802.11ac: The 5th Generation of Wi-Fi
Many of us
while buying a router or looking at the specifications of our Laptop or
smartphone may have come across the term Wi-Fi – 802.11 a/b/g/n. In newer
devices released from last year a new term 802.11 ac is included.
IEEE 802.11
is a set of media access control (MAC) and physical layer (PHY) specifications
for implementing wireless local area network (WLAN) computer communication in
the 900 MHz and 2.4, 3.6, 5, and 60 GHz frequency bands. They are created and
maintained by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
LAN/MAN Standards Committee (IEEE 802).
Now this new
802.11 ac is 3x faster than that attributed to 802.11 n.
Theoretically
802.11 n standard can reach speeds up to 450 Mbps, so the new ac standard is
capable of reaching peak speed of up to 1300 Mbps.
Though the
previous standard works on both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz Band, the newer ac standard
works only at 5 GHz.
The
advantages of 802.11 ac include:
- Higher speed
- · Better performance at longer range
compared to 802.11n
- Five to eight spatial streams
- Addition of Multi-user MIMO (MU-MIMO)
Now the
question arises whether one should invest in a new router? According to me if
there are a lot of people simultaneously streaming 4k content, large Data
transfer requirement then it will be a good investment. But the cost of the
routers supporting this new standard is also on the higher side, it is upto 30 –
50% higher than the existing ones. For the ordinary folks, the existing router
is more than enough. Also the internet speed in our country is also not that
high to make any difference. Once optical fiber cable based internet in India
expands, we will have to remain satisfied with existing wireless technology.
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