801 11ac the so called wave 1 arrived with much fanfare early last year and despite the hype it did not saturate our wired networks.
Ac wave 2 vs wave 1.
11ac is supported by wave 1 products using 20 40 and 80 mhz channels all in the 5 ghz bandwidth.
With the addition of support for 160 mhz wide channels and the modulation and coding scheme mcs rates of 802 11ac wave 2 provides new maximum phy rates based on the number of spatial streams and modulation shown in figure 1.
Wave 2 builds upon wave 1 with some very significant enhanceme.
Related 802 11 ac vs 802 11 n.
Ultimately the right technology for your environment will be the technology that best supports your current needs.
802 11ac wave 2 provides a significant boost in performance when compared to 802 11ac wave 1 and 802 11n.
Wave 2 of the 802 11ac standard builds upon wave 1 with the following key additional functionalities.
In some cases this is combined with the older 11n in the 2 4 ghz bandwidth for compatibility with devices that can only use 11n.
It uses su mimo which means that multiple streams of data can only be sent or received between one device at a time.
Wave 2 can therefore achieve 1 gbit s even if the real world throughput turns.
So what are the differences between wave 1 and wave 2 products and features.
Wave 1 wireless otherwise known as the first version of 802 11ac was created largely with laptops in mind.
Wave 2 on the other hand is more suitable for the demands of mobile devices as it has multi user mimo capabilities.
Wave 2 referring to products introduced in 2016 offers a higher throughput than legacy wave 1 products those introduced starting in 2013.
Whether you re implementing wave 1 or wave 2 the bottom line is that 802 11ac of any generation offers considerable improvements over older legacy products.
It is referred as vht very high throughput specification.
Higher speed with up to 2 3 gbps 1 7 gbps in the 5 ghz range multi user multiple input multiple output mu mimo support for better use of frequency.
Some of key benefits of wave 2.
Now wave 2 has arrived and the pundits are out again saying your wired network needs to be upgraded to 2 5 or 5 gig ethernet depending on whose technology they re pushing.
As such it supports all the data rates of 802 11ac wave 1.
This page compares 11n vs 11ac vs 11ad to provide difference between 11ac wave1 and 11ac wave2 802 11 standards.
Wave 2 is a superset of 802 11ac wave 1.
Wave 2 products started becoming available in 2015.
The maximum physical layer theoretical rate for wave 1 is 1 3 gbit s while wave 2 can reach 2 34 gbit s.
Wave 1 products have been in use in the market for about 2 5 years.