Last time I checked the most reliable and strongest signal strength for WiFi are found in wireless access points, which are just round dish shaped things that are stuck onto a wall or ceiling. These don't have externally mounted antennas, they're internal, and yet they still have better reception and signal strength.
Don't confuse the necessity of having antennas on a WiFi router as a necessity of having weak externally mounted antennas. It'd do better if they used stronger antennas and internally mounted them, like wireless access points.
90% of your "round dish shaped things" have 2dBi antennas that may or may not be in a good location for service. The external antenna gives you the option to arrange the antenna a bit (often you'll find having one horizontal, one vertical and one at a 45* angle is best in a 3x3 system). The little plug in, all in one AP's your talking about are done that way with aesthetics and price as the primary drivers in that design. There are better models with higher power but they're almost all limited to a 2dBi antenna.
The external antennas are better in virtually every way besides aesthetics.
Dish antenna's are one direction only.. they strictly for point to point communications.. unless you gonna put a rotating dish on a router, and have it home in on the devices, it's a silly suggestion.
They are not talking about (satellite) dish antennas which really are one-directional. They are discussing the small APs that look like large smoke detectors (in my opinion) which are multi-directional and can be found mainly in big offices (we had a network of them spanning the two floors my company owned). And yes, I agree they are rubbish as far as signal strength is concerned.
I never did like that about some modern routers. All those antennas made them look like a horseshoe when it's been flipped upside down. I did that once at a beach in Mississippi. Ugh all those legs wiggling in the air! It's been years and I still can't get that creepy image out of my head. Certain routers remind me of that and somewhat creep me out too.
Yes, they can get pretty big. The one I flipped was probably big enough to cover a dinner plate. I seriously thought it was dead or something but nope, all those legs went up in the air and started moving around. I did flip it over again and nudge it back into the water, but gosh that was disturbing.
Very nice, the only downside for it is that while it does have the next gen. Wireless standard.. it still holds to the now old gigabit ports.. I mean where's the 2.5gbps and 5gbps support ?
For a campus environment that doesn't even matter. At my school in the morning when no one is around if I plug a gigabit cable into my laptop in the library I get about 400 Mbit/s. At about 11-11:30 I test over gigabit the speeds are around 200 Mbit/s but the wireless N access points are constantly dropping packets, ping times jumping between 100ms, 500ms and timeouts. You will be lucky to load Facebook in <15 seconds. We recently got upgraded to wireless AC and it has gotten much better over WiFi (slower over gigabit now because the backhaul is now better utilized by the access points) but during exam times the same issue occurs.
I am rather surprised that there aren't stylish antennas being made yet that are installed directly on the walls and look a bit like modern art or at least sleek lines up a wall. It could serve the secondary benefit of being dramatically larger as well and potentially even spread around a room / house and then wired to a central location where the router is.
I could imagine something that looks somewhat like a house plant or a cactus, have the cables connect to the bottom or the back where the "pot" would be and the antennae would look like branches or something.
Concurrent dual-band connection. That is interesting. I wonder how they implemented it. It is interesting because a client can seamlessly switch between radios depending on signal strength.
TLDR: 1) MU-MIMO on the uplink as well as the downlink 2) MU-MIMO is a mandatory feature not an optional one 3) MU-MIMO on 2.4ghz as well as 5 (AC didn't touch 2.4 wifi) 4) Ability to only use part of a channel for low traffic connections that don't need all of it or to share between multiple clients. 5) Devices that don't need to connect often can schedule their next connect time.
I'm surprised there aren't more ad devices out there. Wireless docks and wire-free monitors and the like. I love the idea of just setting down my tablet on a desk and BOOM, I'm now working on a desktop as it wirelessly charges and connects to a big external display.
Because HDMI 1.4 is roughly 10.4Gbps of actual bandwidth. You can't get that over 802.11ad. Yes it is "60Gbps". Due to the nature of the signal and a lot of other stuff you are realistically talking more like a few Gbps. You could probably do 1080p under an idealized setup, uncompressed, but move the laptop around and you'll get image corruption is it is dynamically adjusting bandwidth, re-transmitting packets, etc.
You also have additional lag over wireless than wired. The best current wireless display technologies (yes, using generally 802.11n equivalent I'll grant) have a latency of around 150ms. Okay, but not great, for presentation. If you want a serious connection you need to drive it down to the latency of the monitor display itself, ideally 4-6ms. 802.11ad isn't going to do that.
You COULD do it, but it would be a compromise and you absolutely could not drive multiple monitors at 1080p or greater at once.
