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802.11ac WiFi Router Round-Up Tests Broadcom XStream Platform Performance (hothardware.com)
MojoKid writes: Wireless routers are going through somewhat of a renaissance right now, thanks to the arrival of the 802.11ac standard that is "three times as fast as wireless-N" and the proliferation of Internet-connected devices in our homes and pockets. AC is backward compatible with all previous standards, and whereas 802.11n was only able to pump out 450Mb/s of total bandwidth, 802.11ac is capable of transmitting at up to 1,300Mbps on a 5GHz channel. AC capability is only available on the 5GHz channel, which has fewer devices on it than a typical 2.4GHz channel. The trade-off is that 5GHz signals typically don't travel as far as those on the 2.4GHz channel.
However, 802.11ac makes up for it with a technology named Beamforming, which allows it to figure out where devices are located and amplify the signal in their direction instead of just broadcasting in all directions like 802.11n. Also, while 802.11n supports only four streams of data, 802.11ac supports up to eight streams on channels that are twice as wide. HotHardware's AC Router round-up takes a look at four flagship AC routers from ASUS, TRENDnet, D-Link and Netgear. All are AC3200 routers that use the new Broadcom XStream 5G platform. Netgear's Nighthawk X6 tends to offer the best balance of performance in various use cases. However, all models performed similarly, with subtle variances in design, features and pricing left to differentiate them from one another.
However, 802.11ac makes up for it with a technology named Beamforming, which allows it to figure out where devices are located and amplify the signal in their direction instead of just broadcasting in all directions like 802.11n. Also, while 802.11n supports only four streams of data, 802.11ac supports up to eight streams on channels that are twice as wide. HotHardware's AC Router round-up takes a look at four flagship AC routers from ASUS, TRENDnet, D-Link and Netgear. All are AC3200 routers that use the new Broadcom XStream 5G platform. Netgear's Nighthawk X6 tends to offer the best balance of performance in various use cases. However, all models performed similarly, with subtle variances in design, features and pricing left to differentiate them from one another.
Wireless routers are a security disaster. Public interface combined with the front door and back door to your network.
Get access points. They don't run out of memory because they aren't doing all that routing and firewall stuff.
Have a separate router.
Don't mix to two. Just don't.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
The 1300Mbps is a scam figure because it's industry convention to report the layer 2 data transfer rate, but at that layer there is a lot of chatter dealing specifically with the physical link quality, which can be substantial with wireless. So indeed, in most cases you can take the number, then divide by two. That's the TCP/UDP data rate you will see in the best case scenario.
Moreover, 1300Mbps is the figure for the three-stream capable devices. But what's the percent of clients with three stream wireless adapters? About less than 5%?
Won't the higher available bandwidth help when there's multiple WiFi devices?
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
>industry convention to report the layer 2
you wish, usually they report layer 1 speed, remember how g was supposed to be 54 Mbit/s? but in reality it topped off at 20Mbit :)
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
No mention of Apple products. Apple has been using 802.11ac for years. I have one of their wifi routers: easy to use, just works, etc. and it has 802.11ac.
That's because it's really a Broadcom Xstream Chipset Router Roundup, not an 802.11ac Router Roundup. I wanted to see how they compared to my Draytek, but all they've reviewed is multiple tweaks of the same reference design from Broadcom. They even say they're reviewing "top-shelf units" (first time I've heard D-Link and Trendnet described as top-shelf), but then totally omit what I'd consider actual top-shelf units, maybe an Aironet 3600, a Draytek 2860, and an Airport Extreme.
In D-LInk's case it seems to have turned them into props from the Battlestar Galactica reboot. I mean seriously, did you look at the photos of the AC3200? It should be marketed as an 802.11ac WTF Router.
Maybe I'm crazy, but it seemed like there was a time when pure access points got strangely expensive and "routers" were cheap.
So I just bought a router and used one of the LAN ports as its uplink, avoiding the "WAN" port and all the routing functionality together. I already have a firewall/router elsewhere.
The only downside I've seen of doing this is some of the devices I've used seem to have some of their ancillary functionality, like NTP, hardcoded to only use the WAN port for outgoing traffic.
According to this teardown of the Apple AirPort Extreme A1521, it does in fact have a Broadcom BCM4360 chip rated for 1.3Gbps. So the parent's original question is a good one. Why wasn't this included in the test??
Life is not for the lazy.
