Wireless router Range and Technology Information

Wireless B vs G vs N vs AC | What Is The Difference?

So you’re in the market to buy a wireless router.  You’re doing your research to find the best router for you, but you’ve come to a crossroads.  You have to make a decision: Do you want to buy a Wireless G, Wireless N or Wireless AC router?  But more importantly, what is the difference?  What is outdated?  Is there an option for me if I just want to do basic things like read email and news?  What if I play a lot of games and watch a lot of movies?  You’ve come to the right place for the answers, my friend.  Lets get you on the right track.  By the time we’re done here, you will be able to make a confident decision.  You’ll even be able to make recommendations to your friends and family when it’s their turn to buy a wireless router.
We’ll start out with a bit of technical information about each.  In the end, we’ll relate this information to making a real-world decision based on your needs.

The WLAN Standard: 802.11

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is an organized group of engineers.  They created the standard for WiFi technology which all wireless routers will follow.  They called this standard 802.11.  All wireless routers at the time were built around this standard.  There was no letter designation, such as “G”, “N” or “AC”.  This 802.11 standard was released in 1997.
The main problem with this standard was that it was far too slow (about 2mbps… MegaBits Per Second).  So they improved upon this standard.  Today, wireless routers are not manufactured to this standard.  This is where the different letter designations come in.

802.11 Enhancements

Before we move on, it’s important to note that B, G, and N are not the only extensions.  It would make sense to start with Wireless A, right?  That actually does exist.  However, these other protocols either did not catch on as fast as others or serve a purpose other than for home networks.  For example, Wireless A was released around the same time as Wireless B.  However, Wireless B devices were cheaper so they were more popular with consumers.  Wireless A devices were mainly used by businesses.  So that’s why you won’t hear much about those while you shop for wireless routers for your home network today.  If you’re still curious about these “other” standards, you can find good information about them by doing a quick search.  Wikipedia has some good information about them, but it’s pretty technical so look out for that!  Lets move on.

802.11B / What Is Wireless B?

Routers with only Wireless B are no longer manufactured.  However, some newer routers still support wireless B.  So, it’s still important that you have some basic information about it.  Wireless B supports a maximum theoretical transfer rate of 11mbps.  The signal is good for up to about 150 feet.  A downside to a Wireless B device is that it operates at the unregulated 2.4GHz frequency range.  This is the same as many common household appliances.  Things like cordless phones and microwaves can cause interference if your router is near these appliances.  If you don’t place your router or computer near one of these appliances, you should be fine.

802.11G / What Is Wireless G?

Wireless G supports a maximum theoretical transfer rate of 54mbps.  Like Wireless B, it operates at the unregulated 2.4GHz frequency range.  So it has the same interference issues that Wireless B has.  Wireless G is backward compatible with Wireless B devices.  Odds are that you don’t have a device that only supports Wireless B, but if you do then this is a benefit.  As you can see, the main benefit of a Wireless G router over a Wireless B router is speed.

802.11N / What Is Wireless N?

Wireless N supports a maximum theoretical transfer rate of 300mbps with 2 antennas.  It can reach up to 450mbps with 3 antennas.  Though typical speeds are more accurately around 130mbps or less without certain configurations and conditions being met.  There will be a detailed post on this in the future.  If you are curious, please subscribe to this blog and you will be notified when that post comes.  It operates at both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands.  These Wireless N devices can operate on multiple signals (called Multiple In – Multiple Out… or MIMO) and have 2 or 3 antennas.  It also has increased signal range/power over Wireless G.

802.11AC / What Is Wireless AC?

The next big standard to hit the world is 802.11ac, or Wireless AC.  While it is not finalized yet, there are a significant amount of routers available that use Wireless AC.  It is expected to be finalized in 2014.  Wireless AC is sometimes referred to as Gigabit WiFi (1Gbps… 1 GigaBit Per Second).  It will also have stronger signal strength than Wireless N, giving it greater coverage area.  If you are looking for the latest edge in speed, or if you have a Wireless N router that doesn’t quite cover your whole home, you may want to consider a Wireless AC router.
[table "0" not found /]

Wireless G vs N, Wireless AC vs N: Which One Should I Buy?

The real choice here is going to be Wireless G vs N vs AC, because routers that only support Wireless B are no longer manufactured.  Besides, Wireless G routers are backward compatible with Wireless B devices.

When You Should Buy A Wireless G Router

• When you only have one or a few computers in your house.
• When the great majority of your internet use will be for checking email and reading news or blogs.  You should be able to watch YouTube or Netflix videos on a single device at a time.
• When you have entertainment systems such as Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 and you are playing against other people online (these devices do not support Wireless N out of the box, unless you have the Xbox E which does support Wireless N)
• Shop for Wireless G Routers on Amazon

When You Should Buy A Wireless N Router

• When you have several computers in your house using high-bandwidth sites such as YouTube or Netflix very often at the same time.
• If you download a lot of large files very often
• When you have entertainment systems such as Xbox One or Playstation 4 and you are playing against other people online (these devices do support Wireless N out of the box)
• Shop for Wireless N Routers on Amazon

When You Should Buy A Wireless AC Router

• When you have a large house and your wireless G router doesn’t quite reach all the rooms you want it to.
• If you live in a highly populated area (apartment, mobile/modular park, etc.). A wireless AC router will help because it is new technology, so not many people will be running their home networks on the 5 GHz band. This will give you a very big speed advantage because your router won’t be competing with as many other routers using the same signal. (AC routers run on the 5GHz band while most N routers run on the 2.5 GHz band).
• When you have entertainment systems such as Xbox One or Playstation 4 playing against other people online AND you want your other computers to be able to stream video at the same time without taking much of a performance hit.
• Shop for Wireless AC Routers on Amazon

More Things to Consider

You will want to make sure the wireless interfaces on your devices support each technology.  Not all devices support Wireless AC, for example.  Check with the manufacturer of your device to see what technology is supported.

