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Wi-Fi Alliance Brings Wi-Fi 6 into 6 GHz
- petefromsf 7y agodfd
- zamadatix 7y agoDfd?
- basementcat 7y agoI like to imagine comments like these are from zombie botnet nodes communicating with their C&C backend server. The more sophisticated systems just post stegonographically coded comments about blockchains, how working for a FAANG is awesome/sucks, etc.
- wyxuan 7y agoA lot of marketing speak and not much real content. I found this article by Cisco, which seems a lot better at explaining the importance of 6 GHz https://blogs.cisco.com/enterprise/wi-fis-new-6ghz-spectrum-is-a-new-frontier https://blogs.cisco.com/enterprise/wi-fis-new-6ghz-spectrum-...
- wongarsu 7y agoSo to summarize, 6GHz offers a wider frequency range, allowing for more wider channels, and is not used by anything else. As long as WiFi 6 is the only thing using the specific frequency band the AP can assign devices timeslots for both sending and receiving, improving both performance (fewer collisions) and battery life (no need to keep the radio on outside assigned timeslots).
- crankylinuxuser 7y agoIt's also a lot more line of sight, and easier absorbed in concrete and more dense construction materials (think rooms away with layers of wood and drywall). 2.4GHz = 5 in 6GHz = 2 in The inches are the wavelength height from base to top... Meaning that's pretty much what it can get around without impeded.
- henrikeh 7y agoWavelength is not a height, but the distance between between points of the same phase in the variation of the propagating electromagnetic field. Propagating EM fields are adorned and reflected with multiple effects. Light is electromagnetic fields with a wavelength of ~ 100s nm, yet it can pass through glass, but not a thin sheet of aluminum foil.
- jlgaddis 7y ago> The inches are the wavelength height from base to top... Meaning that's pretty much what it can get around without impeded. Yeah, that's not what it means. λ = c / f "c" being the speed of light in a vacuum (299,792,458 m/s); wavelength in meters, frequency in hertz -- if memory serves! (Not sure how I remember that one 25 years after my first ham radio exam but some things just stick in my mind, I guess).
- Reventlov 7y agoLet's note the "not used by anything else" is probably the most important thing, because of https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/1208921 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/1208921 Basically, because WiFi gives an equal opportunity (sort of) of transmission to all devices, old devices or devices far away will slow down the network for fast devices as they will take a big amount of transmission time because of their lower transmission rates. Greenfield was already a try at "ignoring" old devices but never really took off.
- RL_Quine 7y agoI appreciate that they lasted a year before muddying the already foggy "wifi 6" branding by introducing "wifi 6e". 802.11 802.11a 802.11b 802.11g 802.11-2007 802.11n 802.11-2012 802.11ac 802.11af This is too confusing for consumers, lets drop the letter scheme. Wifi 6. Wifi 6E Hold up.
- watersb 7y agoIt gets better, though: """ Please note: In this story, we discuss 5 GHz and 6 GHz, which are frequency bands, as well as the wireless standards 5G and Wi-Fi 6. The frequency ranges may sound like they are related to the wireless standards, but the terminology similarity is a coincidence. """
- RL_Quine 7y agoThe post also talks about "WiFi 4" and "WiFi 5", which were new terms to me. It turns out "WiFi 4" is back naming for 802.11n, "WiFi 5" is 802.11ac. So you can have Wifi 4 2.4GHz, WiFi 4 5GHz, and WiFi 5 5Ghz, WiFi 6 5GHz and Wifi 6 6GHz? Something like that.
- mjevans 7y agoI'd rather they just use the years the standards were ratified... at least that would be both monotonic and obvious while not risking confusion with the frequency.
- CBLT 7y agoProbably unpalatable to industry. Do you imagine ASUS would want their newest 2020 router to only be Wifi 2018?
- echelon 7y agoConsumers that need to know or care can be taught. The other half or more of the market already doesn't understand the existing versioning scheme. If you print the version in small print on the back of the box, they'll be no worse off. Or simply elide the first two digits and they won't know it's a year-based scheme. And who's to say they can't do a yearly release cadence? WiFi 20, WiFi 21, ...
- ineedasername 7y agoI understand that not being backwards compatible means new wifi 6 devices can take better advantage of improvements, but it will also probably be a bit of a mess for years while millions of legacy devices muddle on, and years even before manufacturers start making wifi 6 capable hardware the default. Not only that, there's a reason many (most?) smart home devices still only support 2.4ghz, (range, particularly through solid objects I think) and I don't think that is going to change. Or are we going to be stuck with wifi routers that have to implement ever wifi protocol?
