As the single source for 802.11ac silicon, we figured we could interview no one more authoritative on the subject than Broadcom. We sat down with Dino Bekis, senior director of the access and wireless entertainment unit (AWE) and Richard Ybarra, technical marketing for AWE, to get their thoughts on the state of this wireless advance today and what it heralds for tomorrow.
Tom's Hardware: So now we have this new wireless spec that will push a ton of today’s current 2.4 GHz traffic onto the 5.0 GHz band. Aren’t we just going to run into the same congestion issues again a couple of years from now as everyone transitions over?
Broadcom: That possibility is always there, but with the new modulation schemes and using 20, 40, 80, and eventually 160 [MHz channels], we have more modulation schemes to work with. We have more bandwidth capability. So even though it may be congested, we still have a fatter pipe from the modulation schemes to push data. Will it get constricted? Yes, that day will eventually come, but we’re a ways away from that. Especially if we share the two spectrums we have with different types of traffic and different technology, I think it will help the overall wireless spectrum. If we share both of those bands with different technologies, it’ll help alleviate some of that congestion and allow us to do some interesting things in the 5.0 GHz space.
Tom's Hardware: Such as what?
Broadcom: Video streaming is one of our priorities. Obviously, video streaming is a major uptick as far as types of traffic across the Internet. Streaming video, downloading video, projecting video. That takes a lot of bandwidth, and that has to be bandwidth that’s dedicated. We see the 5 GHz space dealing with that pretty efficiently at this point. Maybe we send a lot of our data traffic over 2.4 and we use 5 GHz as more of a mechanism for video transfers. We’re kind of already seeing that now throughout the industry. However, I want to stop short of saying that’s a strict policy that we or any of our customers are advocating.
Tom's Hardware: Obviously, faster is better. But is there more significance to the 802.11ac transition than just another speed jump?
Broadcom: When I look at 5G [fifth-generation] Wi-Fi, four advantages stand out. First, there’s overall throughput, the ability to get really wireless gigabit Ethernet capability available to the home. Up until now, that really has not been achievable. Second, for a given throughput requirement per user and because of that higher aggregate capability, we can support more users on a given network. The radio design itself is more robust than the 802.11n design. We’re getting a lot better performance in terms of rate and range than in the past with 802.11n.
We’re also able to support much lower power for a given amount of data that needs to be transferred than with 802.11n. That’s very important for a couple of different products, whether it’s battery-powered products where you can get better life out of them or whether it’s products plugged into the wall, so they’ll be able to achieve higher efficiencies and lower power consumption, which feeds into some of the green standards for products being rolled out in the industry.
Finally, we have a much more standardized approach across the board to achieving the things than we did before with 11n. For example, we support higher throughputs, like 256-QAM, for applications such as fast synching or side-loading. In the past, these were attempted by various people in proprietary fashions—Turbo Mode, etc. That no longer is required. Before, beamforming mechanisms were proprietary, and now we have a standardized approach to beamforming that will support interoperability across various manufacturers. You don’t have these islands of technology that force you down a specific vendor’s path. You’ve got higher throughput, more users with respect to rate range, lower battery power. Those are all the key benefits to 11ac.
- 802.11ac: The Beginning
- 802.11ac Advances
- Broadcom: Insider Comments
- Broadcom: Insider Comments, Continued
- Broadcom: Insider Comments, Continued
- Test Setup And Methodology
- AirLive N450R And Asus RT-AC66U
- Belkin AC1200 DB And Buffalo AC1300/N900
- Linksys EA6500/AC1750 And Netgear R6300
- Results: 2 GB Folder Copy
- Results: PerformanceTest 7, Same-Room
- Results: PerformanceTest 7, Across-House
- Results: PerformanceTest 7 Graphs
- Results: IxChariot, Same-Room, 5.0 GHz
- Results: IxChariot
- Results: IxChariot, Across-House, 2.4 GHz
- 802.11ac: A Substantial Step Up From 802.11n

I think this review proved that it is time to wait for 2nd generation wireless AC routers to appear before rushing to purchase.
Never again...
I'll give ac a year or two before I jump on it...
I have a dual-band router (Netgear N600). I also purchased a couple of dual-band client USB adapters Linksys AE2500 or something to that effect.
So the USB adapter works fine for a desktop, but having that crap sticking out the side of a laptop, netbook or tablet? Busted in 10 minutes. I hooked one up to my netbook and fried it within a couple of weeks because I'm a Netbook in bed guy. You wouldn't think it could get so hot from a USB port but it does.
So the reality is that you have all these devices that can't be upgraded to dual-band and enjoy very little if any benefit from the new-fangled dual-band router.
The other beef I have with routers is that they're terrible with the way they split up bandwidth between multiple devices. Instead of responsively reassigning bandwidth to the device that needs it, the router continues to reserve a major slice for a device that I'm not using.
If you live in an apartment building, it's actually rather rude to use the full 300Mbps capacity of the wireless N band, since you may well succeed in effectively shutting your neighbor down. There's so much happening in the 2.4GHz band nowadays, it's unreal. Your own cordless keyboards/mice/controllers etc can malfunction from being unable to get a packet in edgewise.
For these dual-band routers to be really useful, we need manufacturers of smartphones, tablets, laptops, netbook and such to build dual-band clients into them because adding the functionality with some sort of dongle just doesn't work.
