The previous IEEE Wi-Fi standard, which was designed to improve wireless services in the enterprise as well as support multiple streams of HD video in the home. Also known as "Wi-Fi 5," "Gigabit Wi-Fi" and "5G Wi-Fi," products became available in 2012 before the standard was approved in early 2014.
Operating only in the 5 GHz band, devices are backward compatible with 802.11n, which is expected to co-exist with 802.11ac until the 2020s. An 11ac access point employs beamforming, which uses feedback to aim the transmission at the receiving device. In addition, 11ac beamforming was standardized for vendor interoperability for the first time.
11ac Wave 2
The second generation Wave 2 supports multiuser MIMO (MU-MIMO) with a total of eight simultaneous streams and up to four per client. See
beamforming,
2.5/5G Ethernet,
802.11n,
802.11ad,
OFDM and
QAM.
802.11ac and 802.11n SPECIFICATIONS
11ac 11n
(Wi-Fi 5) (Wi-Fi 4)
Band 5 GHz 2.4/5 GHz
Modulation 256-QAM 64-QAM
Max Antennas 8 4
Channel MHz 20, 40, 20, 40
80, 160
11n
(40 MHz channels)
1 stream 150 Mbps
2 streams 300 Mbps
3 streams 450 Mbps
4 streams 600 Mbps
11ac Wave 1
(80 MHz channels)
1 stream 433 Mbps
2 streams 867 Mbps
3 streams 1.3 Gbps
11ac Wave 2
(160 MHz channels)
1 stream 867 Mbps
4 streams 3.39 Gbps
8 streams 6.77 Gbps