Wi-Fi 6

[Isgrimnur]

Wired

Wi-Fi 6 is the latest generation of wireless connectivity technology. It hasn’t really launched yet, but it will soon, so tech makers have been building support into devices this year as a means of future-proofing their products.

As with most new standards, its stewards say that Wi-Fi 6 will ultimately make our tech lives better and faster. That’s probably true. But keep in mind that the main objective with the launch of Wi-Fi 6 is to increase the performance and reliability of wireless connectivity at a network level, not necessarily on a single device or at a single access point. Sure, your Roku and your Nintendo Switch will see wireless speed gains, but a lot of the new computational intelligence behind Wi-Fi 6 will be devoted to handling streaming to multiple gadgets at once. It’s Wi-Fi for a world crowded with mobile gadgets, IoT devices, and connected equipment..
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These groups lay the foundation for new radio technologies every five years or so, which means Wi-Fi 6 has been in the works since the last standard was released in 2014. The current wireless networking standard we all use today is referred to as IEEE 802.11ac. The upcoming standard is called IEEE 802.11ax.

But you can just call it Wi-Fi 6. That simplified moniker actually represents a change in how the Wi-Fi Alliance is branding these standards. Every Wi-Fi standard will get named in sequence from now on—especially nice since Wi-Fi 6 certainly rolls off the tongue a lot more easily than “802.11ax.”
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Wi-Fi 6 is expected to usher in the first major update to dual-band support since the 2009 rollout of Wi-Fi 802.11n—or Wi-Fi 4, since we’re calling it that now. Wi-Fi 4 operates on both 2.4-GHz and 5-GHz bands. Wi-Fi 5, née 802.11ac, only uses bands in the 5-GHz spectrum. Wi-Fi 6, or 802.11ax, is supposed to optimize for the transmission frequencies of both 2.4-GHz and 5-GHz bands. Two of its marquee features are multi-user, multiple-input, multiple-output technology (MU-MIMO), and something called Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA).

What the what?

Basically, this tech enables more devices to simultaneously operate on the same Wi-Fi channel, which improves the efficiency, latency times, and data throughput of your wireless network. And while Wi-Fi 6 is designed to improve the performance of Wi-Fi networks on the whole, on your own device you might experience up to four times the capacity and four times the data throughput (the amount of data moved from one point to another) that you would with older wireless network standards. Figueroa says this could mean a throughput of 9 to 10 gigabits per second in optimal conditions

[LawBeefaroni]

I'll get it when/if I need it. Not before.

[Jaymon]

with what I have got in the house now, we are good. several phones and tablets, tv, nintendo, alexa, couple of computers. nobody notices buffering of issues during downloads or gaming.

so I'll just naturally migrate as devices eventually break and i buy new ones that come with the new protocol built in.

[morlac]

with what I have got in the house now, we are good. several phones and tablets, tv, nintendo, alexa, couple of computers. nobody notices buffering of issues during downloads or gaming.

so I'll just naturally migrate as devices eventually break and i buy new ones that come with the new protocol built in.

Nobody needs it yet, they said as much. But how many of those devices stream in 4k? Hell, how many actually stream at full/real 1080p? Im close to wanting it now, I suspect ill need it as early as late next year. Im running dual bands now to isolate all the apple devices at 2.4ghz.

[The Meal]

I tried no fewer than five MIMO-friendly routers to handle our poker-night barrage of devices (in our heavily-utilized IoT-connected home) without success. Ultimately I went with a meshed connection of 15 Plume wifi pods which have (mercifully) finally allowed wireless throughput on those nights we have 30 smart phones going in our home. Not the requirement for everyone, but Wi-Fi 6 would seem to be providing a solution I was in search of about two years ago.

[LordMortis]

I tried no fewer than five MIMO-friendly routers to handle our poker-night barrage of devices (in our heavily-utilized IoT-connected home) without success. Ultimately I went with a meshed connection of 15 Plume wifi pods which have (mercifully) finally allowed wireless throughput on those nights we have 30 smart phones going in our home. Not the requirement for everyone, but Wi-Fi 6 would seem to be providing a solution I was in search of about two years ago.

Aruba? They aren't expensive, are very easy to manage, have a good range, and can run POE so you can mount them with nothing but a Cat 6 cable with a POE switch/rotuer or a power injector between your router and the WAP.

https://www.arubanetworks.com/products/ ... ss-points/

I have three fairly old (but updated which costs extra for support over time so you can continue to keep them secure) WAP covering about 15,000+ square feet handling about 60 devices moving across them pretty seamlessly on on internal VLAN and an probably another 100+ on a guest VLAN on most days. I don't allow phones on our internal VLAN partially for security and partially because 70 phones will wreck my aggregate Internet if you don't set up a choke point, like a separate VLAN.

You'll still need a router on the back end but it sounds like you could benefit from a small enterprise level WAP, again not as expensive as you'd think.

[Smoove_B]

Just knowing that Wi-Fi 6 doesn't cause cancer should really boost adoption rates.

/runs out of thread

[The Meal]

You'll still need a router on the back end but it sounds like you could benefit from a small enterprise level WAP, again not as expensive as you'd think.

Thanks for the heads-up. If Plume decides to play goofy with their pricing (again... fortunately I was grandfathered in before they started charging a yearly rate for some of their networking optimizations ) I'd have to consider a new solution. Not today though!