around are using 802.11n dongles.
No amount of tinkering with the settings makes any difference (e.g. bandwidth, channels, security, etc.).
 

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Wireless is for convenience, hardwire when you require speed. I've never seen wireless N even come close to it's potential.
 

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My wireless printer is only G so that is likely messing up my N setup. Another problem I had was my new Bell supplied Actiontek DSL router would only ever use one channel even with the bandwidth set to 40 Mhz. I ended up disabling its Wireless and using my D-Link DIR 655 for the wireless side of things. inSSIDer now shows 300 Mbit/s instead of 150 Mbit/s for my network.
 

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Contrary to what this article suggests you can indeed achieve 1GB+ connection speeds using this new wireless standard.

Some of you appear to be a bit confused about how fast this really is, yes it can be just as fast or faster than a 1GB wired connection but has some rather huge limitations such as going through walls or floors which the 2.4Ghz band can easily handle.

I'm one of the few running the Asus AC66U router with it's own version of PCI-e NIC the Asus PCE-AC66U, when using these together at a distance of 35 feet outdoors with minimal obstacles I usually run at 877.5mbps but have seen up to 1.1GB, it kind of floats around between the two because of the beam forming type antenna's.

The draw backs are that to achieve these types of speeds you have to be using the 5Ghz band which doesn't go through walls or floors worth a darn so it won't do you much good in a typical house setting with so many walls, in this case the 2.4Ghz band is still the better choice.

This new Asus AC66U router has the highest rated 2.4Ghz signal strength of any router on the market, in fact Tom's gave this new router it's highest rating and a special certificate of hardware excellence. It has Superior 2.4Ghz signal strength to my D-Link DIR-655 which is a very good router.

This new tech 802.11ac using the 5Ghz band is better suited to large office spaces without walls and will easily cover 5-10 thousand sq. feet, or any large outdoor area can be easily covered if the A/P is mounted outdoors like mine is.

Still this new tech won't come standard on any new tablet or laptop anytime soon so you would need to use a USB adaptor for 802.11ac.

And Alphanumeric, your one wireless G client is slowing down your entire wireless network by about 8 times. You can only achieve 54mbps with G, where N can be up too 450mbps with PCI or 300mbps USB, huge difference there. My printer was G only also so I just ran a cable to it.

And the Actiontek is only reverting back to the 20Mhz setting because most likely the 2.4Ghz band is crowded in your area, the DIR-655 holds it's 40Mhz setting regardless.

Here is something you don't see everyday....:)
 

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I can only dream on that kind of connection speed.
 

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Wireless is for convenience, hardwire when you require speed. I've never seen wireless N even come close to it's potential.

Indeed.
It is faster for me to copy something onto an external HDD and then connect that drive to my media box, than it is to use wireless to transfer files.

Our network can't even run at 802.11g speeds (regardless of the range from the router).
I suspect that our router is defective.

I have seen much higher wireless speeds, when I was doing exercises for my Networking course at TAFE.
 

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I can only dream on that kind of connection speed.

It only takes money plus a fairly clear path to the client because the 5.0Ghz frequency really can't go through walls at all. That screen shot is from 35 feet away but with a fairly clear path to the client form the A/P.

The good thing about the new Asus AC66U is that the 2.4Ghz frequency's signal strength is superior to any 2.4Ghz router of the past, blows away my DIR-655 which is one of the best routers on the market.

As for getting the most out of any 802.11n type router, it's very important to use the correct settings in order to obtain full wireless N speeds. You must use the 802.11 n Only setting "not mixed", and you must also use the channel bonding settings which show up as 20-40Mhz.
 

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As for getting the most out of any 802.11n type router, it's very important to use the correct settings in order to obtain full wireless N speeds. You must use the 802.11 n Only setting "not mixed", and you must also use the channel bonding settings which show up as 20-40Mhz.

We spent an entire afternoon trying different combinations of settings (including the ones you mentioned) to no avail.
My friend and I suspect that our router is defective.

The only thing we didn't try is Ad Hoc between the PCs and the laptop, to test whether or not the dongles were working correctly (we did try 2 different brands though).

I'll have to dig out our old routers (if I can find them) and see if their 802.11g performance is better.
 

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It only takes money plus a fairly clear path to the client because the 5.0Ghz frequency really can't go through walls at all. That screen shot is from 35 feet away but with a fairly clear path to the client form the A/P.

The good thing about the new Asus AC66U is that the 2.4Ghz frequency's signal strength is superior to any 2.4Ghz router of the past, blows away my DIR-655 which is one of the best routers on the market.

As for getting the most out of any 802.11n type router, it's very important to use the correct settings in order to obtain full wireless N speeds. You must use the 802.11 n Only setting "not mixed", and you must also use the channel bonding settings which show up as 20-40Mhz.
Thanks for the tip, but I don't use wireless. I use a wired DSL here at home and to have better connections speeds, I have to apply for a new subscription plan and its the ISP that will give the router and I don't really know how to tweak or hack it to give it a boost. I have an old 3-year MODEM and I asked someone I know who works at my ISP ta have a technician replace it tomorrow with a newer MODEM.
 

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I was only able to get N speeds when I set up all the Wifi adapters to be N, they were all Asus adapters into an Asus Router. This didn't help much, because it was a Cox Business account, limited to about 2.4 mbps up and down speed. But it was great for the Networked programs which depended on one server machine, and that was the important thing. The only problem was that any new wifi devices on the network could not be detected if they were G. Fortunately the guys new laptop was N, so it was OK.
 

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