How can I achieve Gigabit LAN speed without wires?

Question

I have a Netgear Router which connects to my Cisco router. I have a gigabit switch which connects to my servers in my Garage..

I am currently connecting with wifi adapter on my desktop (in my room) with the netgear router. They all communicate, but speed is very slow. I want to connect the Desktop with my Gigabit switch, which is in my garage.

I can't use LAN cable for that. All my data files and videos are on drives attached to those servers. How can I wirelessly connect to the switch so that my speed will become fast?

Answer 1

Yes, the fastest 802.11ac equipment on the market today allow PHY rates up to 1300mbps. With standard frame aggregation, they can just barely hit 80% efficiency, for TCP throughput of 1.04 Gbps, which is better than gigabit Ethernet's maximum TCP-over-IPv4 throughput of 941 Mbps (with standard sized 1500 Byte frames).

I've actually seen two 2013 retina MacBook Pros (which support the 1300Mbps flavor of 802.11ac) do 1.02Gbps of IPerf TCP throughput over Wi-Fi when one was acting as the AP.

When bridging from 1300Mbps AC to gigabit Ethernet through a typical consumer AP, you'll be limited to gigabit Ethernet's 941Mbps of throughput, but typically also have a little higher latency and a little less efficient frame aggregation, so you'll probably only see a little over 800Mbps of TCP throughput even in ideal conditions. But that's still pretty close to gigabit speeds.

Whether or not you can maintain the 1300Mbps PHY rate in your particular RF conditions (through the garage wall, etc.) is another matter, but 802.11ac gives you a fighting chance of having gigabit-like wireless performance.

You're not going to be able to get these speeds with an 802.11ac USB dongle, because those dongles usually only do the 867Mbps (2 spatial stream) flavor of 802.11ac, and a lot of them only use USB 2.0 for some inexplicable reason, limiting them to well under 480Mbps.

But if you put a 3-spatial-stream 802.11ac PCIe card in your desktop, like the ASUS PCE-AC66, and put a 3-spatial-stream 802.11ac router in your garage, like the ASUS RT-AC66U, and you position them well, pick a clean 80MHz-wide channel, and tune your TCP window size well, you have a fighting chance of getting 500-800 Mbps of TCP throughput between your desktop and your servers in your garage.

Answer 2

This answer is, according to some posters, obsolete for most modern WiFi deployments. See the answer of @Spiff instead (or too: most advanced wireless devices are not allways, and in any were, easy to find. If you don't have access to 802.11ac devices, this one below is still your answer).

As for today (April 2014): you can not, at least in a practical manner.

The best you can get comes from Wireless 802.11N capable access points (or routers), with a theorical maximum of 300Mbps (a bit less than 1/3 of your desired Gigabit).
But... bad news: in the practical field, they do never achieve that theorical speed. Most they get is around 50Mbps (or, translated, 6 MBytes per second) in the best-scenario case, scenario that you will probably not have at home due to walls or, even worst, floors.

Example of wireless speed comparison for modern 802.11N WiFi here.

I think it is theorically possible to buy multiple 802.11N access point (or wireless cards) and deploy some balance load, also known as dividing the transfer between multiple network paths (look at the first image with the 4 Network load balancing hosts in the middle of the network on this tech paper from Microsoft; it is designed for cable networks, but the example is equal for wireless).
But think a bit about it: as long as you request for Gigabit speed, 1.000Mbps/50Mbps == 20 wireless lines transfering radio data (lets hope there will be no interferences between them). Is it worth the price to buy all that stuff?

And, as @Slartibartfast refers below, you will have to add the complexity of configurations involved.

Answer 3

More information would help provide a better answer, however there are a few things you can possibly do depending on the distance -

1. 802.11ac is a newer standard then 802.11n and the equipment is available off-the-shelf - it runs in the 5 gig band and can handle faster speeds then 802.11n. (This hardware is not cheap, but its affordable). 802.11ac has better range and speed then 802.11n. You won't get it, but speeds of up to 1 gigabit are possible on 802.11ac

2. If WIFi interference is a problem you may be able to use Ethernet over Power. New Powerline adaptors have theoretical speeds of up to 500 Mbps using the Powerline 500 AV standard.

3. Its non trivial, but if you have the knowhow you should be able to "channel bond" a powerline + 802.11ac connection and I would not be surprised if you get close to Gigabit speeds - using off-the-shelf hardware available to consumers !!!

Answer 4

There is expensive all in one solution Ubiquity AirFiber With true 1.4Gbps+ data throughput

Answer 5

As long as this thread seems to be evolving into a (n interesting one) debate about technical details and scientifical opinions concerning state-of-the-art nearly-supreme wireless networking technologies, I would like to give a more simple (yet useful for googlers, I hope) answer for end-users seeking for a practical solution to its WiFi low-speed at home issue.

I have deployed multiple wireless systems during years, and I must resume that speakingconcerning to easy-to-install systems (an access point or router to plug and forget), in my tests, when the technology offered:

11Mbps      --real speed was--> 2.5Mbps
22Mbps      --real speed was--> 5Mbps
54Mbps      --real speed was--> 10Mbps
72Mbps      --real speed was--> 20Mbps

And these results were for best conditions with no channel overlapping (most modern routers auto-select channel correctly to avoid this) and near (same room) from the antena device. With this history, we can not be sure that speed results will be different with most modern 802.11ac.

So, my simple answer is:

• If you want to buy something, plug it, and configure a few things with no much job to do (just wireless network name, maybe channel, and no much more) as many people wishes, the Gigabit speed wireless network is, in the given conditions, not reachable.
• However, if you are ready to spend time (hours at least), but not necessarily much money, fighting with whatever defies you, other answers, like the @Spiff one, are for you.

Remember: computer-scientists, as any other engineers, are happy solving problems, so we use to underestimate the headache that the end-user is capable of allow in "configuring the odd thing".