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Apple Reportedly Strikes Deal with Broadcom to Add 802.11ac Gigabit Wi-Fi to 2013 Macs
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But the chart doesn't tell us the range that 802.11ac signal can reach.
Since 802.11ac use 256-QAM modulation versus 802.11n 64-QAM modulation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11ac), I believe 802.11ac range is shorter than 5 GHz 802.11n. If the range is same, then 802.11ac must burn more power than 802.11n. Anyhow it is not suitable for portable device application. 802.11ac is only good for Windows PC.
Quu
macrumors 68040
You'd have to blame Broadcom for that as they made the chart. It's just part of their marketting website for 5G and I agree the bar sizes are deceptive.
The range is about the same. And I don't believe it uses more power than current generation three antenna 5GHz radios. I can see on my own devices that the power being outputted for the radios is identical on both n and ac only modes so the only increase in power would come from the chipset managing the connection and like all things the power usage of that component will continue to get lower as technology advances just as it did for b, g and n.
I think 802.11ac is automatic shift (like a car), it shifts from 256-QAM back to 64-QAM (802.11n) if the range is too long and the signal is too weak. I still believe there is no free lunch, law of physics always applies.
For longer range, 802.11ac is same speed as 802.11n. For shorter range, it is faster than 802.11n but more sensitive to interference.
AC = cooler 🙂
Bearing in mind, there is NO manufactures out as yet that even "has" a router expect a few selective one.
Its not going to be, a big change overnight. Look how long it too for wireless 'n' to comes out.....
Its fine having adapters and such, but in reality how long till home customers use it ? Knowing Apple, though, i bet their next Extreme will have it to support THEIR own stuff for now anyway.
Bearing in mind, there is NO manufactures out as yet that even "has" a router expect a few selective one.
Its not going to be, a big change overnight. Look how long it too for wireless 'n' to comes out.....
Its fine having adapters and such, but in reality how long till home customers use it ? Knowing Apple, though, i bet their next Extreme will have it to support THEIR own stuff for now anyway.
macs4nw
macrumors 601
Agreed. And add a lower-priced all-flash option to the entire Mac line-up, and it could be a great year!
I'm more interested in a front page topic that says "802.11ac spec is finalised and out of draft" than this 🙂
Quu
macrumors 68040
Only Asus, Netgear, Trendnet, Buffalo, Belkin, D-Link and Linksys. But apart from them, no one. 🙄
Yes all those companies actually have 802.11ac routers on sale. And furthermore, Netgear, Asus, D-Link and Broadcom have adapters available too. (To be able to connect to said routers).
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macs4nw
macrumors 601
802.11ad is even further down the pipeline, 2014-15 earliest. Operating in the 60Ghz spectrum, it will revolutionize our desktops with blazingly fast peripheral connectivity speeds, including HDD's, cameras, mobile devices, etc. etc., but it will only operate reliably, at relatively short distances of 10 meters or less, so excellent for short-range connectivity like in-room wireless connections (think of it more like Bluetooth), but less suited for whole-house connectivity.
802.11ac is the future of wireless LANs: they'll operate exclusively in the less crowded 5Ghz band, (as opposed to 2.4 or 5Ghz for 802.11n) and will have theoretical maximum speeds of 6.9Gbps (with channel-bonding at 160Mhz bandwidth, with 8 streams and 256QUAM) and with the extended range of 'beam-forming', and even a fraction of those theoretical speeds, it will 'shine' with the promise of multiple streams of whole-house full HD video.
It is also promised to be fully backward compatible with 802.11a and 802.11n devices.
If APPLE's draft-spec implementation mirrors the final IEEE 802.11ac WG spec, count me in.
Is gigabit wifi realistically gigabit fast? It's really surprising that it can be faster than wired ethernet.
Nanasaki
macrumors 6502
I don't know about you... I have both iPhone 4S, iPod Touch 5G and iPad 3, but i can deal with low resolution iPad Mini.
Here is the catch, the 13 inch Macbook Pro uses 1280x800, it is low compare with 13 inch Macbook Air with 1400x900. When I look at the 13 inch Macbook Pro retina and non-retina one, i do see the difference. But does it worth your $500 dollar just for retina screen? I think not. Same goes for Macbook Air. If the price difference is around $200 or below, then retina version is better.
On the iPad side, since the non-retina iPad 2 and iPad 4 only have $100 difference, the choice is clear.
ASUS question
How has your Asus AC router been working. How's the range. I'm living in a 3 story house and have to upgrade my router. I was going to get the 3TB Time capsule since i wanted to go all Apple, but might hold off for the new Time Capsule with AC wifi. Until then, thought of getting the ASUS AC wifi router, but there is nothing that supports using it yet, so was thinking of getting the N Wifi model instead. I need long range wifi so it can reach my top floor where i'll use another airport extreme to help out the wifi on my top floor.