- duxup 7y agoYeah I've got a handful of random devices that are still just 2.4. my thermostat being the most front and center.
- kccqzy 7y agoFor a pretty long time I disabled 802.11a/b/g on my AP. All devices on my home network must support 802.11n or better. It isn't really an issue because 802.11n is actually really old. IIRC the presence of older 802.11a/b/g devices will cause throughout to decrease for newer devices as well. Late last year I also stopped providing 2.4GHz for my home network. The only inconvenience so far is just a wireless printer not supporting 5GHz, so I have to print using a USB cable. The level of inconvenience would surely be different for everyone, but in my case it's worth it.
- dijit 7y agoI do something similar. I don’t run 2.4GHz. Pain points: * Some IOT devices, such as yeelights. * some SBCs such as OrangePI Zeros. * Some televisions (Sony Bravia)
- reaperducer 7y agoI currently have several devices that are 2.4 only, so I'm stuck. The wireless printer I can probably work around if I move it out of the closet, but the wife won't let me and I love my wife more than I love wifi. There's also two game consoles, an iPhone 4, an egg minder, an e-book reader, and an iLamp on 2.4. Probably some other stuff I don't remember off the top of my head. For me, it would be nice if all AP's had the same power level. Currently the neighbor across the street and two houses up is putting out so much power that it drowns out my AP two rooms away.
- mrfusion 7y agoSo for someone who isn’t following all this. If I replace my seven year old router am I going to get a huge speed boost?
- xenospn 7y agoJust like anything with radio, the answer is "it depends".
- basementcat 7y agoYou might get a modest performance improvement. Wifi 6 makes use of multiple antennas to better spatially separate ACKs and other upstream traffic from multiple clients even when the packets temporally overlap. The extra bands may also come in handy but some of them may be attenuated by walls and other building materials.
- dboreham 7y agoYes. Assuming your upstream connectivity is faster than 100MBits or so.
- Bud 7y ago802.11ac is already capable of 400Mb/s or so. So you'd need a link faster than that, plus devices which have Wifi 6 AND can push/pull data that fast and do something with it. For most folks that's a no, so far.
- ac29 7y ago802.11ac is actually capable of over 3Gbps, though 4 stream devices are pretty uncommon. 2 streams @ 80MHz is pretty common though, and that provides 867Mbps (max link rate, actual throughput is of course lower).
- dboreham 7y agoTrue, but I was speaking in practical terms. To get that 400Mbit you need to be within a few feet of the AP typically. Plus, if there are several concurrently streaming devices on the network you won't achieve the theoretical aggregate maximum throughput. A good rule of thumb in WiFi marketing is to divide whatever throughput the retail box claims by 4 to get the practically achievable throughput. Meanwhile wired networking (the OP's upstream connection) actually delivers the marketed throughput.
- dartdartdart 7y agoOn the topic, what are your favorite budget wifi 6 routers? And is now a good time to buy?
- x13 7y agogreat time to buy devices supporting Wi-Fi 5, because of Wi-Fi 6 devices arriving in the US market. But I say that with some sarcasm, because it's actually a bad time to buy Wi-Fi 6 devices, as Wi-Fi 6E was just announced. Wi-Fi 6E will require new hardware to support the new frequency - as stated by a previous comment. BTW, The Wi-Fi Alliance's naming schemes are confusing and poorly timed (Cellular carriers are pushing 5G..and they launch 6E??? Will they bring out 6F and 6G next year?)
- dartdartdart 7y agoAny recommendations on the best budget router of wifi 5?
- bubblethink 7y agoIf your internet's speed is less than 500 Mbps, netgear r7800 should be able to handle it well with openwrt.
