802.11ac options

[tamorgen]

So, now that Apple has had their 2013 WDDC, and the new Airport Extreme is shipping tomorrow with 802.11ac, what does that mean to the Hackintosh community? Currently I am going wired GB ethernet, but in theory 802.11ac is potentially faster. Because the Airport base stations are limited to 3 ethernet ports, and I have multiple devices, I've had to put some of them on a switch, which of course brings them down to 100 MB/sec speeds.

Any idea of what chipsets will be compatible with Hackintosh builds for a PCI or PCI-e board perspective?

 

[beelzebozo]

It is speculated that a Broadcom BCM4360 should be a compatible ac module.

 

[macbrush]

Since WiFi is half-duplex, even if you get 1.3Gbps link speed (but it depends on a lot of variations, such as antenna and spatial streams on AP, number of antenna STA on client. Just say you get 1.3Gbps link speed all by yourself (but I doubt very much, you'll probably get 886Mbps link speed since most current clients only support that rate), it'll still be slower than a Gigabit ethernet interface, I don't know the actual speed you'll get, since I am still waiting for my first WiFi-ac card to be delivered, but my experience from wifi-n is that the best is probably 700Mbps, PROVIDED your computer is the only client and you have a good AP. If you're transferring files with another client on the same AP, the speed would drop about 20% - 40%.

 

[tamorgen]

Since WiFi is half-duplex, even if you get 1.3Gbps link speed (but it depends on a lot of variations, such as antenna and spatial streams on AP, number of antenna STA on client. Just say you get 1.3Gbps link speed all by yourself (but I doubt very much, you'll probably get 886Mbps link speed since most current clients only support that rate), it'll still be slower than a Gigabit ethernet interface, I don't know the actual speed you'll get, since I am still waiting for my first WiFi-ac card to be delivered, but my experience from wifi-n is that the best is probably 700Mbps, PROVIDED your computer is the only client and you have a good AP. If you're transferring files with another client on the same AP, the speed would drop about 20% - 40%.

Even being half-duplex, it would be faster than 100MB wired. As I said in my original post, my current set up is:

Airport Extreme, port 1, --> Linksys 4 port switch --> Xbox, HTPC, Samsung TV.
port 2, --> Linux server
port 3, --> Hackintosh desktop

The server & desktop are both wired directly to GB ports, but anything after the 4 port switch is dumbed down to 100 MB/sec wired. It creates some congestion and bottlenecking at that switch, so in theory, even 802.11N would be faster.

Now, Xbox & the TV I could care less about, but my HTPC does interact with my server and does get slowed down. If I was to switch over to an AC access point, I'd be more inclined to go wireless.

 

[macbrush]

Not sure about ac when you get it compare to FastEthernet, but each ac PCI-e adaptor will set you back $100.

Speaking from experience of managing 183 Access Points on 2 Aruba M3 controllers, you'll be better off with FastEthernet than 802.11n, with FastEthernet, you'll consistently get 70Mb/s - 80Mb/s on a good switch. Aruba already had beam forming technology with their 802.11n APs, and most of ours are AP-135, that means 4 spatial streams instead of usual 3, but still, I'll prefer wired connection any day.

But then depends on your traffic pattern, if its mostly 1 or 2 clients pulling data off a server, and maybe some very light weight multimedia going on, 802.11ac may be for you.

However, since you already have all of your computer wired, spending $100 to get another GigaEthernet switch might be a better route.

P.S. Anyone bought the New Macbook Air? I really need its special IO80211Family.kext and IONetworking.kext (maybe) to test my Asus AC66 ac card. Any help would be very much appreciated.

 

[macbrush]

To your original question. I have a ASUS PCE-AC66 working here with Link Speed 1300. Plug and play, didn't even need Info.plist editing.

 

[cseistrup]

To your original question. I have a ASUS PCE-AC66 working here with Link Speed 1300. Plug and play, didn't even need Info.plist editing.

What kind of actual file transfer speeds are you getting. I have a high transmit rate as well, but moving files is terribly slow. please see here. http://www.tonymacx86.com/network/104408-802-11ac-mountain-lion.html#post637187

 

[red-storm]

To your original question. I have a ASUS PCE-AC66 working here with Link Speed 1300. Plug and play, didn't even need Info.plist editing.

What mobo do you use?

 

[StrongOak]

To your original question. I have a ASUS PCE-AC66 working here with Link Speed 1300. Plug and play, didn't even need Info.plist editing.

I have tried Mavericks and now Yosemite on the ASUS PCE-AC66 and no matter what I try it will never even look for 5GHz units. I have the latest Airport Extreme Router with AC and when I boot into Windows 8.1 I get Awesome 5Ghz speed from same PC.

There has to be something I am missing because the ASUS PCE-AC66 via Mavericks or Yosemite detects are third part, only sees 2.4ghz APs (tons of them in my apartment complex) and when connected 8 feet away from the Airport Extreme is performs aweful (slows, stalls, downloads quit etc). I have tried a fresh clean boot of Mavericks and Yosemite. Someone said I should edit my DSDT to make it think it is an Airport card, but I havent done much DSDT play.

I am hoping someone with a working ASUS PCE-AC66 can shed some light on this.

Gigabyte P61-USB-B3 MLB with DSDT edit from here
nVidia GTX 670
Samsung SSD 128GB HDD
850W Antec Quattro PSU

 

[schwartzki]

Switch the 5GHz channel to a double digit channel instead of a triple digit channel. Aka 44 not 135 etc. For whatever reason my TP Link country code is blank or null value, because of that the upper 5GHz channels are not considered valid in region.