A lot of you already have a wireless router so that you can share your broadband connection with multiple Wi-Fi devices.
There are a few standards of Wi-Fi available at the moment, these are 802.11 B, 802.11 G and 802.11N. 802.11 G provides data transfer speeds of up to 54Mbps(6.75MBps). In theory, 802.11 N can provide data transfer speeds of up to 500Mbps(62.5MBps). However, 802.11AC(still being drafted by the IEEE) is in the works. In theory, 802.11AC should be able to provide data transfer speeds of up to 1.3Gbps(approximately 165MBps).
At the moment, the most powerful routers are known as ‘N’ routers. This particular type of router provides the longest range and the fastest data transfers and is also backwards with devices with 802.11 B and G Wi-Fi adapters.
Buffalo is a manufacturer that makes optical disk drives, external hard drives, NAS boxes(network attached storage) and many other storage devices. In addition to this, they also do some networking hardware. In particular, Buffalo has beaten everyone else and released the world’s first 802.11 AC router(WZR-D1800H). The router (pictured on the left) has gone on sale today at a lot of retailers in the USA for around $180(around £112). It sports 4 ethernet ports so that you can connect up to 4 devices.
In addition to that, Buffalo has also released the first 802.11AC media bridge(WLI-H4-D1300) (pictured above)which also has 4 ethernet ports and is also on sale for $180 in the USA at the moment.
To the best of my knowledge there are no 802.11AC adapters for our laptops or desktop computers that would be able to connect to one of these to take advantage of this new, super fast standard of Wi-Fi. However, I am looking forward to using one of these here in the UK.
note: Mbps=megabits per second
MBps = megabytes per second