No kidding! Thanks to 802.11ac, Gigabit Wi-Fi is coming to your home and corporate networks. Of course, this applies to countries that have Gbps connections.
Las Vegas – Last year, Broadcom began working on 802.11ac chipsets that could reach speeds of up to 1.3Gbps.
Routers and systems that could come and support 802.11ac, however, remained a dream. In 2013, all that will change. The year of Gigabit Wi-Fi has arrived. And that's because 802.11ac will finally be widely adopted. CES Cisco / Linksys, D-Link, Netgear have all released 802.11ac compatible routers.
Additionally, Broadcom is getting in on the action but it looks like it faces serious competition for the Wi-Fi chipset. Qualcomm. Qualcomm is showing off its Atheros StreamBoost 802.11ac chipset at CES. D-Link has already agreed to offer such routers. Competition between them brings lower prices and more devices. As for Wi-Fi policy tactics, they are just as important as the success of the technology. Although 802.11ac isn't ready yet, it's much closer than it was before.
Most importantly, the Wi-Fi Alliance and the Wireless Gigabit Alliance (WiGig) have announced that they will consolidate the certification and development of WiGig within the Wi-Fi Alliance. Wi-Gig had also been working on 802.11ad speeds, a generation beyond 802.11ac that will eventually bring speeds of up to 7Gbps to your Wi-Fi. That can only be consolation compared to today's 300Mbps 802.11n networks that deliver 802.11ac gigabit speeds and beyond.
This is all well and good, but you need to have computers, devices, and tablets that can run 802.11ac in your network first. Sure, some people will buy 802.11ac adapters, but most won't bother. Fortunately for Gigabit Wi-Fi, computer and device vendors have embraced 802.11ac. It looks like Apple will support 802.11ac in 2013. And once Apple does, other vendors will surely follow.
As Craig Mathias, president of Farpoint Group, said, what may be most important for businesses with 802.11ac, if properly deployed, is that it will bring "overall reliability and ... capacity. (registration required to download the pdf). This means meeting the diverse needs of a large and ever-growing number of users with an equally growing number of devices per user as well as powerful combinations of applications. Requirements and not just for the maximum possible power supply."
Speed may be awesome, but for many network administrators, being able to provide more reliable and robust Wi-Fi to their users could be the best news they'll get this year. For them, 802.11ac won't come soon enough.