- aussieguy1234 7y agoTri band routers are coming. 2.4/5/6ghz
- ksec 7y agoSat down, took a deep breath, sigh, wrote some rant, deleted that and rethinking now, it is actually pretty good marketing. All Date are products ( expected ) on the market, WiFI 6. - 2019 WiFi 6E - 2021 WiFi 7 - 2023 Basically every two year you have a new marketing name to sell. Which is a lot easier for consumers and sales people. Since you need to go through FCC certification for using the new spectrum I assume the likelihood of having your existing WiFi 6 client and router upgradeable to be extremely unlikely. Then there is 802.11ax / WiFi6 Wave 2, which is similar to 802.11ac / WiFi 5 Wave 2 if anyone remember, with additional features that was originally missing from the wave 1. On top of my head they were mainly features related to UL MU-MIMO. I assume those might come with WiFi 6E too. And none of the current WiFi 6 on Smartphone supports 160Mhz Channels, so WiFi 6E is another possible candidate to include that on a Smartphone. Another selling point to push for upgrade. ( I am not saying consumer will upgrade because of that, but at least there is one more point to think about what they have now is old, and requires upgrade. It is important to note consumer here implies normal people who are not tech-savvy ) My beloved NetBSD running WiFi 5 / 802.11ac AirPort Extreme came out nearly 7 years ago and it is still working near to perfection. Had always been planning to upgrade it once a WiFi 6 version comes, but unfortunately Apple discontinued it. But the stubborn Apple changed their mind on Keyboard, may be they will do that too for Airport.
- Causality1 7y agoConsidering how hit or miss 5ghz wifi penetration is in my small house, I have no interest in making that problem worse.
- stoops 7y agoAgreed
- glogla 7y agoIf you own a house, you definitely have money for a wifi setup with multiple APs - like Ubiquiti with three APs and PoE switch and dedicated gateway - I'd love to play with that, but I'm not going to buy a house to do that. And for people living in apartments, where every apartment has their own wifi network, less penetration is really a good thing, because there's less interference from other apartments.
- Bud 7y agoThis is assuming that intra-apt walls magically allow wifi penetration whereas inter-apt walls magically block it. Neither of these things are the case, tragically.
- labawi 7y agoIf you have nice, solid walls, the signal will mostly bounce off them and pass through doors. It will usually pass a single wall, so you will hear some first-degree neighbors, in some places, but it's significantly better than interference from 2nd degree neighbors.
- fareesh 7y agoIs it a universal rule that higher frequency = lower range? The range of 5Ghz is already pretty low and has trouble going through solid materials like concrete. Would 6 be significantly worse?
- Reventlov 7y agoNo it is not universal at all. For example, some materials are transparent, kind of like glass for light, another well known EM wave. You have to look up materials frequency response: on earth, for example, athmosphere does not have a monotonous response (look at http://www.gb.nrao.edu/GBTopsdocs/primer/spect002.gif http://www.gb.nrao.edu/GBTopsdocs/primer/spect002.gif for example). Same with water: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_absorption_by_water https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_absorption_by_... Really, WiFi 5GHz is just well absorbed by walls and buildings, that's all.
- stoops 7y agoWill 6GHz perform in buildings than 5GHz?
- enjenye 7y agoIndeed : radio transmissions follow Friis equation [1] -- power decreases by the square of the frequency (same goes for distance). So, going from 2.4 to 5 GHz cuts the received power at a certain distance by a factor of 2 (more or less). Assuming free space, of course : obstacles will make matters worse, depending on frequency, thickness and materials. Meaning that going from 5 GHz to 6 GHz will decrease the range by a factor of around 1.2 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friis_transmission_equation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friis_transmission_equation
- Reventlov 7y agoAs you note, it's only true when you assume free space. In practice, you have air, you have obstacles, you have earth curvature, you have […], which makes it wrong, because athmosphere has an opacity that varies with the frequency (or wavelength): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Atmospheric_electromagnetic_opacity.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Atmospheric_electromagnet... So, no, it's not an universal rule. Please also note that shorter range is not necessarily bad: it means less interference from neighboring devices that use the same frequency band ( https://www.embedded.com/why-60ghz-mmwave-is-moving-into-the-mainstream/ https://www.embedded.com/why-60ghz-mmwave-is-moving-into-the... ).
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Reventlov 7y agoFun fact: Wi-Fi 6 official standard is not even out yet :)
- fulafel 7y agoWhere can this be used? As far as licensed spectrum goes.
- fulafel 7y agoApparently nowhere yet, better coverage at: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/wi-fi-6e-prepares-to-expand-next-gen-wireless-connections-to-6ghz-band/ar-BBYAFDT https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/wi-fi-6e-prepares-...
- jakeogh 7y agoIs there an NDA?
- HocusLocus 7y agoLet's increase the operating frequency so these conference room demonstrations will be even more >>>awesome<<<
- fnord77 7y agoso... I need a new laptop and a new router. ossum
- glogla 7y agoIf you are limited by your current wifi. Which most people really aren't.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- 11235813213455 7y agoAm I the only one concerned about the impact on health? A higher frequency is generally worse for living organisms, and personally I don't need a higher speed than 4Mb/s
- ko27 7y agoIn that case, you should also avoid any light source. Not to mention all those infrared emitting organisms around you.
