How to Know if You Have 802.11ac
If you lot've been downwards to your local Best Buy lately, yous might have noticed that a whole new grade of wireless routers are on the market on the premium stop of the product scale, emblazoned with an "802.11ac" label in bright letters on the front of the box.
Merely what does 802.11ac mean, and is it really necessary for you to get the most out of your daily WiFi browsing feel? Read on as we articulate up the confusion around this confounding wireless networking standard and tell y'all everything you need to know about the newest devices that tin can support it in 2016.
802.11 Explained
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Whenever you buy a new router, the first affair yous probably notice is that no matter which model you eventually go with, they all share the denotation of "802.xi(something)" somewhere in their proper name. Without getting too deep with the technical details, what you'll want to pay attention to is the alphabetic character that follows afterwards this number, which signifies both the generation of the router and the maximum speed yous can promise to transmit or receive between the base station and other wireless devices.
You can read near what all of these mean in our handy guide here, but to cut to the hunt the only two we'll be talking about today are 802.11n, and 802.11ac. To start, it helps to know that on the whole well-nigh routers made within the past five years will back up 802.11n, which at its peak tin can transfer upwardly of 450Mbits/s, or around 56 megabytes per second. This, of form, is the theoretical max bespeak for the technology achieved in carefully controlled lab settings, but it'southward still enough fast plenty for the boilerplate household to run multiple Netflix streams or gaming sessions at a time without anyone noticing a slowdown.
802.11ac on the other hand is quite a fleck newer, having just been approved by the IEEE (Constitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) for consumers in 2014. Theoretically capable of maxing out at a whopping 1.3Gbits per second (162.5 MB/south), the throughput of an ac-enabled router is more than double what you can await with the more than common 802.11n. As well, it's important to notation that opposed to 802.11n, 802.11ac can but transmit over the 5Ghz spectrum. As we explicate in this article, while the 2.4Ghz band is much more than crowded than 5Ghz and tin can endure from increased interference, its larger wavelength allows it to penetrate walls over longer distances without much signal loss.
This means that if your router sits a number of rooms or floors away from your wireless devices, it may not be the best option for your household despite the possible increased throughput.
802.11ac Routers: Do I Demand One Yet?
Because 802.11ac was only approved for the consumer market so recently, router manufacturers have just begun the process of flooding the shelves downwardly at your local Best Purchase with wireless networking hubs that bear the new brand.
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To know that a router is ac-fix, simply look at the proper name of the model to learn everything you need to know about what kind of power you should expect straight out of the box. For the time beingness, all routers featuring 802.11ac will take an "air conditioning" stashed somewhere in its proper noun (the Asus RT-AC3200, D-Link AC3200, etc). On boilerplate you can wait to pay anywhere from $150 – $400 for an 802.11ac router, which is a high price for users who might only have one or two devices in the house that are really capable of tuning into the aqueduct in the first place.
Right at present, the crux of ownership an 802.11ac router is that only the most current wireless devices even know how to decode its signal. For example, both the iPhone half dozen and 6s are equipped to handle an 802.11ac point…just when was the last time you found yourself struggling with the fact that 802.11nonlytransmits at a 'mere' 56 megabytes per second?
802.11ac will be nifty as presently every bit everyone in the business firm wants their ain private 4K movie on laptops or streaming devices that are capable of handling that much bandwidth over the air, simply until then, information technology seems it's simply a luxury for those who accept the hottest devices equipped with the latest and greatest in WiFi technology.
Conclusion
Then, do you reallyneed an 802.11ac router just yet? (Probably) not. If you're somehow streaming 4K videos to your iPhone through a central media server or take an ultrabook that was released in the by 6 months then yes, y'all can receive an ac bespeak and obviously have enough reasons to put it to piece of work.
That said, unless y'all're one of the lucky few customers to have cobweb optic lines in their home that actually receive broadband speeds above the 150Mbit limit, your standard b/g/n router should exist able to handle the job just fine. They're a heck of a lot cheaper than 802.11ac routers, compatible with both the 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz spectrum, and run almost all of the current heavy-load applications (gaming, streaming, downloading) without breaking a sweat.
Our recommendation is to look this i out some other year or two one time the balance of the wireless networking community catches upwardly to the trend that 802.11ac routers are but starting to dip their toes into. If you accept the spare cash on hand and simply tin't get enough of routers that expect like they were designed by Bruce Wayne, then it's a worthy investment that'due south only about as "future-proof" equally they come. If yous merely need something that delivers solid functioning at a discount nonetheless, there are withal enough of 802.11n models out at that place that will become the chore washed just fine.
Paradigm Credits: Wikimedia, D-Link, Asus
Source: https://www.howtogeek.com/234751/what-is-802.11ac-and-do-i-need-it/
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