How has your Asus AC router been working. How's the range. I'm living in a 3 story house and have to upgrade my router. I was going to get the 3TB Time capsule since i wanted to go all Apple, but might hold off for the new Time Capsule with AC wifi. Until then, thought of getting the ASUS AC wifi router, but there is nothing that supports using it yet, so was thinking of getting the N Wifi model instead. I need long range wifi so it can reach my top floor where i'll use another airport extreme to help out the wifi on my top floor.
(a) LTE IS a technical, not a marketing term. It indicates that the signal is modulated using some form of OFDM rather than some form of CDMA.
(b) I have no interest in the idiocies of whether something is or is not "real" 4G vs 3.75G or whatever. However to claim that HSPA+ is not "75% of the speed of LTE" is a deeply misleading statement. All other things being equal, CDMA has about 84% of the goodput of LTE. SOME carriers have decided to switch to LTE aggressively, and so have not improved their HSPA+ infrastructure, so they are not using features like MIMO or dual-carrier. But this is a statement about the particular business choices they have made, it is a statement that THEIR implementation of HSPA+ is substantially slower than THEIR IMPLEMENTATION of LTE.
Don't confuse such statements with claims about the underlying technology. There are various good reasons to switch to OFDM (not just that 16% improvement over WCDMA, but also that it is much easier to enable various future advanced technologies --- which are, however, not yet enabled). However there is no reason to sneer at networks that, for whatever reason, stay on the HSPA+ track rather than switching to LTE. There is not that much practical difference between 42 and 50Mbps or 84 and 100 Mbps.
Well, wired ethernet is up to 10gb, though the equipment is VERY expensive. Wired Gb is also full-duplex where wireless is half-duplex and has more overhead, so no, it won't be faster than a wired connection. No to mention, your maximum throughput also drops significantly with distance or obstacles in the way.
Quu
macrumors 68040
Well I actually have an Airport Extreme (The first 1Gb ethernet model with 2.4 or 5GHz operation but not both simultaneously) so I can compare the Asus to that in range and performance.
I've found that the performance is better on the Asus router. Sometimes I'm seeing data rates that are more than twice as high as my old Airport Extreme but keep in mind my Airport Extreme was very old, Apple has since reiterated on it about two or three times.
Range wise I can't really say which is better as they both completely cover my whole house with no dropouts. I live in a small 3-bedroom typical British home.
Something to note though the Asus model has a lot more features than the Airport Extreme does. It includes for example MAC Address cloning, built in P2P Clients, HTTP & FTP Servers, Dual USB Ports for serving hard disks (Airport Extreme & Time Capsules only offer one port for that). It also has AsusVPN built in.
But most important to me is the 3rd party firmware offerings. Asus has taken the bold step of making their router firmware known as AsusWRT it open source so that anyone can take it, modify it and release their own version with all of Asus's proprietary software intact like the Broadcom WiFi drivers and AICloud (Asus's version of turning your router in to your home cloud accessible from the internet).
What this means is you can install 3rd party software such as AsusWRT-Merlin (Which is what I run) that looks identical to Asus's official firmware, keeps all the same features and has higher performance than DD-WRT does (As they don't have the official drivers in their releases like Merlin does in his) while getting some even better features like per-machine bandwidth monitoring (up, down, 2.4, 5.2, wired and internet based monitoring all separate over days/weeks/months) and OpenVPN as opposed to AsusVPN in the firmware.
I've used lots and lots of different routers over the past decade and I can easily say that the Asus AC66U and the N66U are the best routers available to consumers today. The software is based on Tomato, it is responsive and information in it updates without page refreshes so you can monitor your traffic or router load, configuration or connectivity in real time. It has more features than you can imagine and excellent 3rd party developer support through folks like Merlin. And of course hardware wise it has an extremely fast processor and the latest wireless technology.
One other thing to note, the USB ports on the back of the unit can be used with a 3G/4G modem so that you can seamlessly switch to those modems automatically when your main internet connection is unavailable.
And if you use the Merlin firmware you can even have two internet connections provided to the router, both via Ethernet which you can use for fall-over or for teaming providing up to a 2Gb connection to the internet. And of course the LAN ports on the router also support teaming so you could theoretically serve a 2Gb home network and a 2Gb internet connection with this router which is just astounding for a home product in my opinion.
Yeah, exactly. I have an N router and can get well over 100mbps actual throughput consistantly on my wireless clients scattered throughout the house, and while that may not be as fast as having them connected directly to my GBe switch, it's enough that I can make full use of my 30mb internet pipe and even transfer large files with reasonable speed compared to what we had before with Wireless G. This is just another step towards being even less dependant on wires for the very large transfers.
"LTE" is a marketing term, short for Long Term Evolution. The summary on Wikipedia says it best: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTE_(telecommunication)
