Should You Upgrade to an 802.11ac Router?

Apple users know what it’s like to buy a product for its potential rather than its current value. New Mac owners waited nearly a year to see a significant number of products make use of the speedy Thunderbolt ports built into their hardware. Now the waiting game has begun with next-generation wireless networking.

Buffalo’s 802.11ac AirStation WZR-D1800H router, which shipped this week to retailers across the country, is so bleeding edge that no products can yet take advantage of its theoretical max transfer speed of 1.3 Gbps. Most of your Wi-Fi-enabled gadgets--including your MacBook and iPad--top out at 802.11n, which is currently the fastest Wi-Fi bandwidth available. The IEEE is still ratifying the 11ac standard, and we won’t start to see compatible devices until it's legitimized.  We expect the rollout of 11ac to gain momentum after Cisco and Netgear release competing routers later this year, but until then you might be wondering if it’s worthwhile to invest in the technology early.

To answer that question, let’s look at what the AirStation offers. It's a gigabit dual band wireless router that supports up to four ethernet-connected devices, as well as one USB device for network sharing. It's also backwards compatible with previous Wi-Fi standards, though you won't see high speeds if you're on a device that tops out at the low end of the spectrum (an older laptop, for instance, may only be 802.11g-capable).

Although 802.11ac boasts a maximum speed of 1,750 Mbps, the current standard supports just half that. However, Buffalo has future-proofed the AirStation by packing in both 802.11ac and 802.11n technologies. So for now you can enjoy the benefits of the current Wi-Fi standard while preparing for the 11ac-compatible devices that will emerge in several months.

So, should you consider buying Buffalo's 802.11ac router now, even though nothing currently takes advantage of its higher speeds? Yes. You'll be ready for what's to come, and it couldn't hurt for AirPlay streaming either. We can’t fully endorse this particular 11ac router until we get the chance to test it here at Mac

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