It has always been cheaper. It costs a lot more to run a physical line. Faster than 10-gigabit ethernet? Maybe 1% of the time when it's completely optimal.
People are easily confused by big numbers which are presented in a different fashion than what they're used to.
For APs the labeling is more like "add all the speeds that you can think of, in lab conditions" to get a number you'll never ever ever see in real life. Ever. Not even close. So that advertised speed is just marketing.
There's no single device which will ever be able to use the consolidated BW of this AP. Then almost no devices support top speed of the latest standard so even if all other conditions are *perfect* and you sum up all the speeds, you will never see top speeds. Then even if you use all the correct devices, wireless medium just doesn't allow anything close to those peak theoretical speeds.
It's confusing for the regular customer and it's meant to be because it's an opportunity to sell them numbers. Regular people never cared about switching speed because it has been fixed and standard for decades - 100M/1G to the point manufacturers couldn't overdo each other. Now they can.
This AP will be faster and better than the previous ones but manufacturers aren't doing anything to eliminate the confusion and misplaced expectations of regular people.
And I don't agree that WiFi was always cheaper. It was always more convenient but cheap is a matter of the specific deployment and needs. At home you can get 8 real 1G connections with a $20 switch, $20 worth of cheap cables, and any basic device with Ethernet connectivity can take full advantage. With WiFi you need to spend 10 times that just on the AP capable of similar theoretical speeds, even before you consider the premium commanded by a client device to support that. So definitely more convenient, not necessarily cheaper. The real benefit of WiFi is that it enables mobile devices, something impossible with cables.
I think 802.11g (54 Mb/s) was the last WiFi standard where you could actually hit the rated speed in real world conditions. You had to be right next to the router, but it wasn't impractical to achieve. I recall I'd typically get 48 Mb/s on my laptop, while sitting 6-8 feet away.
Quoted WiFi speeds apply only to transmission of the data payload and ignore all the pauses required for dealing with the shared medium. If you saw 48 Mbps you were probably using a client and AP that shared support for a proprietary enhancement to 802.11g like Atheros SuperG. SuperG had a max transmission rate of 108Mbps and also deployed compression and some MAC enhancements.
>It has always been cheaper. It costs a lot more to run a physical line. Really? In my experience, you can get enough cable to run quite a lot of runs of ordinary home/small-office distances before you add up to the cost of even one decently capable access point. I'll admit I haven't run the numbers exactly, but that is my anecdotal experience.
This isn't to knock how far WiFi has come over the years. It's very impressive, but it's also very misleading.
The actual throughput spec of a Cat5e and Cat6 cable is 2.5gb and 5gb per second out to 100 meters, respectively. We're just used to 1G cause that's been the standard for over a decade, but the cables are capable of faster speeds. Cat6 can also do 10gb out to 30m, which is more than enough length for a home office that has both equipment and modem in it. The speeds are just a limitation of your switch.
But here's the catch. The AP is a device just like your PC, and if you have a "37GB/s capable AP" connected to your switch on a 1GB capable port, then you're limited to a maximum 1GB (shared) connection. If you want blistering speeds on your WiFi, then it's going to have to be connected to a 10GB or faster port, which is expensive. And if you can connect a WiFi to a 10GB port, you can connect a hard line to it, too.
Oh, and because most networking standards use base-10 speeds, Gib would be incorrect. You basically always want Gb.
The Gi prefix mostly relates to memory, which tends to come in power-of-2 sizes, due to the addresses being encoded over a bus consisting of n wires (yielding 2^n combinations). Even storage is sized in base-10 units, because it makes the numbers bigger and there's no real reason not to. It's mostly due to historical legacy that file sizes are typically reported in base-2 units.
> with storage it's good to know how many blocks and things like that.
I still consider that as legacy, since end users are well removed from the low-level implementation details of storage. However, you do have a point that storage device interfaces and filesystem implementations are indeed built around power-of-2 size blocks.
What's interesting is that the level *beneath* storage device interfaces allocates a non-power-of-2 number of cells (or HDD bits) to representing these blocks. So, the practical benefit is again one of addressing and efficiently representing block offsets and occupancy with fixed-size binary bitfields.
T-Mo's 5G FWA service is expanding quite fast, and quite affordable compared to incumbents in many areas - in fact, they had an Uncarrier event recently related to their home internet service with many incentives and a solid roadmap announcement.
Let's set aside the lie that is the maximum speed. Let's just talk about the home switch in use by the normies out there. What's a switch? Exactly. All we have here is a product that comes with a booklet full of promises and a centralized server everyone must be constantly in communication with or their product won't work. I'm sure it will be fine. $10 if you can guess what that booklet is good for.
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MikeMurphy - Wednesday, May 4, 2022 - link
Does automatic frequency coordination (AFC) means I don't have to go through the archaic process of selecting fixed channels?cbm80 - Wednesday, May 4, 2022 - link
AFC concerns non-wifi interference, not wifi/wifi interference.wr3zzz - Wednesday, May 4, 2022 - link
So WiFi will soon be cheaper and faster than home Ethernet?lemurbutton - Thursday, May 5, 2022 - link
It has always been cheaper. It costs a lot more to run a physical line. Faster than 10-gigabit ethernet? Maybe 1% of the time when it's completely optimal.at_clucks - Thursday, May 5, 2022 - link
People are easily confused by big numbers which are presented in a different fashion than what they're used to.For APs the labeling is more like "add all the speeds that you can think of, in lab conditions" to get a number you'll never ever ever see in real life. Ever. Not even close. So that advertised speed is just marketing.
