What's the status of 802.11AC support?

[Hauke Mehrtens]

On 08/05/2014 03:09 PM, Pontus Karlsson wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On 5 Aug 2014 at 14:37:15, Arend van Spriel (arend at broadcom.com
> <mailto:arend at broadcom.com>) wrote:
> 
>> 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. 
> 
> It appears this was a misinterpretation from my part, as I said I am
> very fresh with wireless networking
> and the details that it revolves around.
> 
> When I read about the specifications for several different adapters I
> was under the impression that
> for example adapters advertising themselves as 1750Mbps max rate in
> their specifications meant
> that they would work under 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz simultaneously to combine a
> maximumd rate of
> 1750Mbps. Now however after I’ve read a bit further I realize that the
> max rate is merely the max rate
> of their 2.4Ghz mode and 5Ghz, but not at the same time. So for 1750
> that means a max of 1.3Gbps for
> the 5Ghz and 450Mbps for the 2.4Ghz mode.
> 
>>
>>
>> > 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 
> 
> Ah I see that now. But then perhaps you could answer me this;
> 
> The ASUS PCE-AC68 features the Broadcom BCM4709 chipset. One of the
> features they brag with is the
> Broadcom TurboQAM feature, which supposedly would combine the 2.4Ghz
> data rate with the 5Ghz data rate
> providing an “AC1900”-adapter. Does this mean that there’s two separate
> radios? I know it’s dual band, but doesn’t
> say whether i can use them simultaneously or not.

The ASUS PCE-AC68 uses a BCM4360 [0] which is only supported by the
proprietary Broadcom driver, which probably does not support AP mode and
will probably cause some other problems. The BCM4709 is a ARM SoC
without wireless. When you want to do something more than normal station
mode with ieee80211ac in Linux I would suggest to buy something
supported by ath10k. TurboQAM is the marketing name for using 256QAM in
the 2.4 GHz band.

[0]: https://wikidevi.com/wiki/ASUS_PCE-AC68

Hauke