Wi-Fi Takes a Giant Leap, Hits 1Gbps

Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT) Corp has just showed a prototype of a 802.11ac spec Wi-Fi network.

Rossi Fernandes|Jul 12, 2011, 11:48:36 IST

Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT) Corp has just showed a prototype of a 802.11ac spec Wi-Fi network. The 802.11ac specification allows for 1 Gbps (theoretically 128MB/s) speeds over the air. The test demonstration was done in Yokohoma, Japan and Tech-on was present. The plan is to use 802.11ac in the future for homes and offices. Currently, 802.11n theoritical speeds peak at around 300 Mbps using different configurations. The 802.11ac is still not finalised and that’s expected to happen sometime in 2013. During the test with three users being on the other end of the transmission, the speeds reduced to roughly 120 Mbps.

At par with Gigabit Ethernet

These are huge improvements over existing wireless technologies. How effective 802.11ac will be over a distance is still not known. Commercial products will also take a while to hit the market. Even though 802.11n claims to hit 300 Mbps, it can only do so in specific conditions and environments. In the real world scenario, speeds drop to well under 5 MB/s (megabytes per second). Guess we’ll have to wait and see if 802.11ac manages to cross the 50 MB/s threshold.

By Rossi Fernandes

Our resident Hardware Ninja, Rossi, lives for speed - by uhh riding his bicycle. He's Tech2's utility man, dividing his time between cameras, software and intense bouts of Quake III. He's also a fan of all things obscure, case in point, Live for Speed (sic). Never heard of it? We rest our case. In his spare time he tries to teach our new joinees the tricks of the trade even though the blood sweat and tears, but give him a camera and all things forgotten.