802.11ac: A Survival Guide

The next frontier for wireless LANs is 802.11ac, a standard that increases throughput beyond one gigabit per second. This concise guide provides in-depth information to help you plan for 802.11ac, with technical details on design, network operations, deployment, and monitoring.

Author Matthew Gast—an industry expert who led the development of 802.11-2012 and security task groups at the Wi-Fi Alliance—explains how 802.11ac will not only increase the speed of your network, but its capacity as well. Whether you need to serve more clients with your current level of throughput, or serve your existing client load with higher throughput, 802.11ac is the solution. This book gets you started.

• Understand how the 802.11ac protocol works to improve the speed and capacity of a wireless LAN
• Explore how beamforming increases speed capacity by improving link margin, and lays the foundation for multi-user MIMO
• Learn how multi-user MIMO increases capacity by enabling an AP to send data to multiple clients simultaneously
• Plan when and how to upgrade your network to 802.11ac by evaluating client devices, applications, and network connections

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Introduction to 802.11ac
Chapter 2. The PHY
Chapter 3. The MAC
Chapter 4. Beamforming in 802.11ac
Chapter 5. 802.11ac Planning