As for wireless charging, inefficient as heck. The best are in the range of 90% efficient, when the device and charger are ideally placed. Realistic is more in the 80% range. On top of all of the other efficiencies you are talking about and a 100w draw for a laptop is going to be wasting 15-20 watts of power, just on the wireless charging end of things.
Not as much of a concern for a device pulling 5w to charge.
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Charlie22911 - Monday, February 13, 2017 - link
This is cool and all, but if the next wave of high end 802.11ax routers has gigabit ports and looks like dead bugs I'm going to be disappointed.Dahak - Monday, February 13, 2017 - link
Well the dead bug look is a side affect, as it need them for all the anntennasJoeyJoJo123 - Monday, February 13, 2017 - link
Last time I checked the most reliable and strongest signal strength for WiFi are found in wireless access points, which are just round dish shaped things that are stuck onto a wall or ceiling. These don't have externally mounted antennas, they're internal, and yet they still have better reception and signal strength.Don't confuse the necessity of having antennas on a WiFi router as a necessity of having weak externally mounted antennas. It'd do better if they used stronger antennas and internally mounted them, like wireless access points.
0ldman79 - Monday, February 13, 2017 - link
I work in IT, have for years, run a WISP.90% of your "round dish shaped things" have 2dBi antennas that may or may not be in a good location for service. The external antenna gives you the option to arrange the antenna a bit (often you'll find having one horizontal, one vertical and one at a 45* angle is best in a 3x3 system). The little plug in, all in one AP's your talking about are done that way with aesthetics and price as the primary drivers in that design. There are better models with higher power but they're almost all limited to a 2dBi antenna.
The external antennas are better in virtually every way besides aesthetics.
Gasaraki88 - Tuesday, February 14, 2017 - link
Thank you.extide - Friday, February 24, 2017 - link
Thanks for making this comment soi I didn't have to.Morawka - Monday, February 13, 2017 - link
Dish antenna's are one direction only.. they strictly for point to point communications.. unless you gonna put a rotating dish on a router, and have it home in on the devices, it's a silly suggestion.HrD - Tuesday, February 14, 2017 - link
They are not talking about (satellite) dish antennas which really are one-directional. They are discussing the small APs that look like large smoke detectors (in my opinion) which are multi-directional and can be found mainly in big offices (we had a network of them spanning the two floors my company owned). And yes, I agree they are rubbish as far as signal strength is concerned.mikeroch - Monday, February 20, 2017 - link
Yes, I also think the same the dead bug look also like a side effect to me too.mikeroch - Monday, February 20, 2017 - link
If it's not a dead bug then it should be the IP loop hole as per the <a href="http://http-192-168-1-1.net/">http 192.168.1.1</a>WorldWithoutMadness - Monday, February 13, 2017 - link
Flip it and you'll get a mad standing bugBrokenCrayons - Monday, February 13, 2017 - link
I never did like that about some modern routers. All those antennas made them look like a horseshoe when it's been flipped upside down. I did that once at a beach in Mississippi. Ugh all those legs wiggling in the air! It's been years and I still can't get that creepy image out of my head. Certain routers remind me of that and somewhat creep me out too.Murloc - Monday, February 13, 2017 - link
ewww and they're huge too.We don't have those in the mediterranean.
BrokenCrayons - Tuesday, February 14, 2017 - link
Yes, they can get pretty big. The one I flipped was probably big enough to cover a dinner plate. I seriously thought it was dead or something but nope, all those legs went up in the air and started moving around. I did flip it over again and nudge it back into the water, but gosh that was disturbing.extide - Friday, February 24, 2017 - link
OMG I don't understand the maths and thus don't get the design guidelines.SORRY NOT MY PROBLEM
CaedenV - Monday, February 13, 2017 - link
If you hang it from the ceiling via PoE then it looks like a freakin huge spider coming down!0ldman79 - Monday, February 13, 2017 - link
I might do that at my office... lolMurloc - Monday, February 13, 2017 - link
but don't you enjoy grabbing them by the antennas?Xajel - Monday, February 13, 2017 - link
Very nice, the only downside for it is that while it does have the next gen. Wireless standard.. it still holds to the now old gigabit ports.. I mean where's the 2.5gbps and 5gbps support ?Darkknight512 - Monday, February 13, 2017 - link
For a campus environment that doesn't even matter. At my school in the morning when no one is around if I plug a gigabit cable into my laptop in the library I get about 400 Mbit/s. At about 11-11:30 I test over gigabit the speeds are around 200 Mbit/s but the wireless N access points are constantly dropping packets, ping times jumping between 100ms, 500ms and timeouts. You will be lucky to load Facebook in <15 seconds. We recently got upgraded to wireless AC and it has gotten much better over WiFi (slower over gigabit now because the backhaul is now better utilized by the access points) but during exam times the same issue occurs.phoenix_rizzen - Monday, February 13, 2017 - link
Seems you skipped the section that mentioned support for nbase-t up to 10gbps.krisirk - Monday, February 13, 2017 - link
The article says it's supported."The IPQ8074 SoC also supports NBASE-T, with up to two 10G interfaces supported."
