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WiFi Performance to Improve As FCC Opens Unlicensed Frequencies
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Unlikely as this is increasing spectrum used and therefore tuned components within WiFi routers are unlikely to work within the new frequency range.
Yeah I pick up everyone in my building - 16 units. Since there's a lot more than 16 names, I'm assuming someone is running multiple AP's as well. And I'm not referring to the 'guest' networks appended to their main SSID.
I checked mine after tweaking it - I used to be able to walk to my car and still get a signal, now if I just walk out my door and step 10 feet the signal cuts out.
My media center (tv, xbox, wii u, apple tv, etc) is all hard wired. Not even sure if having 7 devices in the same cabinet is even good connected wireless.
I even considered running cat5e to my mac mini across the room.
Really? That's great news if 100% true. I recall from way back that you could always hook up your own hard drive to an Airport Extreme and have Time Machine backups over the network just like with a Time Capsule. But I also recall that Apple didn't officially support it. Do they officially support that configuration now?
So...we still will need a firmware or software update to have router use the new frequencies?
I can with my 3 rd gen Time Capsule. I also use a powered USB2 Hub and attach to older USB drives off that Hub and it works great.
Yes, as they'll be setup to not allow the use of these frequencies when set to "US" location.
(It will not pick the channels automatically, and most routers will also not offer them as an option manually)
Different regions of the world allow and block different channels. Access Points are sold with those lists programmed in, but current APs believe that these regions are blocked. They'll need to be updated to know that they are now unblocked in the 'US' region and that they are therefore allowed to use them.
Client devices connecting to these APs don't have these restrictions. Its not their job to know.
Mobile devices don't help either. Since they have such low maximum capacity, they take up a huge amount of time when they send.
Remember: Only one device can transmit at a time over a frequency. If slow device A requires 30% of the time to do it, then its going to have a massive negative effect on everyone else.
It only takes a few phones, because they usually are slow and with a weaker signal. (which increases T required)
And yes, its for this reason you want a phone/computer with a high wireless speed. Even if you can't use the speed yourself, the higher speed means that congestion is reduced.
Devices such as iPhones (and Android phones) cause huge amounts of congestion problems if they're in use, because their efficiency is very poor.
This rule carries over to 3G/LTE as well. The faster your device, the less congestion you cause.
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johnnyturbouk
macrumors 68000
yes, but is the virgin router wireless AC? I believe the super-hub is 802.11b/g/n. Dual-band ...yes but not wireless gigabit!
The new TC is 802.11ac
Quite a bit of a difference
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Good try. Except, if the new lanes are only open to Tesla cars, it hardly benefits others. It will be a while until enough people sell old cars a buy Tesla for others to notice a difference.
It's an IEEE standard. All IEEE standards are numbered. The 802 family is for local area network standards. IEEE 802.3 for example, encompasses ethernet standards. IEEE 802.16 is WiMAX. Bluetooth was originally IEEE 802.15.1, though subsequent versions have not been maintained as IEEE standards.
IEEE 802.11 just happens to be for WiFi.
There's no reason why consumer products can't use a different name than the IEEE standard name to describe itself. Apple, of course, uses the AirPort branding. They did the same thing with IEEE 1394a, calling it "FireWire 400" instead. Sony called it "i.LINK". Then there was IEEE 1394b, which Apple called FireWire 800. Oh and by the way, Apple calls their ethernet plugs "gigabit ethernet" but it's really just 1000BASE-T, as defined by the IEEE 802.3ab standard.
If I had to guess why 802.11<letters> has been used so much in the consumer space, is because not all the 802.11 standards are compatible with the same antennas, and many WiFi devices support multiple standards, so it's useful to know exactly what you're getting. Specificity is a good thing, so you don't accidentally buy two devices that can't talk to each other, or can't talk to each other at full speed. From a consumer perspective, it probably would have been a good thing if 802.11a had never existed. Maybe without it, we'd have gotten more consumer-friendly names like "WiFi 3.0". Of course, there's absolutely no reason why companies can't sell products using their own little names.
Oh, and don't let the "4G" fool you. There's a number of different cellular network standards that are called "4G" that are not at all compatible with one another nor operate at the same speeds. The same was true of "3G" before that, there were several competing standards.
If you want, you can probably think of 802.11ac as a fourth generation WiFi standard, though. Call a and b first generation, g second, n third. There's an 802.11ax in the pipeline that will be the fifth generation.
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And what does that have to do with the original point? I was answering the 'meaningless until ISPs catch up' point, not whether you need new equipment or updates or not
Good try indeed
Wi-fi radio waves, like cell phone radio waves, are non-ionizing (they aren't capable of damaging tissue in a way that causes cancer).
Is this 100MHz adjacent to the frequencies used in 5GHz 802.11n/ac? What channel would it be equivalent to?
If it's adjacent, it would be pretty sweet if the additional channels could be added through a firmware update, in the same way that software can enable the locked out higher channels in the 2.4GHz range in the US.
If it's adjacent, it would be pretty sweet if the additional channels could be added through a firmware update, in the same way that software can enable the locked out higher channels in the 2.4GHz range in the US.