Will 802.11ac Gigabit WiFi be the death of Ethernet?

happygeek 0 921 Views

The Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE) has started work on WiFi the next generation. While that news in itself might not exactly rock your socks off, the small matter of a big speed increase might. Word is that WiFi TNG could be fast, very fast indeed. Anyone fancy some 1 gigabit per second wireless networking?

Of course, there are a couple of caveats for the average consumer that need to be thrown in the mix here: firstly any WiFi standard upgrade is at least a year or two away yet, and secondly just because your WiFi network will support gigabit speeds that doesn't mean the Internet connection feeding it will run any faster.

So why the excitement? Seriously speedy wireless network could herald the death of Ethernet, simple as that. Assuming the thing can be engineered to be both robust enough as well as quick enough, that is. Certainly 1 Gbps is fast enough as raw encoding rates go, but what about the reliability factor?

From what I can gather it could be a case of perm any one from three, with the three in question being speed, distance and robustness. So the technology can be tweaked to provide better range at the expense of throughput and reliability, or better reliability at the expense of throughput and range for example. However, providing a massive boost to all three would appear to be something of a fantasy right now.

That said, I applaud the IEEE for the work it is doing on 802.11ac and wish it all the best in getting that 1Gbps wireless that we all want, if not actually need. That said, I don't think that the reliable, rangy and speedy Gigabit Ethernet is going to be added to the endangered networks list any time soon.

Dani AI

Generated

Short answer: no — 802.11ac did raise the wireless ceiling, but it did not make Ethernet obsolete. 802.11ac (later branded "Wi‑Fi 5") arrived as a production standard and pushed PHY rates and capacity in the 5 GHz band, but those headline numbers were theoretical peaks that depended on channel width, number of spatial streams and ideal RF conditions. Cisco: What Is 802.11ac?

That matters because the air is a shared medium. Real-world throughput (application/TCP level) is routinely lower than PHY specs; reviews and lab tests from early 11ac equipment show peak user throughput in the hundreds of megabits per second and big variation depending on firmware, environment and client mix. Latency and jitter remain worse and more variable on Wi‑Fi than on wired links, which is why latency-sensitive use cases stayed on copper or fiber — even as Wi‑Fi improved (and later standards introduced OFDMA, MU‑MIMO and other features to reduce latency and increase efficiency). SmallNetBuilder 11ac tests · Wi‑Fi Alliance: Wi‑Fi CERTIFIED 6 (OFDMA/latency)

Meanwhile, wired Ethernet kept evolving to meet the needs Wi‑Fi could not: higher and multi-gig speeds, backhaul capacity, Power over Ethernet for APs and edge devices, and deterministic enhancements (Time‑Sensitive Networking) for industrial and AV use. Those capabilities — plus predictable latency, security, and power delivery — preserve Ethernet for servers, storage, building backbones and mission-critical systems. Ethernet Alliance / industry interoperability (40/100G context) ·

Practical takeaways tied to earlier posts: was right that wireless would get much faster; was right that latency matters; and were right that choice is use-case driven and cost-sensitive. The common, long‑term architecture is hybrid: wireless for client convenience and dense device coverage; wired (multi‑gig where needed) for AP backhaul, servers, storage and deterministic or power‑hungry devices.

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bsdhacker 0 Newbie Poster

WiFi will likely never be able to completely replace wired Ethernet due to latency. Depending on the situation, latency is often more important than throughput.

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jeffh0821 0 Newbie Poster

I'm not sure wired connections of any type will ever be completely replaced. There are just too many specialized throughput and latency requirements to do away with ultra-high speed interconnects. For the vast majority of network connectivity requirements, however, 802.11n was the first shot at replacing general purpose wired connectivity. If you assume that the corporate world is the primary driver of adoption or replacement, and the general use of the network in these environments is e-mail, web, voip, and some media, then 802.11n (and ultimately 802.11ac) will certainly prove to be the wholesale replacement for wired Ethernet.

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Chris Potter 0 Newbie Poster

This can almost be considered as fact. This is true because not only is wireless networking convenient and all that is needed for general use purposes, it is convenient once more because of cost issues, too. Think of how many miles of wired ethernet has to go throughout just one business building. Wireless replaces all of this, thus saving thousands of dollars of cost. Wired etherned is definitely here to stay, yet wireless connection is the most convenient and cost-effective solution of businesses for the future.

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