What's So Great About 2.4 GHz 600 Mbps?

[Bulldog]

I appreciate fast routers as much as anyone .... but why are brands increasing throughput in the crowded 2.4 GHz band? Doesn't it make more sense to concentrate efforts on the 5 GHz band? What am I missing here?

 

[thiggins]

I appreciate fast routers as much as anyone .... but why are brands increasing throughput in the crowded 2.4 GHz band? Doesn't it make more sense to concentrate efforts on the 5 GHz band? What am I missing here?

This is mainly a marketing ploy to attract buyers who focus on a higher number on the box.

The QAM 256 modulation that enables this is part of the 80211.ac MAC/PHY. So Broadcom figured why not apply it to 2.4 GHz and have something else to sell.

It does provide higher throughput in 2.4 GHz without eating up more channels. But 600 Mbps requires 40 MHz bandwidth, which is hard to do in a crowded band with 20/40 coexistence enforced.

The lack of clients that support it is also a factor.

 

[TonyH]

Hi,
Also not every one lives in crowded urban area. Think about ranchers, farmers, etc.

 

[jlake]

Hi,
Also not every one lives in crowded urban area. Think about ranchers, farmers, etc.

Right. But most ranchers and farmers or anyone else that lives in rural areas (in the U.S.) is dealing with ADSL or satellite. Not much need for 40 Mhz on DSL or most satellite connections. Unless your subscribe to the theory that there's a large consumer market for ranchers and farmers pushing a lot of wireless data across their LAN to their NAS or home server.

I live in a low population density area of U.S. (38 people per square mile) or (19 housing units per square mile). Only DSL and satellite is available. My neighbor to the North is on channel 1. My neighbor to South is on channel 1. I've got 6 & 11, but I still use 20 Mhz on 2.4 Ghz because I've got 40 Mhz on 5 Ghz. The 5 Ghz covers 3800 square foot home.

 

[Bulldog]

I'm sorry, but I don't buy (or perhaps I don't understand) the arguments in favor of people living in uncrowded areas. Why would they 'settle' for 600 Mbps when they can have 1.3 Gbps?

And for the rest of us who want more speed from our LANs but aren't quite ready to spring for an 802.11ac setup, switching to the 5 GHz band on 802.11n (as I recently did) provides a nice boost for zero cost.

With all due respect for those who think differently, I feel that selling expensive high-end routers on the basis of incrementally faster 2.4 GHz speed is an exercise in parting people from their money.

 

[L&LD]

Bulldog, make no mistake that the 2.4GHz band has much farther usable range than the 5GHz band.

Otherwise, I agree.

 

[sfx2000]

basically - pretty much against this - getting to the 600 Mbs PHY in 2.4Ghz brings in elements of 802.11ac - and this is pretty much non-standard as 802.11ac is 5Ghz only.

The industry runs the risk here of getting back to the ugly latter days of 802.11g if they're not careful.

802.11n in 2.4GHz has been relatively stable across all vendors these days.

sfx

 

[sm00thpapa]

Nothing it's a ploy to make you buy it thinking your getting faster speed.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[stevech]

Next, the router vendors will put a 10gigabit ethernet switch in. And call it a 10gigabit router. And scam about 95% of the retail customers.

 

[azazel1024]

Hi,
Also not every one lives in crowded urban area. Think about ranchers, farmers, etc.

Or just people who live on the outskirts. I am neither of the above professions, but on my 1.01 acres I see 4-5 other SSIDs walking around my house. The strongest hits -85dBm. IE, basically non-existant. Even outside my house unless I walk up on a property line none of the them hit over about -75dBm.

I haven't tested any of it, but it might be possible that you get better usable speeds on 2.4GHz 256QAM 40MHz than you could on 5GHz 80MHz 256QAM...but probably not. I can see instances where it would be a nice feature for a wireless backhaul on a mesh network and using 5GHz to connect to the clients.

There ARE use cases where it can be nice, but they aren't big.

As for 10GbE in a router, it is needed sooner or later. That or link aggregation.

The upcoming 4:4 160MHz 11ac routers will deffinitely be able to push more than 1Gbps of payload data over the airwaves on connections, add in MU:MIMO and scenarios where they might actually have use cases that cause that are increasingly likely.

So, 10GbE in a router...no, but link aggregation, it is needed sooner rather than later. Plenty of 3:3 80MHz pushing 400-600Mbps usable speeds on 3:3 links...add another and double the bandwidth and you'll certainly be maxing the 1Gbps wire speeds.

Will most people need that? Hell no. It would still be nice to have and 802.3ad should add pretty much nothing to the cost of the router, just firmware and as an L3/4/7 device, a router should easily be able to handle link aggregation. Heck, my semi-managed L2 switch does it just fine all day long.

 

[sfx2000]

There's already been discussion in the enterprise space about how to feed 802.11ac Wave 2 AP's - to get best performance, likely it'll be two drops on a bonded link, and POE concerns as basebands and RF/PA's are expected to use more power than can be kicked down the wire...