You are confusing Megabits per second(little b) with Megabytes per second(big B).
Look at your picture it shows (MB) not (Mb)
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
First Gigabit Wi-Fi Routers Ready to Launch
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
You are confusing Megabits per second(little b) with Megabytes per second(big B).
Look at your picture it shows (MB) not (Mb)
Sooo jealous! I'm getting 3Mbps DSL for $30 with no tv or phone. The fastest I can get is 15Mbps cable for $70.
i guess its the advantage of having so many different providers trying to beat each other. i'm pretty happy with my 100mbit/s at my place, when i go home to my parents house over the weekend, i have to go back to 3 mbit/s which is always driving me insaaaaane
No in fact the primary usage case for mobile devices using 11ac is more important than desktops using it. The common misconception is that faster baseband/broadband technologies cost more power but in fact they offer the ability to use less power.
For example"
I'm downloading a 400GB game on my iPhone or iPad.
802.11n takes me say 22 minutes to download.
That's 22 minutes that my radio is going full tilt and eating up power.
Next I download the same file on another device with 11ac. That same download takes 10 minutes.
That's a significant power savings there as 11ac components aren't twice the power of their predecessor.
Next up Cloud:
Dropbox and iCloud do LAN sync. Which means that conserving bandwidth means taking the shortest most direct route. Cloud technologies have to be smart enough to know that moving a large or small file from Point A to Point B is most efficient across the LAN if they both are on the same LAN. The faster this transfer happens the better.
So that means upgraded devices that support 11ac will leverage LAN sync even better.
At this point I think the next iPhone will likely have a 11ac chipset in it as Apple likes Broadcom for its SoC.
Here's the onslaught coming
Broadcom
http://www.engadget.com/2012/02/29/broadcom-802-11ac-chipsets-already-in-preproduction-preparing/
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5293/broadcom-announces-family-of-80211ac-chipsets-5g-wifi-brand
Qualcomm/Atheros
http://www.anandtech.com/show/5594/qualcomm-atheros-demos-80211ac-on-msm8960 (230Mbps on a crowded CES floor)
http://www.engadget.com/2012/02/23/qualcomm-atheros-flaunts-802-11ac-wifi/
Mobile is really where it's at for 11ac.
People seem to fail to understand the primary purpose of this....it's NOT to have a faster internet connection....it's a faster internal network...think....streaming high definition content to multiple clients.
Wish my provider would provide faster than 1.5mbps. Also, no I don't live in the country, I live ten minutes from downtown, (It has an apple store)
Why, out of curiosity?
Is your internet connection that awesome?
(The other reason that comes to mind is if you're in need of an upgrade anyway).
I'm looking forward to evolutions in WiFi technology, but they'll only be useful to me once all the right goodies on my local network support any applicable new standard(s) so my in-network traffic can move around faster. And there's no point in trailblazing until the right equipment is available—the established networking products tend to be more reliable than the original ones. And Comcast isn't going to be to a point where this matters anytime soon.
Call me when I can buy an iPhone with 400 Gigabytes of storage, then you can use that as an example...
Sorry to be the one to break this to you but unfortunately D-Link has never been the same after the DIR-655 and DGL-4500 release, they have about the same amount of firmware nonsense going with their newer lineups and even with their newer firmware (since v1.11) for the DIR-655 which used to be rock stable back in the day.
Sadly the same goes for both Netgear and Linksys so basically every major brand of consumer grade routers have their difficulties with firmware stability, it almost seems like it's more important to rush new and fancy models to the market instead of making the one they've already got 100% stable and working before they release new models and abandoning the older ones altogether.
But your DGL-4500 is no better for "gaming" than any other router, the only difference between your DGL-4500 and a DIR-655 for instance is that your router features presets of different gaming QoS you can enable, you can achieve the exact same result by manually create Port QoS on a DIR-655 which got almost the exact same hardware under the hood.
Newer routers with improved and more powerful hardware will due even better, but sadly firmware issues tend to occur with way too many modern routers. The safest bet is to get small business / enterprise routers with well developed firmware with new firmware coming for it several years after it was released on the market. Routers like Cisco RV 220W for instance will blow your DGL-4500 out of the water any day and will suit your gaming needs just as good, if not better as a result of more powerful hardware than your current DGL-4500, you have just fallen for D-Link's "gaming branding".
Wow. That is one of the least meaningful terms I've heard in a while. I think it takes the cake over AT&T's fake 4G.
802.11ac is still a developing standard as far as the 5-6 GHz spectrum is concerned. It can utilize up to 160 MHz of bandwidth and this spectrum is used by the USDoD in a number of national security surveillance and communication systems.
After the FCC's debacle with Light Squared and its abysmal failure, the FCC will be very cautious about the commercial world sharing spectrum with other US Government agencies. The large bandwidth allocation of 802.11ac is problematic, and it may be limited if there is enough national security push back. I personally look forward to 802.11ad in the 60 GHz spectrum where there isn't any national infrastructure there.
After the FCC's debacle with Light Squared and its abysmal failure, the FCC will be very cautious about the commercial world sharing spectrum with other US Government agencies. The large bandwidth allocation of 802.11ac is problematic, and it may be limited if there is enough national security push back. I personally look forward to 802.11ad in the 60 GHz spectrum where there isn't any national infrastructure there.
11n still on 5GHz with ac Routers?
