Has anyone tested 802.11ac wireless yet?

[zag]

I've just been testing out our new 802.11ac transmitters and wondering if anyone else has upgraded yet?

 

We are using Aruba 225 transmitters here, with netgear GS510TP POE switches and it seems to work well.

 

I've managed to connect at 1GB/s over wireless on my macbook air. Really pleased at those speeds as the quickest we could get before was 144mbps. Has anyone noticed a difference in real world usage?

 

Most of our client equipment isn't capable of AC yet so wondering what to invest in in terms of laptops/tablets now.

[SYNACK]

Have been holding off for AC gear, seems silly buying N when its replacement is defined and out or close. Should be decent and remember that ac waps will help over 2x2 n waps even with old tech along with better backhaul to the network. Remember if you really need the extra bandwidth on real laptops you can swap out the Nic for a mini pcie one.

[abillybob]

I don't know whether your referring to testing it in general (Home Use) or do you mean just School use. I don't use it in School only use 5Ghz 802.11n setup as we won't be buying anything that's worth the whole Wi-Fi infrastructure change for a while. Though I do use AC at home as all of our devices apart from 1 is compatible with AC and it does work very well and very quickly at some points it would exceed Ethernet speeds.

[Michael]

As above, I've started to deploy wireless N using 5GHz only. I can't see why anyone needs more than 300Mbps just yet.

[SYNACK]

I doubt it would manage better than gb ethernet, I think the max theoretical is something like 1.3gbit bit that is shared between wap and client and all other clients as well as being half duplex. It may on a tiny few occasions match 1gbit ethernet if the laptop is sitting on a wap in a faraday cage doing a udp download but cable is just better if you want speed and reliability.

 

Ac is still a huge improvement as it gives you about a gigabit to share between everyone on that wap but not as good as cable for bandwidth and reliability. Something our MoE and their dropkick tech 'experts' don't seem to get. @dhare46

 

I hope that at some point people will make sure that they remember that almost all tech is great in the right situation but it all has its limitations that are never listed in the advertising brochure.

[zag]

As above, I've started to deploy wireless N using 5GHz only. I can't see why anyone needs more than 300Mbps just yet.

 

Yeh that's exactly my point, I've got a 1gb/s connection here but its on a macbook so its hard to test things like logon speed yet.

 

I'll have to try and get a windows laptop and see the difference.

 

I'm more interested in how it will work with 30+ laptops connecting all at once. Hopefully it will fix some problems with have with capacity. We're upgrading from 802.11g transmitters.

 

Things like battery life on the clients are also a consideration

Edited May 15, 2014 by zag

[abillybob]

I doubt it would manage better than gb ethernet, I think the max theoretical is something like 1.3gbit bit that is shared between wap and client and all other clients as well as being half duplex. It may on a tiny few occasions match 1gbit ethernet if the laptop is sitting on a wap in a faraday cage doing a udp download but cable is just better if you want speed and reliability.

 

Well it was downloading from my server quicker with AC wireless than it was when it was connected via Ethernet.... You must be right although for some reason it WAS quicker.

[Michael]

Yeh that's exactly my point, I've got a 1gb/s connection here but its on a macbook so its hard to test things like logon speed yet.

 

I'll have to try and get a windows laptop and see the difference.

 

I'm more interested in how it will work with 30+ laptops connecting all at once. Hopefully it will fix some problems with have with capacity. We're upgrading from 802.11g transmitters.

 

Things like battery life on the clients are also a consideration

 

AC will of course be better than N, but you need to weigh up cost vs. performance. I suspect most of your clients probably can support N, so running G/N in 2.4GHz would be a good start, slowly moving up to N on 5GHz. I think it'll be sometime before AC becomes affordable and as standard on devices.

 

Even the almighty iPad only supports dual band 2.4GHz/5GHz up to N and not AC. No doubt Apple will do a hardware refresh at some point.

[zag]

AC will of course be better than N, but you need to weigh up cost vs. performance. I suspect most of your clients probably can support N, so running G/N in 2.4GHz would be a good start, slowly moving up to N on 5GHz. I think it'll be sometime before AC becomes affordable and as standard on devices.

 

Even the almighty iPad only supports dual band 2.4GHz/5GHz up to N and not AC. No doubt Apple will do a hardware refresh at some point.

 

We jumped from 802.11g so the price difference between N and AC wasn't that different. We decided to go direct to AC.

 

I've already noticed all our ipads connecting over 5GHz, thats pretty cool. Shame they are currently limited to N speeds though.

