WiFi to get Speed Boost Thanks to New Frequencies

WiFi is about to get a speed boost due to a new frequency band. The new band will function at 60GHz compared to the traditional 2.4GHz and 5GHz that the current wireless connections use. The new faster band could see a speed increase of at least 10 times when compared to 802.11n networks.

‘Today’s Wi-Fi speeds are measured in the low hundreds of megabits per second, says Edgar Figueroa, executive director of the Wi-Fi Alliance.The 60-GHz band allows for significant boost in performance, so we are talking about speeds in the gigabits per second range.

Right now the limit on 802.11n is around 150MBps. A switch over to 60GHz could see speeds of between 1GBps and 6GBps in optimal conditions. This would allow for more data to be shifted between devices such as multiple HD channels without the image quality being lowered.

Other uses for such a high transfer speed could include transferring pictures around, backing up data and transferring/streaming between several devices at the same time.

There is a downside though in that the higher the frequency, the more problems it has moving through walls. Also the higher frequencies also have a shorter range.

‘The 60 GHz is like a beam of light ” you have to have line of sight ” but you can get multi-gigabit point-to point networking speeds with it, he says.

It is expected that tri-band routers will be made available in the next couple of years which will be able to automatically switch between 2.4GHz, 5GHz and 60GHz bands.

Via: Wired

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