So I bought a Dir-822 Wireless AC1200 Dual Band Router with High-Gain Antennas, it was on sale for $44 at Best Buy for boxing day.
I figure that my new MacBook 12" supports WifiAC that I needed a router that would give me that wireless gigabit speeds that we all have been drooling over; yay for wireless gigabit!!
After connecting the new router to my old router and running adhoc, my network is now totally obfuscated to any new network visitors. The Clouds are on the original network with static IPs while all wireless connections are on the new network but the clouds are still accessible by their IPs but not their Cloud names. However since all my devices have both ethernet and wifi connections, my whole network works in an indirect way. It can see my Apple TV’s via the wireless connections but not through the wire; thus if I turn off my Wifi, I cannot stream to my TV.
Yes, I know, I can put all this on one network and set the original router into bridge mode or even IP pass through mode, but I’m not going to because of the convolution of wires hanging all over the place. In other words the new Wifi router is sitting on top of the bookshelf and would require a spiderweb network to connect everyone together.
Anyways, I spent a good portion of my time trying to understand why my new router isn’t giving me that 867Mbps that the box is claiming to achieve.
Just like the point made about what is the Cloud Maximum speed, everyone will say “it depends on what you are transferring”… and someone is bound to say RTFM. The answer is really 80-100MB/s reads and between 60-80MB/s writes on >800MB file size on a gigabit ethernet network. Anything else like wifi networks, photos, mp3’s etc, doesn’t matter because we know as soon as you start copying smaller files the speed drops down to Wifi speeds.
So I am reading and researching this theoretical Wifi AC speeds and I am really getting angry because everyone kept saying, depends on how far away from the router, blocking of walls, reflective material of wall paint and the number of users. I’m sitting here… thinking well… how about 2 feet away from the router, no walls, no reflective paint and just one user… and I’m getting a max of 11MB/s? where is that theoretical 867Mbps at 5Ghz speeds that is advertised on the ■■■■ box?
so I finally find this…
Below is a breakdown of actual real-life average speeds you can expect from wireless routers within a reasonable distance, with low interference and small number of simultaneous clients:
802.11b - 2-3 Mbps downstream, up to 5-6 Mbps with some vendor-specific extensions.
802.11g - ~20 Mbps downstream
802.11n - 40-50 Mbps typical, varying greatly depending on configuration, whether it is mixed or N-only network, the number of bonded channels, etc. Specifying a channel, and using 40MHz channels can help achieve 70-80Mbps with some newer routers. Up to 100 Mbps achievable with more expensive commercial equipment with 8x8 arrays, gigabit ports, etc.
802.11ac - 70-100+ Mbps typical, higher speeds possible over short distances without many obstacles, with newer generation 802.11ac routers, and client adapters capable of multiple streams.
and in the comments section I see users claiming to get 126Mbps, one is getting 250MB/s <== (■■■■■ user with his cap locks on), 160Mbps…
so if I multiply my 11MB/s, I am getting a max of 88Mbps, ok lets round that to a 100mbs connection.
Anyways, I really cannot complain because this new AC router was only $44 and it certainly beats the old N speeds which were 7 to 8 MB/s which works out to 56 to 64 mbs. This new router also extends my Wifi range to my bedroom where I finally connected my old Plasma TV to my old Apple TV so I can get netflix. Previously my old wifi signals would barely get to the right side of my bed of which if I roll over my phone would switch to LTE.
The funny thing is that the max speed of my high speed Shaw internet is only around 56mbs, so this N and AC is perfectly fine to handle the traffic even for torrenting. I am 10 feet away from my router with no walls sitting in the middle of my living room and I’m maxing out my internet connection.
Of course even with all this new wifi tech, I cannot live without my wired gigabit ethernet. In fact I still have a ethernet cable running into the middle of my living room just so I can work on copying files while sitting on my couch.
So if you are getting faster AC speeds, go ahead and brag but do post up on how you managed to achieve that and if it requires a high price router, post up the price too so we don’t feel so bad.
oh here is a pic of my new MacBook 12" with a book cover 
I found the cook book in our apartment library.
