A new technical paper from Aruba Networks suggests that, "in enterprise networks, the higher rates and increased capacity of 802.11ac will break down the last remaining barriers to the all-wireless office. There should be enough capacity in an 802.11ac WLAN that users see equivalent performance to wired Ethernet," adds the analysis.
The paper goes on to ask the question: "Is 802.11ac the last word in Wi-Fi, at least at the physical layer?" Aruba Networks notes that "there is certainly a case for saying that [the technology] pushes most [Wi-Fi] parameters to the limit, [including] channel bandwidth, modulation, number of antennas and spatial streams, and beamforming."
"802.11ac takes all the techniques the Wi-Fi industry has learned up to 802.11n, and extends them," concludes the paper. "It is relatively uncontroversial to say that in a few years, Wi-Fi will be synonymous with 802.11ac, or whichever name the Wi-Fi Alliance chooses for it."
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Matt Vincent
Senior Editor
Matt Vincent is a B2B technology journalist, editor and content producer with over 15 years of experience, specializing in the full range of media content production and management, as well as SEO and social media engagement best practices, for both Cabling Installation & Maintenance magazine and its website CablingInstall.com. He currently provides trade show, company, executive and field technology trend coverage for the ICT structured cabling, telecommunications networking, data center, IP physical security, and professional AV vertical market segments. Email: [email protected]