[Michael]

Oh don't get me wrong, I'd buy AC WAPs if I were upgrading today - I just wouldn't go to the effort replacing all adapters to AC compatible ones. The cost is going to be very high at the moment. The Intel Wireless-AC 7260 currently costs about £20 per machine!

[Quackers]

All our Staff laptops support AC , but we have Ruckus and i do not think they have Wireless AC Access Points yet.

[zag]

Oh don't get me wrong, I'd buy AC WAPs if I were upgrading today - I just wouldn't go to the effort replacing all adapters to AC compatible ones. The cost is going to be very high at the moment. The Intel Wireless-AC 7260 currently costs about £20 per machine!

 

That Half Mini PCI card looks like a nice upgrade choice!

 

I've bought one to test with, thanks. If it works I might buy a batch load.

[Michael]

That Half Mini PCI card looks like a nice upgrade choice!

 

I've bought one to test with, thanks. If it works I might buy a batch load.

 

I like the Intel stuff, it's always good quality and good driver support. Compatibility is excellent too.

[sted]

That Half Mini PCI card looks like a nice upgrade choice!

 

I've bought one to test with, thanks. If it works I might buy a batch load.

 

thats what i shoved in my laptop to go from n to ac. (iirc cost me less than £20 nearer £15) i get 600ish mb to my bt router its definately faster than n for file transfer but not by as much as id like

[zag]

thats what i shoved in my laptop to go from n to ac. (iirc cost me less than £20 nearer £15) i get 600ish mb to my bt router its definately faster than n for file transfer but not by as much as id like

 

Yeh I'll have to test it at home as well. I've got the new BTHome Hub 5 which has been excellent so far.

 

What kind of file transfer speeds are you getting using AC?

[njc235]

The R700 is Ruckus's AC AP and is available now.

[zag]

I'd be interested to know if that Ruckas needs a 30watt POE supply.

 

The arubas need to use POE+ to get the full speed so we had to replace a few switches as well. Apparently the Meru devices don't need this.

[njc235]

From the Ruuckus website; PoE: 802.3af compliant

 

Yoiu are correct about the Meru AP832, it will run AC at full power on both radios using af power

[Net-Ctrl]

As mentioned above the R700 is Ruckus' current wave 1 11AC product. Their 11ac products will work seamlessly (with full functionality) with existing 802.3af PoE switch infrastructures.

 

They produced an interesting blog last September about the power requirement of 11AC products and their approach to it if anyone was interested: POWER STRUGGLE - The Ruckus Room

[craig4gon]

Ruckus AC ZoneFlex R700 | Ruckus Wireless, Inc. - I havent tried this myself but I have utilised other AC access points and I have been impressed. I know everyone already knows this but I loved 5ghz on the AC protocol. I really did notice the difference. I cant say I was in a noisy environment but I had used n protocol on 2.4 in the same area and the results were significantly improved. I know AC is the way forward and I will be certainly looking to move everything to this protocol over the coming times. Enjoy guys

[njc235]

Also worth a thought is what happens to your dual radio AC AP (2.4GHz & 5GHz) when the 2.4 clients start to, and completely disappear. I am told that some vendors' APs will operate 5 on both but some will effectively have a redundant radio.

[craig4gon]

Not sure if im not understanding your point njc235 - Are you saying some manufacturers are considering dropping 2.4ghz from AP's - surely not. 5ghz is good for open spaces, large areas etc. but the cost of infrastructure would rise rapidly as you would need almost and AP per room (I get I am over dramatising a little here). I cant see 2.4 not being used - I can actually see a few more freq used in the future - Ofcom have already relaxed some of the frequency licensing now - I expect that will filter through to the rest of the market and eventually we will have tri band AP's being common place.

 

Apologies if I'm missing your point njc235

[njc235]

I am suggesting that the number of 2.4 clients will probably fall off as the number of AC clients rise. If that is the case then the need for a 2.4 radio will be diminished.

[craig4gon]

Oh I see, Thought I was missing some part of that. Still not sure that will happen - I just expect devices will operate on more and more frequencies - as is happening with cellular networks. The Iphone couldn't operate on O2's 4G frequency but they just made the device able to use that aswell.

 

Im sure the clients operating on 2.4 will reduce and 5 will increase but as devices increase Im still sure we will have AP's that operate on something like tri-band then quad band in order to satisfy more BYOD's etc. But only time will tell on that front I suppose :-)

[zag]

The Aruba 802.11ac transmitters require 30 watts per port to run at full speed (although they do still work slower using normal POE)

 

I've upgraded our switches to these GS510TP POE+ switches which cost around £800 for the entire site, serving 32 transmitters

 

 

Basically it wasn't that big a deal.