802.11ac vs 802.11n WiFi: What's The Difference?

Compatibility – Everything Works Together
I’ll start with the good news: chipsets featuring 802.11ac are fully backwards compatible with previous WiFi standards.

WiFi official logo and accepted standards

This means it works perfectly with 802.11a (introduced in 1999), 802.11b (2000), 802.11g (2003) and 802.11n (2007). The bad news is you will be limited to the performance of the older standard and will only get the full benefits of ‘Wireless AC’ or ‘AC WiFi’, as it is also known, if you are connecting from 802.11ac to 802.11ac. That means an 802.11ac router and an 802.11ac device.
So that out the way, what are the benefits?

802.11                 Max           Indoor
Bands                 Speed          Range*                Range
Encoding           (GHz)         (Mbps)                  (ft)

 11b  DSSS            2.4, 5          11                        150
 11g  OFDM          2.4              54                        170
 11a  OFDM          5                 54                         95
 11n  OFDM          2.4, 5          150**                  230
 11ac OFDM         5                 433***                 230

   * = Up to 4x farther outdoors.
  ** = Per antenna at 40 MHz channels.
 *** = Per antenna at 80 MHz channels.

802.11ac: Technology

802.11ac: next-gen Wi-Fi

If you thought Wi-Fi couldn't get much faster than 802.11n, think again.
802.11ac, dubbed 5G Wi-Fi, promises ridiculously fast wireless connections, better range, improved reliability, improved power consumption and a free horse. (OK, we're lying about the horse.)
802.11ac is the latest evolution of Wi-Fi, and it should be particularly good for gaming and HD video streaming.
So how does it work, does it live up to the hype, and how long will you have to wait before you can get your hands on it? Let's find out.

Your 802.11ac speed could break the gigabit barrier

The fastest current 802.11n Wi-Fi connections max out at around 150Mbps with one antenna, 300Mbps with two and 450Mbps with three antennas. 802.11ac connections will be roughly three times faster - so that's 450Mbps, 900Mbps and 1.3Gbps respectively. Netgear, brilliantly, illustrates this with two pictures of motorways: the first picture, showing "Today's Wi-Fi", is normal, but the one labelled "3x speed with 802.11ac" is really blurry.

Your 802.11ac speed won't break the gigabit barrier

As with previous Wi-Fi standards, the speeds quoted on the box and in the promotional materials are theoretical maximums, not the speeds you'll actually get: so far devices with potential top speeds of 1.3Gbps have topped out at around 800Mbps. That's still blisteringly fast, of course, but there's still a gap between advertised speeds and real world ones. 802.11ac connection speeds will be reduced by numerous factors: network overhead, which is the chatter your hardware needs to keep the connection going; interference, congestion and physical obstacles; distance; the number of simultaneous connections; and whether the router is running in compatibility mode so that older wireless kit can still connect.

802.11ac video and gaming

Because 802.11ac has bandwidth to spare, it should be great for HD video streaming and for gaming. According to Netgear [PDF], you can say bye-bye to buffering: "802.11ac will significantly enhance the user experience by improving the playback quality to any point throughout the house. With 802.11ac, for the first time wireless will provide similar performance as wired Gigabit connections."

802.11ac routers use more antennas

To improve range and reliability, 802.11ac routers can use more antennas than existing 802.11n kit: your next router may have as many as eight antennas inside it.

802.11ac routers will use "beamforming" technology

Wi-Fi is omnidirectional, but 802.11ac routers will be able to use directional transmission and reception technology dubbed "beamforming". The router will be able to identify the rough location of the device it's talking to and strengthen the appropriate antenna(s) accordingly. The idea is to reduce interference.

802.11ac Wi-Fi uses the 5GHz frequency band

Older wireless kit uses the 2.4GHz frequency band, which is fairly crowded: your kit is potentially sharing radio frequency with next door's baby monitor, your cordless phone and even your microwave. Like high performance 802.11n kit, 802.11ac routers will use the less cluttered 5GHz band where there's considerably more room for data transmission. 802.11ac hardware will use two kinds of channels in that range: 80GHz ones and 160GHz ones.

802.11ac routers will be backwards compatible

You won't need to throw out all your old wireless-capable kit as 802.11ac routers will be backwards compatible with your existing Wi-Fi kit. For example, at last year's CES Buffalo demonstrated an 802.11ac router that operated on both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequency bands and that promised to play nice with 802.11a, b, g and n hardware.

The 802.11ac release date is now, sort of

As with 802.11n, hardware is coming out before the 802.11ac standard is actually finalised. That's going to happen later this year, but manufacturers are readying their products now and they'll be everywhere by the summer, with minor software updates addressing any changes that might happen to the standard before it's finalised. We'd expect 802.11ac prices to be steep initially, as they were with the first 802.11n kit, but those prices should start to fall almost immediately.

802.11ac hasn't skipped lots of letters

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the body in charge of the 802.11 standard, isn't skipping lots of letters: while major WiFi standards have jumped from 802.11n to 802.11ac, the IEEE didn't just skip 802.11o, p, q and so on. Successive versions of the 802.11 standard can also denote amendments to existing standards, so for example 802.11i introduced improved security and 802.11j introduced extensions for Japanese networks. 

SHARE

Ibrar Ansari

• 
• 
• 
• 
•