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Cheat sheet: What you need to know about 802.11ac - TechRepublic
quoted
What do experts say about 802.11ac?
There is a lot of guessing going on as to how 802.11ac pre-ratified devices are performing. I don't like to guess, so I contacted Steve Leytus, my Wi-Fi guy who also owns Nuts about Nets, and asked him what he thought:
Regarding 802.11ac, we are testing wireless game consoles for a large company in the Seattle area. We test performance using 20, 40, and 80 MHz channels. During the tests, we stream video data and monitor the rate of packet loss in the presence of RF interference or 802.11 congestion.
802.11ac's primary advantage is support for the 80 MHz-wide channel. And without question, the wider channel can stream more data. But, as with everything, there are trade-offs.
I asked Steve what the trade-offs were: • I don't think you'll find 802.11ac clients as standard equipment for computers. So, you need to buy one, connect it to the computer via Ethernet, configure the client, and finally pair the client with the router/access point.
• Unless your application requires streaming large amounts of data, you probably will not experience a noticeable improvement in performance.
• The 80 MHz-wide channel is more susceptible to RF interference or congestion from other Wi-Fi channels by virtue of its larger width.
• The 80 MHz channel eats up four of the available channels in the 5.0 GHz band. Some routers implement DCS (dynamic channel selection) whereby they will jump to a better channel in the presence of RF interference. But if you are using 80 MHz channels your choices for better channels are few or non-existent.
quoted
What do experts say about 802.11ac?
There is a lot of guessing going on as to how 802.11ac pre-ratified devices are performing. I don't like to guess, so I contacted Steve Leytus, my Wi-Fi guy who also owns Nuts about Nets, and asked him what he thought:
Regarding 802.11ac, we are testing wireless game consoles for a large company in the Seattle area. We test performance using 20, 40, and 80 MHz channels. During the tests, we stream video data and monitor the rate of packet loss in the presence of RF interference or 802.11 congestion.
802.11ac's primary advantage is support for the 80 MHz-wide channel. And without question, the wider channel can stream more data. But, as with everything, there are trade-offs.
I asked Steve what the trade-offs were: • I don't think you'll find 802.11ac clients as standard equipment for computers. So, you need to buy one, connect it to the computer via Ethernet, configure the client, and finally pair the client with the router/access point.
• Unless your application requires streaming large amounts of data, you probably will not experience a noticeable improvement in performance.
• The 80 MHz-wide channel is more susceptible to RF interference or congestion from other Wi-Fi channels by virtue of its larger width.
• The 80 MHz channel eats up four of the available channels in the 5.0 GHz band. Some routers implement DCS (dynamic channel selection) whereby they will jump to a better channel in the presence of RF interference. But if you are using 80 MHz channels your choices for better channels are few or non-existent.
