802.11

Netgear today teamed up with Broadcom to announce and demonstrate a new line of wireless networking products that use Broadcom's 802.11ac chips. These are the chips that Broadcom showed off in preparation for and during CES 2012.

These devices include two routers, the Netgear R6300 WiFi and the R6300 WiFi, and one USB adapter, the A6200 WiFi.

All of these devices are based on the new 802.11ac Wi-Fi standard (or 5G Wi-Fi, as Broadcom calls it). The Netgear R6300 is the top of the line and supports the three-stream 802.11ac standard that offers up to 1.… Read more

Finally, it's here.

The much-anticipated next generation of Wi-Fi standard, 802.11ac, is now available for purchase, thanks to Buffalo.

The company announced today the availability of the AirStation WZR-D1800H wireless router and WLI-H4-D1300 wireless media bridge. It's important that the two devices are available at the same time, since you'll need to get both of them to enjoy 802.11ac speeds, which is about three times faster than even the fastest Wireless-N (802.11n) solution. The WLI-H4-D1300 media bridge is designed to hook up to four Ethernet-ready devices to the new 802.11ac-based Wi-Fi network created … Read more

As predicted at CES 2012, the new and much faster wireless networking standard, 802.11ac, is really going to arrive this year.

Following Broadcom, Qualcomm Atheros today launched its own 802.11ac Wi-Fi ecosystem that covers all aspects of wireless networking--mobile devices, computers, and other electronics--scaling from home to enterprise applications.

Sharing the common 802.11ac standard, Qualcomm's new chips offer up to the top speed of 1.3Gbps (three-stream), 900Mbps (dual-stream), and 450Mbps (single-stream). Basically, the new Wi-Fi standard will offer comparable performance to Gigabit Ethernet, and even faster in some instances, so wireless networking will no longer be a compromise.… Read more

If you think 802.11n Wi-Fi is the bee's knees, check out this new ultra-powerful wireless setup jointly developed by Sony and the Tokyo Institute of Technology.

The two chips in this advancement push a staggering data rate of 6.3Gbps, which is 14 times the transfer speed in commercially available routers (450Mbps).

According to the press release, "implementation of this technology will enable users to transmit and receive data at much higher speeds between mobile devices without the need for cable connections. This technology will also enable users to enjoy uncompressed high-quality video streaming from a mobile device to a display." … Read more

Joining a carrier Wi-Fi hot spot on your smartphone or tablet will soon be as simple as turning on your device. That means no more scrolling through lists of available Wi-Fi networks, and no more typing passwords to join networks.

Wireless carriers all over the world have been turning to Wi-Fi to alleviate network congestion, but the onus of actually getting on those networks has been on individual subscribers. A set of new standards being developed will soon change that.

The IEEE technical standards body is developing 802.11u and the Wi-Fi Alliance has developed its Hotspot 2.0 initiative … Read more

Streaming high-definition video wirelessly throughout your home will be a major benefit of Wi-Fi 802.11ac in the next few years, says NPD In-Stat.

Expected to receive final approval by the IEEE toward the end of this year, 802.11ac will boast several improvements over 802.11n. The new wireless flavor will offer speeds surpassing 1 gigabit per second, almost three times that of 802.11n. It also promises to provide better coverage throughout an entire home with fewer dead spots.

From a technical standpoint, the new standard will use such technologies as beamforming and higher amplitude modulation to send … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Despite the scariest cross-wind landing I have ever experienced, when arriving in Las Vegas last Saturday, CES 2012 panned out mostly smoothly, with no unpleasant surprises.

As predicted, 802.11ac was big at CES 2012, while Thunderbolt and cloud-based services proved to be on the rise.

Though there were no working 802.11ac (or 5G Wi-Fi as the technology is called by BroadCom) devices at the show (all products showcased here were just mock-ups or nonfunctioning prototypes), every single networking vendor I talked with--such as TrendNet, BroadCom, Cisco, Netgear, D-Link, Belkin, and Buffalo--committed to offering 802.11ac devices … Read more

LAS VEGAS -- D-Link said today at CES 2012 that it fully supports and is ready for the new era of Wi-Fi that's based on the new 802.11ac standard.

This resonates with the announcements of TrendNet, Cisco, Broadcom and other networking vendors. D-Link doesn't have any 802.11ac products to demo or showcase at the show, however.

The 802.11ac standard the upgrade to the existing 802.11n specification (known as wireless N) and is considered to be the wireless standard for the "post-PC era" of data connectivity. This is because over time, the number … Read more

Trendnet, a vendor of affordable and green networking products, announced today the first 802.11ac networking products to be showcased at CES 2012.

As introduced by networking chip-maker, Broadcom, recently, the 802.11ac wireless standard is the next generation of the 802.11 wireless technology with the 802.11n (or wireless N) currently being the mainstream. The new standard will initially offer up to 1300Mbps speed (compared to the top 450Mbps of the existing N standard), with the capability to scale up to 6.8Gbps in the future.

The new AC standard also uses the low 5Ghz band and incorporates … Read more