There's no single device which will ever be able to use the consolidated BW of this AP. Then almost no devices support top speed of the latest standard so even if all other conditions are *perfect* and you sum up all the speeds, you will never see top speeds. Then even if you use all the correct devices, wireless medium just doesn't allow anything close to those peak theoretical speeds.
It's confusing for the regular customer and it's meant to be because it's an opportunity to sell them numbers. Regular people never cared about switching speed because it has been fixed and standard for decades - 100M/1G to the point manufacturers couldn't overdo each other. Now they can.
This AP will be faster and better than the previous ones but manufacturers aren't doing anything to eliminate the confusion and misplaced expectations of regular people.
And I don't agree that WiFi was always cheaper. It was always more convenient but cheap is a matter of the specific deployment and needs. At home you can get 8 real 1G connections with a $20 switch, $20 worth of cheap cables, and any basic device with Ethernet connectivity can take full advantage. With WiFi you need to spend 10 times that just on the AP capable of similar theoretical speeds, even before you consider the premium commanded by a client device to support that. So definitely more convenient, not necessarily cheaper. The real benefit of WiFi is that it enables mobile devices, something impossible with cables.
mode_13h - Thursday, May 5, 2022 - link
I think 802.11g (54 Mb/s) was the last WiFi standard where you could actually hit the rated speed in real world conditions. You had to be right next to the router, but it wasn't impractical to achieve. I recall I'd typically get 48 Mb/s on my laptop, while sitting 6-8 feet away.easp - Wednesday, May 11, 2022 - link
Quoted WiFi speeds apply only to transmission of the data payload and ignore all the pauses required for dealing with the shared medium. If you saw 48 Mbps you were probably using a client and AP that shared support for a proprietary enhancement to 802.11g like Atheros SuperG. SuperG had a max transmission rate of 108Mbps and also deployed compression and some MAC enhancements.Dolda2000 - Thursday, May 26, 2022 - link
>It has always been cheaper. It costs a lot more to run a physical line.Really? In my experience, you can get enough cable to run quite a lot of runs of ordinary home/small-office distances before you add up to the cost of even one decently capable access point. I'll admit I haven't run the numbers exactly, but that is my anecdotal experience.
Ranari - Thursday, May 5, 2022 - link
This isn't to knock how far WiFi has come over the years. It's very impressive, but it's also very misleading.The actual throughput spec of a Cat5e and Cat6 cable is 2.5gb and 5gb per second out to 100 meters, respectively. We're just used to 1G cause that's been the standard for over a decade, but the cables are capable of faster speeds. Cat6 can also do 10gb out to 30m, which is more than enough length for a home office that has both equipment and modem in it. The speeds are just a limitation of your switch.
But here's the catch. The AP is a device just like your PC, and if you have a "37GB/s capable AP" connected to your switch on a 1GB capable port, then you're limited to a maximum 1GB (shared) connection. If you want blistering speeds on your WiFi, then it's going to have to be connected to a 10GB or faster port, which is expensive. And if you can connect a WiFi to a 10GB port, you can connect a hard line to it, too.
So the real answer is both, haha.
mode_13h - Thursday, May 5, 2022 - link
> Cat6 can also do 10gb out to 30m> ... connected to your switch on a 1GB capable port
Please pay attention to capitalization.
Gb = gigabit
GB = gigabyte (technically 10^9 bytes), which is typically 8x 1 Gb.
BTW, Gi is the prefix (as in GiB) to use, when you mean 2^30.
mode_13h - Thursday, May 5, 2022 - link
Oh, and because most networking standards use base-10 speeds, Gib would be incorrect. You basically always want Gb.The Gi prefix mostly relates to memory, which tends to come in power-of-2 sizes, due to the addresses being encoded over a bus consisting of n wires (yielding 2^n combinations). Even storage is sized in base-10 units, because it makes the numbers bigger and there's no real reason not to. It's mostly due to historical legacy that file sizes are typically reported in base-2 units.
lmcd - Thursday, May 5, 2022 - link
Disagreed on the "historical legacy" bit at the end, since with storage it's good to know how many blocks and things like that.mode_13h - Friday, May 6, 2022 - link
> with storage it's good to know how many blocks and things like that.I still consider that as legacy, since end users are well removed from the low-level implementation details of storage. However, you do have a point that storage device interfaces and filesystem implementations are indeed built around power-of-2 size blocks.
What's interesting is that the level *beneath* storage device interfaces allocates a non-power-of-2 number of cells (or HDD bits) to representing these blocks. So, the practical benefit is again one of addressing and efficiently representing block offsets and occupancy with fixed-size binary bitfields.
James5mith - Thursday, May 5, 2022 - link
"5G-based fixed wireless access is fast becoming an attractive option for many consumers - sometimes even as the primary broadband connection"Where? What country? Sure as heck isn't the U.S.
ganeshts - Friday, May 6, 2022 - link
T-Mo's 5G FWA service is expanding quite fast, and quite affordable compared to incumbents in many areas - in fact, they had an Uncarrier event recently related to their home internet service with many incentives and a solid roadmap announcement.wbfox - Thursday, May 5, 2022 - link
Let's set aside the lie that is the maximum speed. Let's just talk about the home switch in use by the normies out there. What's a switch? Exactly. All we have here is a product that comes with a booklet full of promises and a centralized server everyone must be constantly in communication with or their product won't work. I'm sure it will be fine. $10 if you can guess what that booklet is good for.kkromm - Wednesday, May 11, 2022 - link
I have 10gbe fiber in my home with 10gbe switches and 10gbe network cards. Really not very difficult to run.