Wi-Fi. It’s the thing that allows you to be able to see who’s ringing your doorbell, check your email, and post stories of your loved ones and pets to Instagram and Snapchat; all from the comfort of your couch. You’ve also probably heard about Wi-Fi 6 being rolled out along with the announcement of Wi-Fi 6E, and you’re wondering what either one of these are and why they’re such a big deal. You may also fall into one of two camps, you’re thinking that Wi-Fi 6 is either some fancy marketing term that companies are using to make you upgrade your router, or you want to jump right in and get a new shiny Wi-Fi 6 access point to get the fastest speeds possible.
If you’re in the first crowd, you’re partially right, but there are also several key benefits to be had with Wi-Fi 6, and if you’re part of the second crowd, yes Wi-Fi 6 does offer better speeds, but that isn’t it’s primary goal.
Wi-Fi 6, formerly known as 802.11ax, is an improvement upon the current mainstream 802.11ac and 802.11ac Wave 2 standards. The WCC, the commission that is in charge of the naming of these different Wi-Fi standards, wanted to simplify the naming convention, so they decided to rebrand the AX standard as “Wi-Fi 6”, since it is the sixth major revision to the Wi-Fi standard.
As for speeds, the theoretical maximum speed of the older AC and AC Wave 2, or “5th gen Wi-Fi” standards, was 866Mbps per band, a near 6x improvement over the older “N” standard. These speeds are difficult to achieve in real world usage though, since other electronics in your home cause interference and obstacles such as walls, doors, and furniture slow down or block your signal. The Wi-Fi 6 standard is capable of a theoretical maximum throughput of 1200Mbps, or about 38% faster speeds over the older standard. So while the throughput does go up, it was never intended to be the primary selling point. Where the former revisions of Wi-Fi have aimed to improve speeds through brute force and increase of throughput, Wi-Fi 6 aims to improve speeds through efficiency of transmitting data through the channels that your access point uses to communicate to your devices.
How Wi-Fi channels have operated up until now was on a first come, first serve basis. Meaning that if your phone is downloading an app update, your Roku or Apple TV effectively had to wait in line in order to load up your Netflix show. Wi-Fi 6 changes that with the implementation of OFDMA. What OFDMA stands for isn’t as important as what it does. OFDMA takes the conventional channels that Wi-Fi uses to communicate to your phone, laptop, or other devices, and chops it up into smaller sub-channels, which allow up to around 30 devices to talk to your router at the same time–all on the same channel.
What this allows your router or access point to do is not just allow multiple devices to talk to it, but simultaneously allocate bandwidth to devices based on what they need. For example, if you’re browsing Facebook on your phone while you’re watching a show on Netflix, your Wi-Fi 6 compatible access point can dynamically move some of the bandwidth it would normally use for your phone over to your TV to help ensure that you won’t have to deal with buffering when you’re streaming at 4K with HDR enabled.
Another improvement that was implemented in Wi-Fi 6 is something called BSS Color. No, this doesn’t make your Netflix shows look any better on your TV, but rather, it allows for less congestion in crowded areas like condos, townhouses, and developments.
Traditionally, if your router saw data that was being transmitted, even from your neighbor’s network, it would wait for that data to pass before it would transmit its own data. With BSS Color, your router would “color code” its data, and be able to recognize when your neighbor’s access point transmitted something because it would be a different “color”, and so your router would ignore what your neighbor’s access point is doing and go ahead and transmit its own data.
One final addition with Wi-Fi 6 is a feature called “Target Wakeup Time”, which would allow devices like your phone or tablet to negotiate with your router when and for how long it would need to transmit data. This permits the device’s Wi-Fi radios to “wake up” less often, thus helping preserve it’s battery life.
Now as for Wi-Fi 6E, everything with Wi-Fi 6 still applies, but now the FCC has permitted wireless routers and devices to expand from just the 2.4GHz and 5GHz spectrums they’ve used up until now and go into the 6GHz wireless spectrum. The main advantage of the higher frequency is the potential for data to transfer faster, but with the downside of less range, and less ability to penetrate through walls and furniture.
So now that you know a little more about Wi-Fi 6, you want to know what you have to do to get all of these improvements, right? Well, there’s two parts to that. In order to enjoy all of the benefits that Wi-Fi 6 offers, yes, you’ll need a new router; but your devices will also need to support the standard. Each device–from your phone to your laptop to your streaming box or TV–would have to support the Wi-Fi 6 standard in order for that device to enjoy these improvements. The same will go for Wi-Fi 6E, although it may still be a few years after 6E is mainstreamed until devices can really take advantage of the increased throughput.
Thankfully, since the public release of Wi-Fi 6 in 2018, the cost of Wi-Fi 6 capable routers and access points has come down dramatically, and more and more devices have been released, including many flagship smartphones like the iPhone 11 variants, the Samsung Galaxy S10 and S20 variants along with the Note 10, and other phones from LG, Motorola, and OnePlus. 6E routers are due to be released at the end of this year, and phones and other devices to follow in late 2021 into 2022.
If you’re interested in upgrading or extending your home or business Wi-Fi network, please send us a message here on Facebook or an email at sales@creationaud.io and we can give you a free consultation to help you get better Wi-Fi today.