vanilla_gorilla - Wednesday, February 15, 2017 - link
"The IPQ8074 SoC also supports NBASE-T, with up to two 10G interfaces supported."shadarlo - Monday, February 13, 2017 - link
I am rather surprised that there aren't stylish antennas being made yet that are installed directly on the walls and look a bit like modern art or at least sleek lines up a wall. It could serve the secondary benefit of being dramatically larger as well and potentially even spread around a room / house and then wired to a central location where the router is.Murloc - Monday, February 13, 2017 - link
that would be a waste of money and an overcomplication for no good reason given that the normal-sized ones are easy to hide.Meteor2 - Tuesday, February 14, 2017 - link
Oh I don't know. My Airport Extreme looks good and I'm happy to have it visible. I'm sure there'd be a market for big aesthetically pleasing routers.nils_ - Wednesday, February 15, 2017 - link
I could imagine something that looks somewhat like a house plant or a cactus, have the cables connect to the bottom or the back where the "pot" would be and the antennae would look like branches or something.zodiacfml - Monday, February 13, 2017 - link
Concurrent dual-band connection. That is interesting. I wonder how they implemented it. It is interesting because a client can seamlessly switch between radios depending on signal strength.DanNeely - Monday, February 13, 2017 - link
Arstechnica has a good write up on what 802.11ax adds.https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/02/qualcomms-...
TLDR:
1) MU-MIMO on the uplink as well as the downlink
2) MU-MIMO is a mandatory feature not an optional one
3) MU-MIMO on 2.4ghz as well as 5 (AC didn't touch 2.4 wifi)
4) Ability to only use part of a channel for low traffic connections that don't need all of it or to share between multiple clients.
5) Devices that don't need to connect often can schedule their next connect time.
Murloc - Monday, February 13, 2017 - link
can't wait for 802.11 ayyy lmaoanand_desai - Monday, February 13, 2017 - link
How do you get immediate coverage improvement with existing 11n devices?Meteor2 - Tuesday, February 14, 2017 - link
Beam-forming.anand_desai - Tuesday, February 14, 2017 - link
beam-forming is not a new technology being introduced in 11ax. Why are they claiming immediate improvement in 11n devices on a 11ax network?0ldman79 - Wednesday, February 15, 2017 - link
Beam forming is integral to AX apparently, still rarely used in AC.anand_desai - Thursday, February 16, 2017 - link
Not true. Beamforming is key for MIMO to be successful. Both wave 1 11ac and wave 2 11ac leverage Tx-beamforming.Meteor2 - Tuesday, February 14, 2017 - link
ac/ad, ax/ay; I like what they've done there.I'm surprised there aren't more ad devices out there. Wireless docks and wire-free monitors and the like. I love the idea of just setting down my tablet on a desk and BOOM, I'm now working on a desktop as it wirelessly charges and connects to a big external display.
azazel1024 - Tuesday, February 14, 2017 - link
Because HDMI 1.4 is roughly 10.4Gbps of actual bandwidth. You can't get that over 802.11ad. Yes it is "60Gbps". Due to the nature of the signal and a lot of other stuff you are realistically talking more like a few Gbps. You could probably do 1080p under an idealized setup, uncompressed, but move the laptop around and you'll get image corruption is it is dynamically adjusting bandwidth, re-transmitting packets, etc.You also have additional lag over wireless than wired. The best current wireless display technologies (yes, using generally 802.11n equivalent I'll grant) have a latency of around 150ms. Okay, but not great, for presentation. If you want a serious connection you need to drive it down to the latency of the monitor display itself, ideally 4-6ms. 802.11ad isn't going to do that.
You COULD do it, but it would be a compromise and you absolutely could not drive multiple monitors at 1080p or greater at once.
As for wireless charging, inefficient as heck. The best are in the range of 90% efficient, when the device and charger are ideally placed. Realistic is more in the 80% range. On top of all of the other efficiencies you are talking about and a 100w draw for a laptop is going to be wasting 15-20 watts of power, just on the wireless charging end of things.
Not as much of a concern for a device pulling 5w to charge.
Rich_kerr - Tuesday, February 14, 2017 - link
Does this device still support IBSS and RSN? How is Mesh done?