Wireless 802.11AC, the newest thing?

[Ninety-9 SE-L]

Sorry if this has been discussed before, but I guess I haven't been keeping up. Just looking for some input: to buy or not to buy.

I guess I'm somewhat in the stone age, I have a wired Cisco RV082 router (VPN) with a Linksys 54GL-type wireless router. Most reliable setup I ever had, but getting a little dated and too slow for streaming media over the network.

I wired my old house with Cat5e copper and I preferred it over wireless, but I moved and I had been playing with the idea of going into the crawl space and laying Cat6 copper into every room. Kind of a PITA. The other option was wireless N and just getting USB adapters on everything.

I went to the store and saw wireless AC1600, 1750, 1900, etc, and what's this all about? So I looked it up, appears to be the latest thing to have, clearly better than wasting my time with gigibit copper, but the 802.11ac specs don't seem to be finalized and I'm not sure if I should wait of go for it. Because it's still in draft, will I have trouble finding compatible adapters once it becomes standard?

 

[gangaskan]

Sorry if this has been discussed before, but I guess I haven't been keeping up. Just looking for some input: to buy or not to buy.

I guess I'm somewhat in the stone age, I have a wired Cisco RV082 router (VPN) with a Linksys 54GL-type wireless router. Most reliable setup I ever had, but getting a little dated and too slow for streaming media over the network.

I wired my old house with Cat5e copper and I preferred it over wireless, but I moved and I had been playing with the idea of going into the crawl space and laying Cat6 copper into every room. Kind of a PITA. The other option was wireless N and just getting USB adapters on everything.

I went to the store and saw wireless AC1600, 1750, 1900, etc, and what's this all about? So I looked it up, appears to be the latest thing to have, clearly better than wasting my time with gigibit copper, but the 802.11ac specs don't seem to be finalized and I'm not sure if I should wait of go for it. Because it's still in draft, will I have trouble finding compatible adapters once it becomes standard?

AC is the newest set of draft wireless and i think you can get close to a gigabit in speeds at the time.


i'm waiting on af i think it is. through channel manipulation and bonding you can get up to 7 gigs of throughput.

its all about frequency bonding in the 50+ ghz range even 60 i think at some point. nevertheless, speeds will vary because of the short gap in frequencies.

 

[petteyg359]

So I looked it up, appears to be the latest thing to have, clearly better than wasting my time with gigibit copper, but the 802.11ac specs don't seem to be finalized and I'm not sure if I should wait of go for it. Because it's still in draft, will I have trouble finding compatible adapters once it becomes standard?

AFAIU, 802.11ac is really just 802.11n with a bunch of channels glued together. If you've got neighbours with 802.11n (or ac) networks, you're very likely to not get anywhere close to gigabit speeds from it.

 

[Ninety-9 SE-L]

AFAIU, 802.11ac is really just 802.11n with a bunch of channels glued together. If you've got neighbours with 802.11n (or ac) networks, you're very likely to not get anywhere close to gigabit speeds from it.

In that case, not much for me to worry about. I have about an acre of land and only 2 houses near me that are close enough to be in range. I have seen a very weak wireless G signal pop up, probably from my neighbors who are in their 70s.

I just want to make sure Wireless AC is worth the plunge or if I'm going to regret buying a product (1 router and 3 USB network adapters to start out) that's still considered "wireless draft" "Draft N" is the reason I didn't get wireless N at the time I purchased my WRT54GL. At the time, Draft N only went up to 150mbps, now it goes up to 900mbps.

 

[Ninety-9 SE-L]

If I go all out, I'll probably go with this:
http://www.asus.com/us/Networking/RTAC68U

I'm mostly attracted to the PPTP server built in, which is a must, for me.

 

[petteyg359]

If I go all out, I'll probably go with this:
http://www.asus.com/us/Networking/RTAC68U

I'm mostly attracted to the PPTP server built in, which is a must, for me.

I was looking at that one for USB 3.0 "NAS", if OpenWRT devs get around to supporting it. If you're in the middle of a bunch of unpopulated (relatively, compared to suburbia) space, then AC is probably pretty great.

 

[madman22]

The only real technological benefit that I see about 802.11ac is required chip based beamforming. This reduces interference and allows for an extra 3db of signal gain compared to non beamforming chipsets (3db is double the power, huge benefit!). The newest higher end 802.11n chipsets support beamforming, but ac requires it in the spec. Since AC can have 8 spatial streams, beamforming is a must to get better SNR (signal to noise ratio)

edit: looks like beamforming is still only optional. So that means if you get any new wireless equipment you will have to be sure it has beamforming or it will not perform as well.

 

[Ninety-9 SE-L]

The only real technological benefit that I see about 802.11ac is required chip based beamforming. This reduces interference and allows for an extra 3db of signal gain compared to non beamforming chipsets (3db is double the power, huge benefit!). The newest higher end 802.11n chipsets support beamforming, but ac requires it in the spec. Since AC can have 8 spatial streams, beamforming is a must to get better SNR (signal to noise ratio)

edit: looks like beamforming is still only optional. So that means if you get any new wireless equipment you will have to be sure it has beamforming or it will not perform as well.

It look like the Asus I've been looking at uses beamforming, their name for it is AiRadar.

For the record, I just bought the Asus RT-AC68U Seems like the best bang for the buck...probably the best bang, period.