said by mackey:said by AnonMan :The whole 802.11AC is a joke. It's fast an great now because most people are on 2.4GHz but now move everyone to 5GHz and all you did was create the same thing, but in this case it will be worse because they are mashing more channels together to get this bandwidth and increasing power output...
Although it's still going to be a mess, it won't be as bad as the current 2.4GHz situation.
With 2.4GHz there's 3 non-overlapping channels, but on 5GHz with 80MHz wide channels there are 5 non-overlapping channels. Plus, if an AP detects someone else trying to use the same channel it will automatically drop back to 40MHz (10 non-overlapping channels) and then 20 MHz wide channels in order to avoid interference. Also helping is the fact that 5GHz doesn't penetrate or go as far as 2.4GHz does.
/M
I wouldn't really count those additional 80 MHz areas since barely any consumer gear uses them and many devices being are defaulted to use channels in the upper 5 GHz band(Netgear defaults all of their new dual band routers to channel 153). The only device I have seen that is available to regular people and can use non 38-48 or 149-165 channels is the VAP2500. My WNDA4100 can detect networks on non 38-40 or 149-165 channels while my new A6200 cannot. The upper 5 GHz band is going to become quite congested. No overlapping does help however.
Many AC routers don't have much of a wide gap between 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz range(when in the upper band). A R6300v2 can have -50 on 2.4 GHz and -55 on 5 GHz and my EA6300v1 has -48 on 2.4 GHz and -54 on 5 GHz. Dropping to the lower band(with lower output power) does however widen that gap.
I also wouldn't count on the automatic fallback. Many devices in the 2.4 GHz band don't fallback from 40 MHz(even wifi certified devices). Examples: The WNR1000v3 with 150 Mbps enabled, the Belkin N150, EA6300v1(With N only/auto channel width enabled), R6250(Disabling 20/40 MHz coexistence), even a Comcast SMC gateway is wifi certified, yet it forces 40 MHz by default.
I feel that more devices should support the additional 5 GHz channels that you mentioned to help ease congestion.
I did however notice that more companies with devices in the 5 GHz band are now putting in dynamic auto channel modes. Networks in the 5 GHz band are usually easy to "nudge" off a channel if you put your network on it since they use dynamic auto modes that work while the unit is running instead of just on boot up/wireless refresh.