There are numerous disruptive developments in the Wi‑Fi landscape promising faster connections and better performance. Innovations range from Hotspot 2.0, which uses the IEEE 802.11u standard to enable cellular-like roaming, to the 802.11ac standard formally introduced by the Wi‑Fi Alliance in June.
Ruckus Wireless recently introduced a product claimed to be the first designed from the ground up for 802.11ac: the Ruckus ZoneFlex R700. The R700 can operate as a standalone access point (AP) or as part of a centrally managed wireless LAN, enabling enterprises and service providers to offer reliable, gigabit-class Wi‑Fi performance.
Craig Mathias of mobile and wireless advisory firm Fairpoint Group observed that while 802.11ac promises broad performance gains, achieving those gains depends on sophisticated radio frequency (RF) controls and advanced WLAN system architecture and product implementation.
The 802.11ac standard introduces several technical elements to boost speed and efficiency. First, it adopts 256QAM modulation, a more advanced modulation scheme that can increase throughput by roughly 30%. Second, it supports more spatial streams: whereas 802.11n commonly offers two streams, 802.11ac supports four and can extend to eight. Third, 802.11ac mandates wider channel widths—an 80MHz channel is standard, compared with 40MHz for 802.11n—enabling much higher aggregate data rates.
Steve Hratko, director of service provider marketing at Ruckus, highlighted the importance of channel width. “The wider the channel, the faster you can go,” he explained. “It’s essentially a one‑to‑one relationship: a 20MHz channel supports a certain speed; an 80MHz channel can deliver roughly four times that speed.”
Hratko noted that similar techniques appear in cellular technology, pointing to LTE‑Advanced, which combines licensed channels to increase throughput. “Bonding more channels and wider bandwidth is becoming a common way to achieve higher speeds,” he said.
However, Hratko cautioned that the headline speeds 802.11ac advertises are difficult to achieve in typical real‑world environments. As technology writer Steven J. Vaughan‑Nichols pointed out, achieving peak speeds like 1.3 Gbps generally requires laboratory conditions rather than an ordinary office.
Adoption patterns vary across markets. “Enterprise and consumer markets are adopting 802.11ac—there’s a lot of traction there,” Hratko said. “Carriers and mobile operators have been less engaged so far.” The distinction ties back to channel bonding: to use an 80MHz channel, all component channels must be idle. That’s easier to guarantee in controlled enterprise settings than in public spaces, where spectrum is congested.
“In unlicensed spectrum you must listen before you transmit,” Hratko explained. “If you want to transmit on 80MHz, you need four adjacent 20MHz channels to be idle. On a crowded street corner, it’s unlikely you’ll find that happening—maybe at three in the morning.” He added that in environments where density is managed and real estate is controlled, 802.11ac can deliver substantial benefits.
A more significant development for carriers is the second wave of 802.11ac. Hratko called wave two potentially transformative for carrier networks. “Until now, Wi‑Fi technologies have typically served one user at a time: the AP or a client listens, the band is clear, and then a single transmitter sends data,” he said. “With wave two, a four‑stream AP can communicate with four users simultaneously and receive from four users at once. It’s like having four access points acting as one, which is ideal for high‑density environments.”
While wave two could be especially important for operators, standards and product cycles move at different speeds. Even though the main 802.11ac announcement came in June, the standard was only formally approved in January, illustrating the extended timeline that often accompanies standards work.
“Standards always take time,” Hratko noted. “You need to bring an ecosystem along, reconcile competing ideas, and navigate the politics of standards. Often the technology is mature about a year before the standard is finalized, but the approval process still takes time.”
Device support is another key challenge, a hurdle similar to what Hotspot 2.0 faced. “You have to get major device manufacturers on board—companies in Mountain View and Cupertino play a big role,” Hratko said, noting that Hotspot 2.0 was ready well before devices fully supported it. The ecosystem requires AP vendors to adopt and implement standards and then for device makers to integrate that support.
The Ruckus ZoneFlex R700 ships at $1,295 and is available globally.