Upcoming Wifi standards

[vnangia]

Holiday greetings everyone!

The Verge carried a piece about an upcoming Buffalo product, and from the article, I was surprised to learn that we're about a year from the ratification of 802.11n's successor, 802.11ac. The article also mentions 802.11ad, another standards I had not heard of until this article came out.

Are these formal IEEE names for something we've already heard about like WiGig, WiMedia, WHDI, etc or are these brand spanking new standards?

How exciting! After the protracted wait for n to be finalized, it's nice to hear of so much progress in a relatively short while!

 

[claykin]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11ac

 

[thiggins]

I would not get too excited about 802.11ac. Anything shown/announced at CES will be at least a year away from shipment. ac operates in the 5 GHz band only, so will have limited range vs. 2.4 GHz.

And note well this statement from the Wikipedia article (bolding mine):

Theoretically, this specification will enable multi-station WLAN throughput of at least 1 Gigabit

The short story is like three-stream N, the primary benefit will be to enterprises that need to expand available wireless bandwidth and don't mind installing a pantload of APs.