Monday, June 24, 2013

NextGen WiFi Should Speed Up Downloads

Contrary to popular belief, many of the connection problems that home users encounter are often not related to their broadband service but rather to the Wi-Fi routers.

But according to Paresh Dave at the LATimes, new technology — 802.11ac — has the potential to be up to four times as fast as the current standard 802.11n technology. Smartphones, computers and routers with the new technology are already hitting store shelves, though industry experts don't expect average consumers to start picking up the devices until the holiday shopping season or early next year.

The technical improvements bring Wi-Fi up to par with the sweeping changes in the home entertainment industry. The number of Wi-Fi-connected devices in U.S. households has doubled during the last five years, according to Wakefield Research.

Smartphones, tablets and even appliances such as refrigerators and washing machines now compete with televisions, gaming consoles and laptops for a share of a finite network bandwidth. Increasingly, many of those devices are also displaying hours of video a day, putting incredible demand on the network.

The fifth generation of Wi-Fi tackles those problems by increasing speed limits and moving to a new highway, from the congested lanes of the 2.4-gigahertz frequency band to a more open 5-gigahertz spectrum.

The changes should mean that routers will be able to accommodate more devices at one time and provide better coverage throughout a home or office space.

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