What's the status of 802.11AC support?

[Arend van Spriel]

On 08/05/14 10:56, Pontus Karlsson wrote:
> Hi Arend, and thanks a bunch for the configuration!
>
> As far as I understand it, the higher speeds of 11ac is dependent on
> both modes operating simultaneously
> and in cooperation. Is this correct?

Not sure what you mean by modes, but I tend to say no here.

> You’re saying that all my STAs needs to be 11ac compatible, but one of
> the main reasons I’m switching to 11ac is due to
> the vary of different clients that connects to our network, there’s even
> a few 802.11g clients (cellphones mainly).
> According to different sources and specifications 11ac is supposed to be
> compatible with both a/b/g/n/ac,
> I suppose this is due to it’s operation on both modes as well?

For the higher speeds your STAs should be 11ac compatible. Upon 
connecting the capbilities are negotiated.

> I’m curious, what speeds do you measure with that setup, and with what
> chipset / NIC?

Not a question to ask me. I am biased as my employer is a wireless 
vendor :-p

Regards,
Arend

>
> On 5 Aug 2014 at 10:10:10, Arend van Spriel (arend at broadcom.com
> <mailto:arend at broadcom.com>) wrote:
>
>> On 08/05/14 06:53, Pontus Karlsson wrote:
>> > I’m considering upgrading my WiFi NIC in my router and need to know,
>> > if I were to get an ASUS PCE-AC68
>> > (http://www.asus.com/us/Networking/PCEAC68/)
>> > What could I expect from this running hostapd in terms of speed and
>> > reliability?
>> >
>> > Bare in mind I’m very fresh when it comes to hostapd, I usually end up
>> > with a simple configuration
>> > that partially works for my needs and stick with that for a few years.
>> >
>> > As far as I understand it, 802.11AC in order to achieve higher speeds it
>> > needs to operate in both
>> > 2.4Ghz mode and 5Ghz mode simultaneously. Does this work properly in
>> > hostapd?
>>
>> Hi Pontus,
>>
>> The higher speeds in 11ac are depending on bandwidth doing 80MHz and
>> higher and some more stuff that falls under the term MCS. Anyway, 11ac
>> is only available in 5GHz. Probably stating the obvious but both AP and
>> STA clients must be 11ac capable. Attached is a sample config I used. It
>> is a bit tricky. The channel indicates the operating channel. I used
>> channel 36 and for 11ac you have to specify the center frequency using
>> vht_oper_centr_freq_seg0_idx, which is 42 in my case for 80MHz bandwidth
>> (vht_oper_chwidth=1). If I am not mistaken vht_oper_centr_freq_seg1_idx
>> is only used for 80+80 bandwidth.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Arend