AREDN Linking 802.11N and 802.11AC units question

AREDN Linking 802.11N and 802.11AC units question

Question for you: If a mountain top site upgrades to an AC unit, can a mix of 802.11N and 802.11AC units run at their native speeds or would all stations be restricted to run at 802.11N?



All links with an 802.11n unit at one end or both use 802.11n modulation rates (which vary according to link quality)

Any link with the 802.11ac at both ends has the potential to run a bit faster (but only if very good link quality exists).

Most of the speed improvements 802.11ac is capable of stem from its use of 40 or 80 MHz wide channels. That ain't happenin' on the 5 GHz ham radio bands.. (and note that there's no support for 802.11ac on the 2 GHz band).


I believe 802.11ac has one additional MCS (Modulation and coding scheme) index than 802.11n and if link conditions permit, it will shift up to that.

Wireless technology is quite complex. Browse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11ac-2013 to get a flavor of it :-) Bear in mind that the data rates shown for various MCS levels don't show them for 10 or 5 MHz channels. Divide the throughput numbers shown for 20 MHz channels accordingly to get the maximum possible modulation rate for 10 or 5 MHz channels.

And there's a good explanation of each of the wireless standards here: https://computer.howstuffworks.com/wireless-network.htm











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