{"id":62377,"date":"2013-11-07T21:05:12","date_gmt":"2013-11-08T02:05:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rbachnet.wwwmi3-ss40.a2hosted.com\/index.php\/"},"modified":"2021-08-01T13:45:55","modified_gmt":"2021-08-01T17:45:55","slug":"802-11ac-wi-fi-dont-bother-yet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rbach.net\/index.php\/802-11ac-wi-fi-dont-bother-yet\/","title":{"rendered":"802.11ac Wi-Fi – Don’t Bother Yet"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"802.11ac<\/a>The new iPads are here! The new iPads are here! There’s no 802.11ac here! But that’s expected. Experienced Apple watchers know that Apple likes to let new radio technologies mature before they integrate them into their new idevices. So that means most enterprises can slow their plans to upgrade their Wi-Fi to the new standard according to<\/a> Kevin Fitchard<\/a> at GigaOM<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>The latest\u00a0Apple<\/a> (AAPL<\/a>) tablet doesn\u2019t sport the new<\/del> soon-to-be-completed IEEE<\/a> 802.11ac standard<\/a>, even though Apple\u2019s latest generation routers, PCs, and laptops all support it. GigaOM<\/em> reports Apple is providing is a speed boost to the now thoroughly established 802.11n<\/a> networking standard in the form of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO<\/a>) smart antenna technology. Like many Wi-Fi routers on the market, the iPad<\/a> Air has dual antennas, allowing it to wend two parallel paths over the unlicensed airwaves. The MIMO implementation will double the speeds at which the iPad can access Wi-Fi networks, according to Apple.<\/p>\n

The Wi-Fi Alliance<\/a> only began certifying commercial 802.11ac devices in June<\/a>, and even those devices only incorporate partial versions of the full 802.11ac spec. The IEEE isn\u2019t expected to fully complete the standard until 2014. Very few smartphones and tablets have ac embedded as of yet, though the technology is making its way into consumer and enterprise routers and PCs, including Apple\u2019s newest MacBooks and iMacs<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"iPad<\/a>But waiting another year for 802.11ac-enabled iPhones and iPads also means we\u2019ll probably have to wait another year before we see wide-scale adoption of the standard in public hotspots and access points. Unlike in the home, most outdoor and public Wi-Fi connections are made over mobile devices, not PCs.<\/p>\n

In an interview with GigaOM<\/em>, Boingo<\/a> VP of corporate communications Christian Gunning<\/a> said it hasn\u2019t turned up 802.11ac in any of its hundreds of thousands of owned and managed hotspots yet, simply because it\u2019s seeing very few devices with ac radios trying to access its network.<\/p>\n

\"higher-powered<\/a>FierceCIO<\/a>‘s<\/em>\u00a0Paul Mah<\/a> offers more reasons<\/a> to delay the roll-out of 802.11ac. The advanced 802.11ac radio is more power-hungry than earlier iterations of Wi-Fi. So it will more likely need the use of the higher-powered 802.3at<\/a> Power over Ethernet (PoE)<\/a> to run 802.11ac with all its bells and whistles. It is possible that businesses still on 802.3af<\/a> PoE (rb- Majority<\/em>) may well have to incur extra infrastructure costs<\/a> to deploy 802.11ac today. Mr. Mah contends that it is yet to be seen if\u00a0improved 802.11ac chipsets will allow firms to stick with legacy PoE. (rb-<\/strong><\/em> For a refresher on PoE, check out these posts 802.3af<\/a> and 802.3at<\/a><\/em>)<\/p>\n

Another consideration according to FierceCIO<\/em> is clients. The handful of business-grade 802.11ac wireless APs on the market today typically support three spatial streams,<\/a> which allows for a (theoretical) maximum data rate of 1.3Gbps in the 5GHz band. Though this is a significant improvement over 450 Mbps 802.11n, the dearth of 802.11ac client devices renders this a moot point. Some will argue that Apple did incorporate 802.11ac into the new MacBook Air laptops.\u00a0 However, they did not include it in the new iPads, or the iPhone 5S<\/a> and iPhone 5C smartphones. And with no smartphones or tablets equipped with 802.11ac capabilities today, this does make deploying it a rather pointless strategy for BYOD.<\/p>\n

\"802.11ac<\/a>Finally, Mr. Mah points out that while 1.3Gbps is a good speed to have, we should keep in mind that 802.11ac does have a theoretical maximum speed of 7 Gbps. A “second wave<\/a>” of 802.11ac that implements four or more data streams for much faster speeds should be arriving in the second half of 2014. He says current signs are that this second wave of 802.11ac devices might need new processor chips<\/a>–which means you will have to buy new 802.11ac hardware to benefit.<\/p>\n

GigaOM’s<\/em>\u00a0Fitchard stresses Apple\u2019s influence when it comes to popularizing new technology, he says the iPhone and the iPad\u2019s reach shouldn\u2019t be underestimated. As an example, new Passpoint-certified phones have been out for more than a year<\/a>, but it wasn\u2019t until Apple started offering support for Passpoint\u2019s automatic login technology in iOS7 that the wireless industry took notice. It was only after Apple made iOS7 publicly available, that Boingo started Passpoint trials<\/a>.<\/p>\n

rb-<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I’m not saying 802.11ac is a bad thing, but enterprises need to ignore the hype cycle and make decisions that are best for them and not the multi-billion dollar networking industry. IMHO 802.11ac is still immature, there are few devices out there that can fully take advantage, the full feature set is not fully implemented in silicon and you finished the upgrade to 802.11n yet?<\/em><\/p>\n

What to do?<\/em><\/p>\n

What does your wired network look like? Are you still connecting your AP’s at 100 Mbps? That is a bottleneck with 802.11n.<\/em><\/p>\n

Do you have enough juice? What is your PoE status? Do you have enough PoE+ ports? Are they being used for just an access port – wasting the extra costs of a PoE port? <\/em><\/p>\n

Both switches cost money, is there a budget available for these items or is IT going to spend an operational budget to address a structural issue?<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ralph Bach<\/a>\u00a0has been in IT long enough to know better and has blogged from his\u00a0Bach Seat<\/a> about IT, careers, and anything else that catches his attention since 2005. You can follow him on LinkedIn<\/a>,\u00a0Facebook<\/a>,\u00a0and\u00a0Twitter<\/a>. Email the Bach Seat\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The new Apple iPad is missing IEEE 802.11ac support so firms should delay rolling out the new wi-fi until there is widespread support<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[3044,1883,1970,253,1916,420,101,1242,76,296,304,1879,1961,579],"class_list":["post-62377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wi-fi","tag-3044","tag-802-11ac","tag-802-11n","tag-802-3af","tag-802-3at","tag-aapl","tag-apple","tag-byod","tag-ieee","tag-ipad","tag-iphone","tag-mimo","tag-tablet","tag-wi-fi-2"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rbach.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rbach.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rbach.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rbach.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rbach.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62377"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"https:\/\/rbach.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62377\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":132946,"href":"https:\/\/rbach.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62377\/revisions\/132946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rbach.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rbach.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rbach.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}