I think this review proved that it is time to wait for 2nd generation wireless AC routers to appear before rushing to purchase.
Never again...
I'll give ac a year or two before I jump on it...
Exactly. The 'client' adapter they used if anyone didn't catch it was a Cisco/Linksys router-sized device. Not practical by any means. It'd be totally insane to make any product recommendations prior to real client adapters being available, or more accurately, embedded ones are available. I think a wireless salesman wrote this article.
They can't put lipstick on this pig.
No actually , If you transfer from hardrive to hardrive you probably get a max output of 45MB/s The asus is close to 35MB/s wich is almost maxing out ur drives power. Ofcourse if you have a good performance you can get upto 80MB/s or a little more Not counting SSD to SSD transfer rates- Also remember that you will be able to transfer 4k HD content with the same amount of data that 1080p took
Shibby save us with another awesome tomato release!
Probably so. However, on the graph it's written Mb(Megabits), not MB(Megabytes). Since tehnically 8b=1B, 35Mb/s=4.38MB/s and that's very slow. That's why I asked if the graph meant Mb/s or MB/s.
Most networks - in my experience - are some sort of hodgepodge of different devices. So ac speeds are only really relevant if the results also translate over to the other spaces.
1) Wired performance: All of these things sport wired gigabit connectivity, but as with wireless we all know that wired performance can have wired bottlenecks and problems of its own. I am sure they are all better than wireless or 100/t... but what kind of throughput are we talking about? Personally (and I know I am not alone on this), I like wireless for portable devices, but for something that never moves like a TV or a PC it is really not that much extra effort to run a line under carpet or through a vent.
-Specifically I am curious to know if any of these routers can run their ethernet in a gang mode so that I can have 2 gigabit lines to a server, and 2 lines to my PC (and 1 line to my wife's PC) so I can have enough throughput to offload all of my HDDs to a central location and have a truly silent PC without having to use a seperate switch or router. I do video editing, and obviously cannot afford 10GbE in the home, so this type of setup is needed to get the 150+MB/s throughput needed for real video editing (until consumer 5GbE or 10GbE becomes available... where is that tech anyways?). I am currently using a wireless G router, and then an old (and noisy) gigabit switch (using 5 ports on a 24 port switch lol), and to be able to consolidate both devices would be really nice.
2) High traffic performance: We all know that G and N suffer once you populate a network with a lot of devices, or have multiple networks congesting the same area. While I personally have very low traffic in my area (very low-tech neighbors), I know a ton of readers live in apartments, or have businesses with a ton of machines, and it would be nice for them to know how many devices you can have before having to worry about a serious performance fall-off. As most devices are still on N it would also be curious to see if these new routers can support more devices on N before seeing fall-off than traditional N devices.
3) Internet performance: I have 'decently fast' internet at my home, but that is still only ~25Mb/s. But when wireless G is at 54Mb/s it makes it rather hard to justify getting anything faster than G for your average home user that is simply using wireless on 1-3 devices for internet access, and there is very little file sharing going on. Are there any real-world tests to show some significant performance boost for such simple 'internet only' uses? Perhaps lower ping rates, or more consistent performance at that 25Mb/s level?
4) Power savings: I think more than anything that 11ac is going to show most of it's usefulness in power savings for future portable devices (and I think that ties in a lot with why they are marketing it as 5G to tie in with the cell network speak of 3G and 4G). I look at my friends phones that are only 1-2 years old, and they have to disable the wifi to get a full day's battery out of the phone because wifi's idle simply takes too much power. Compare that to new phones (or even higher quality old phones) which you can leave the wifi on all day and not have a significant battery issue. Even my 5 year old laptop gains an hour or more of battery life (a near 1/3 life boost) simply by turning off the wifi switch, so obviously the new radios in devices are getting much better at battery life without sacrificing much in the way of performance. Also cell providers like ATT and VZW have a lot of incentive to push 5G on phones and in houses to off-load cell traffic.
Anywho, I guess what I am curious about is if the actual network speed is what gains the battery performance, or if it is merely having a more modern radio which brings such gains. As mentioned already, I am running 11g both at work and at home, and so 'all things being equal' the battery impact of wireless appears to have more to do with how modern the device is rather than the speed of the wireless network. I understand the 'race to sleep' argument, but if your internet coming in is only ~5-30Mb/s then I relay wonder if the end device will be able to sleep much at all. Because no matter if your network is 54Mb/s or 1300Mb/s the slow drip of the internet connection is going to keep those radios awake the entire time the internet is up. So is the 5G battery improvement really going to be from the network speed? Or is it merely going to be a factor of having a smaller and more efficient radio package to begin with regardless of what network it hooks up to?
-Note: this is not the same thing as comparing 3G to 4G/LTE networks where the actual internet speed is faster allowing the device to gets it's job done faster and go to sleep faster. When on a network the internet speed is a relative constant (and almost always slower than 11g), and I am curious if changing the wireless from 11g to 11n/ac provides any battery gain on any given device for a set workload.
Anywho, Great article! My old wireless G router is starting to have troubles, and needs to be reset every 4-6 weeks, so I am really curious about getting either a high end 11n device, or a midrange 11ac device before the year is out. And if I can find one that can last the 8+ years that my current linksys G router did then all the better! We don't see a lot of wireless articles here on Toms, and it is something that is increasingly important as people put heavier workloads and take bigger machines off of wired connections.