- hnarn 7y ago> Am I the only one concerned about the impact on health? Am I the only one concerned about people spreading unfounded FUD online without spending five minutes to do their research?
- SamuelAdams 7y ago>A higher frequency is generally worse for living organisms Do you have any sources for this claim?
- oliwarner 7y agoDeeply uninspiring. 5Ghz gets blocked by the thinnest brick walls. We all live in castles in Europe so 5Ghz practically only works line-of-sight. Makes it pretty expensive and cable-intensive to deploy [well] in a large building. It's also disheartening when a new standard comes out and device manufacturers flock to replace all their old single-radio, single-antenna devices with shiny new... single-radio, single-antenna devices. Wave2/MU-MIMO should be a base requirement. Is there any progress on improving longer band wifi? Ie sub-2.4GHz, or 2.4GHz coordination between masts so devices can actually roam well?
- walshemj 7y agoYes that's how it works in professional installations you want a lot of AP's that don't overlap and using 5Ghz makes this simpler than using 2.4Ghz 5Ghz Also has lot more non overlapping channels. Just use Powerline for your DS
- oliwarner 7y agoWhat's the "that" in "that's how it works"? 5GHz APs in every room? I'm not saying that 5GHz doesn't have benefits, just that many of them are hard to exploit when you have real walls.
- gburdell3 7y agoThey do indeed have 5GHz APs in almost every room in most commercial installations in the US.
- duelingjello 7y agoUsing higher GHz is all about selling more hardware. Let’s use 500 GHz so you have to have one in ever corner of every room to work. And don’t breathe or take a shower because that will block the signal.
- zamadatix 7y agoSingle antenna devices make sense for a lot of small/low power devices. Not to say manufacturers don't just cheap out sometimes though :). 802.11ah (2017) would be your most likely bet for low frequency in the short term. I have a 5 year bet going with another guy in the office that he won't be able to get a client and an AP with it by 2022 (i.e. he thought manufacturers would jump on it, I thought it was going to fizzle and 6/24/60 GHz would have the hardware action). So far it's looking like I'm going to win that lunch. There is also some talk about refreshing the 3.7 GHz space but I'm not sure that'll happen and if it did it'd probably be a ways out before real world impact (if ever). As far as improving 2.4 all of the roaming standards improvements work in it and Wi-Fi 6 works in it. It's really no different than 5 GHz/6 GHz in that regard it just has a bunch of shitty legacy clients to compete with which is amplified by the fact it penetrates farther.
- aurbano 7y agoSerious question - is there any reason why naming things with consecutive simple numbers isn't the best approach? WiFi 1, WiFi 2 ... MacBook Air 1, MacBook Air 2 ... MacOS 10, MacOS 11 I know some of these are already named this way, they're just examples. Using the year would also be a good (or even better) approach, as it gives you two pieces of information. I understand that it may not be the best marketing approach, but it would make life so much easier for consumers - if I need a new anything I want to know exactly which is the latest, if I look at second hand items I want to know how far behind it is quickly, without requiring extensive research. When buying an iPad for instance it took me ages to figure out how far behind the models I was looking at in eBay were...
- elicash 7y ago> if I need a new anything I want to know exactly which is the latest If so, then month/year would be better than a number. (There are flaws to both approaches, though.) 2021-01 Wi-Fi.
- WorldMaker 7y agoThat is what the WiFi Alliance is trying with WiFi 6. They just have the baggage of the old names (802.11a/b/g/n/ac) to deal with. (It is a lot of baggage. Everyone can agree that n/ac are WiFi 4 and WiFi 5 respectively from a consumer standpoint, but between a/b/g there a lot of interesting debates on how you can possibly number any of them 1-3 in any order for both technical reasons and consumption reasons.) This story is interesting because even in trying to keep to consecutive single numbers, the WiFi Alliance hit a detour in the consumer expectations. "6E" doesn't make sense as a "6.1" or a "7", but still needs to be differentiated from "6 only" to sell it to consumers.
- exabrial 7y agoIt's actually useful in high density environments to have wireless signals absorbed. Say you're in an office: there may be 3-10 wireless devices per desk. Have those signals reach an access point and then die is a good thing. Another scenario is a stadium. It's best that communication doesn't propogate or reflect or nobody will be getting a communication line.
- Bud 7y agoThey should have called it "Route 66", since it's Wifi 6 plus 6 GHz functionality. ;)