802.11ad Will Knock Your Socks Off, Says Interop Panel

alphadogg writes "While the Wi-Fi world is rightly abuzz over the rapidly approaching large-scale deployment of the new 802.11ac standard, experts at an Interop NY panel said this week that the 802.11ad standard is likely to be even more transformative. '802.11ac is an extension for pure mainstream Wi-Fi,' said Sean Coffey, Realtek's director of standards and business development. 'It's evolutionary. ... You're not going to see dramatically new use cases." By contrast, 802.11ad adds 60GHz connectivity to the previously used 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequencies, potentially providing multi-gigabit connection speeds and dramatically broadening the number of applications for which wireless can be used."

So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

And the signal range will be abysmal.

Are we suddenly following the alphabet?

[damn_registrars]

802.11ad after 802.11ac could potentially be a sign that we will start following the alphabet for subsequent releases of 802.11 wifi standards. That on its own would be a good reason to adopt it - just to straighten out the alphabet soup that was previous wifi standards.

Re:Lord.

[bugs2squash]

you don't have ac ? How do you charge your phone ?

Re:Are we suddenly following the alphabet?

[dohzer]

I'm sure there's not going to be a massive amount of confusion between 802.11a and 802.11ac or 802.11ad. People are far too tech-savvy these days!

Re:Lord.

[dohzer]

DC. Everyone knows AC is for killing animals on stage and generating that relaxing hum in audio devices. DC is the way of the future.

Re:So what?

[binarylarry]

I thought they were giant potatoes.

Re:Are we suddenly following the alphabet?

[MinutiaeMan]

I hope not; I want to see them get to 802.11wtf someday soon! (And, looking at the Wikipedia list [wikipedia.org] of 802.11 standards, there are already some planned for after "ad".)

Hairy potatoes ?

[Taco Cowboy]

I thought they were giant potatoes.

I dunno about you, but I have yet to see any potato with hair