Quick question: With the new 11ac routers, is 11n now limited to 2.4GHz? If so, is a router like this really an upgrade for those who still need 11g and 11n?
I could still use a separate b/g router with an 11ac router, but would it be better to purchase a dual-band 11b/g/n router instead?
Quick question: With the new 11ac routers, is 11n now limited to 2.4GHz? If so, is a router like this really an upgrade for those who still need 11g and 11n?
I could still use a separate b/g router with an 11ac router, but would it be better to purchase a dual-band 11b/g/n router instead?
Well it is 5th-generation in terms of speed; we've gone through 2, 11, 54, and 600 Mb/s before 802.11ac came about.
it depends....
What problem are you trying to solve? It would always be fastest to run Cat-6 cables.
WiFi really sucks compared to copper (and the fact that copper runs each cable as a full duplex connection compared to wireless being a shared half-duplex bottleneck). Ten systems on Cat-6 could run at an aggregate bandwidth of 20 gigabit per second. Ten systems on gigabit wifi could run at 1 gigabit per second.
What data are you transferring (internet streams [likely limited by your modem], backups [likely in the middle of the night when performance is not important], local file server access [most likely to benefit from faster WiFi if you can't run copper])?
What problem are you trying to solve? It would always be fastest to run Cat-6 cables.
WiFi really sucks compared to copper (and the fact that copper runs each cable as a full duplex connection compared to wireless being a shared half-duplex bottleneck). Ten systems on Cat-6 could run at an aggregate bandwidth of 20 gigabit per second. Ten systems on gigabit wifi could run at 1 gigabit per second.
What data are you transferring (internet streams [likely limited by your modem], backups [likely in the middle of the night when performance is not important], local file server access [most likely to benefit from faster WiFi if you can't run copper])?
Call me when I can buy an iPhone with 400 Gigabytes of storage, then you can use that as an example...
Oops. Wishful thinking lol
Only thing is, as is the case with 802.11n, you'll only get decent speeds if you're sat ontop of the router. Going through a wall (depending on their construction) can quarter the speed you get in my experience. The more walls, the worse it is. In many cases when you're in a different room to the router, I find 2.4ghz N turns out to be faster than 5ghz. Mainly due to the lower frequency being able to penetrate walls more effectively.
That'd be fine until a few people logged on/started browsing/accessing files simultaneously. Don't forget, if you had say 300 devices (as per your "few" statement) and 3 access points with non-overlapping channels, that'd mean there would be 100 devices per access point. Each device has to wait for radio silence before it can communicate, and with 99 other devices all trying to send/receive data, that wait can be very, very long. A realistic one-to-one 802.11n network gets say 15MB/sec. You could then quite reasonably assume that 50 devices want to communicate at once, each one halving the data speed. So divide that speed by 50, and you're left with 0.3MB/sec. It'd be even worse as there would be many in that office that were on the fringes of the signal.
Ethernet on the other hand allows computers to talk to each other simultaneously. One device doesn't have to wait for all the others to stop before it can send data, which is why it'll be a very long time until wifi technology is good enough for hardwired ethernet connections to be replaced.
Also, there are 4 non-overlapping channels in 802.11g.
The required infrastructure is air. If air is not available, vacuum will do just fine. So I think infrastructure is not a problem
I'm pretty sure he means the WAN infrastructure is not available.
Hold alt and click the wifi menu, it'll tell you the actual PHY connection rate (in megabits/sec). To calculate roughly what speed you should get when say, copying a file, in megabytes/sec: connection_rate/2/8 = maximum speed in megabytes/sec. It's divided by two as wifi is half-duplex. Divided by 8 to change Mb to MB.
For example, I'm connected at 81Mbps, so my maximum speed in megabytes/sec is about 5 megabytes. Testing this in the Finder gives about 4.5megabytes/sec.
My sarcasm detector has broken... Because if you're being serious, 60GHz would have a range of about 3 feet
Spoken like someone who doesn't travel. I've been in plenty of hotels were the wifi is either too weak or overpriced, whereas the Ethernet works.
Ouch.
I had a 24Mb/s contract with *Be There. At first I got 14Mb/s and about 4Mb/s up. After about 4 years the speed had dropped to a max of 9Mb/s. I then moved about a mile across London. Same borough, but BT now gives me a whopping 2.8Mb/s max down and 0.8Mb/s up. (all using BT exchanges).
2.8Mb/s is NOT broadband.
I had 4Mb/s in New Zealand in 1998!!!
BT also keeps delaying their Infinity installation. But when it does come, I'll have "Super fast download speeds of up to 76Mb/s".
at no extra cost
Last edited:
If I'm not entirely mistaken, once you have a fiber-optic infrastructure laid out to support it, it's mostly a matter of upgrading the back-end to be able to deliver such speeds.
Stick with that DSL. I'm on Time Warner's Roadrunner Cable broadband ISP and get 15 to 30Kbps during evening hours for $50 in rural New York. It's faster after midnight (150-200Kbs). I know it's not my house setup because during 7 AM and 8 AM it goes up to 1Mbps. I've never seen it go anywhere near 3Mbps. Cable broadband speeds depend on how many people are using it at the time, unlike DSL.
Yeah. I can't believe how many people making comments here don't realize a WiFi router's speed (ac vs n) pertains to the local LAN not the Internet or WAN.