Has anyone got a AC wifi enable device and AC Access Point?
Wonder if in real terms its worth an upgrade. My house gives really crappy coverage with thick walls. Would AC offer a benefit over distance where signal degrades quickly? Currently have wireless N 150Mbps.
May just buy an industrial AP which has more gain and a better aerial.
I think you'll find an AC standard router will help a lot. The two bands on all of them will mean that closer devices on 5GHz will stop saturating the deeper penetrating 2.4GHz band, leaving more bandwidth for farther devices. AC also standardised beamforming, which focuses radiative energy at the client devices, increasing wall penetration further.
Originally Posted by Agent
Very possibly. But, it's just worth noting that ANY microwave transmission is subject to blindspots. If a blindspot stops n, it might also be a blindspot in ac. The only way, really, to be sure, is a site survey and probably a signsl strength meter. By the same logic, some (though by no means all) blindspots can be worked round by moving the router. Try higher up, or even a few feet away in the same room. I don't know if the OP has tried that, but a few feet MIGHT nake all the difference.
True enough, though the precise benefit depends on local conditions.
True, but not quite complete.
It standardised beamforming, or to be more precise, standardised a minimum standard of compliance for beamforming. But support in any given device is optional. But if beamforming is supported at all, the AC method (explicit compressed feedback) has to be, first, fully implemented, and second, primary handshaking has to detect and offer it.
So two potential issues. First, does a given device support beamforming at all? It is optional in ac.
Second, ac doesn't preclude other, additional, and possibly more effective, beamforming methods, providing it will, at least, drop to the ac standard.
It's a bit like me, as an English-speaker, visiting a part of China and finding no English speakers. There might be someone that sort-of speaks Spanish, and I sort-of speak Spanish, so we can communicate. But as I'm fluent in German, if I find another fluent German-speaker, it'll be much more efficient to communicate.
The ac implementation, if you like, requires basic Spanish to comply with the standard. But it doesn't prevent German being used if both parties speak it.
Just to clarify the limits of the analogy, the ac implementation of beamforming isn't at all bad, as my 'basic' Spanish analogy might imply. Perhaps a better analogy might be fluent general Spanish, but if I want to hold a highly technical discussion, I get better results if we're both fluent in Spanish and astro-physics, if that's what we want to discuss.
Anyway, analogy aside, if beamforming is desired, ensure a given device supports it. And consider that a proprietary standard, say Netgear, might provide better results IF supported at both ends, and can always fall back on ac if non-supporting devices are added.
ac, in other words, provides the reassurance of that minimum level of beamforming standardisation (if implemented at all) but doesn't preclude more effective implementations existing as well, because handshaking will always drop back to the ac standard if nothing better can be negotiated.
All, "as I understand it", of course.
It depends on the router to a large extent. My experiences (more or less downstairs corner to far upstairs corner in an averag 4 bed)
Super Hub 2:
2.4G N c. 200mbps
5G N c.300mbps
Tp LInk Archer:
2.4G N c.150mbps
5G AC c.350mbps
Asus RT-AC66:
2.4G N c.200mbps
5G AC 1050mbps.
Thats to a desktop machine with an asus pce ac68 network card, YMMV.
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