So which ones are well-supported (actually functional and stable) by OpenWRT? The bandwidth will be nice, but dealing with factory firmware isn't worth it.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
They do seem to have focused almost entirely on one single thing, which is probably irrelevant for most non-geek users: If their router can stream YouTube, Skype, or Facetime, then it's fast enough. The criteria that really matter to most users, things like "Do you need to reboot it every second day in order to keep it functioning", "What are the chances of it being incorporated into a botnet if I do something as totally crazy as connecting it to the Internet" (something that Asus, D-Link, Netgear, and, oh yes, Trendnet are notorious for), and "For how many minutes after I buy it will the vendor provide firmware upgrades" (Linksys, where everything's a legacy product as soon as it ships) haven't been taken into consideration.
top self refers to a bar where the best liquor is kept on the top self
All I really care about is that, for the first time, I can actually use wireless reliably. I have a link in my apartment where the wireless router is in the next room to my bedroom. I struggled to get decent speeds for even youtube but since upgrading my wireless router to 802.11ac, I've managed to stream 1080p movies off my NAS.
802.11b is comfortably faster than our "Borat_band".
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
At least in the US, this serves absolutely no purpose, since even plain ol' 802.11g/a beats anything short of FTTP.
Hell, I even use a pretty kickass home media server, and streaming a 1080p Blu-Ray rip only sucks down around 20-30MBps on average (peaks at 54, IIRC). 802.11n can handle 5-10 of those simultaneously without breaking a sweat.
I don't mean to sound like "640k should be enough for anyone" - I love new toys - But we need to address the bigger problem with getting the bits to our door before we worry about how fast the bits actually move around inside our houses.
It only would have MU-MIMO enabled devices, and they started hitting the market only this summer. So if you have three single stream AC clients and an AC17500/AC1900 three stream access point, then they all could talk it at once. However, there is still an issue with MU-MIMO, because MU-MIMO allows simultaneous clients only for uploads to the router. It won't help in situations one MU-MIMO client transferring files to another MU-MIMO client connected to the same radio on a AC.
Well, that shouldn't be an issue for 802.11ac or 802.11n. But like I mentioned in an other post, any AC router rated faster than AC1750 or AC1900 is overkill. You can make an argument that the two-stream AC1200 will suffice for 90% of households, since less than 5% or so of people have three stream capable wireless adapters.
Up until the point that all of your neighbors upgrade to AC with 80 MHz or 160 MHz channels on 5Ghz and suddenly your back to the same crowded, interference burdened system you see on 2.4GHz. It's ridiculous that these units will be sold, configured out of the box for maximum speed, chewing up spectrum, to connect to a 10Mbs Internet connection.
There are many more 5 ghz channels than 2.4 ghz and the range is much shorter so there will actually be fewer neighbors to contend with so the situation should never get anywhere near as bad as it is now on 2.4 ghz. On top of that things like, cheap wireless phones and baby monitors are not on the 5ghz range so I doubt the situation will ever end up as bad.
Most newer high-end laptops have 3-stream 802.11ac, like the MBP I'm typing this on.
Hams know that a good antenna system backed by a marginal radio will always beat a great radio on a garbage antenna. Good to know that rule applies for wireless as well. My move to an AC router meant that my 2.4 ghz signal is now maxed out in the whole house, and the 5 ghz signal, which used to work in two rooms only, now covers the whole house like my old router on 2.4.
Actually they've been making some of the best SOHO routers since the original Airport Extreme. I'm not sure where they bought their wlan talent but Apple can take the same merchant chips and make a superior device out of it and they tend to support them longer than pure networking companies. The one downside is they tend to be on the expensive side vs other solutions unless you buy them right after a refresh where they are generally competitive.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
It won't help in situations one MU-MIMO client transferring files to another MU-MIMO client connected to the same radio on a AC.
Actually MU-MIMO requires beam forming which means it does help as long as the clients are separated by enough angular space for the beam forming to happen.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
All of the routers tested in TFA are rated for 600Mb/s @2.4GHz and 1,300Mb/s @ 5GHz. The UniFi AC Lite AP that you link to is rated at 300Mb/s @2.4GHz and 867Mb/s @ 5GHz, so no surprise they're a lot cheaper.
The Ubiquiti UniFi products also require management software to be installed on some local computer, they don't provide a built-in web interface like most home networking devices. Whether this makes them "easier to configure" is a matter of personal preference I suppose.
The "divide by 2" rule has never been that accurate. Back in late B spec/early G spec days when I first heard this rule, actual throughput was usually 40-45% of the link rate. N spec improved coding efficiency greatly and is around 60-65% as well as AC spec.