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I appreciate that they lasted a year before muddying the already foggy "wifi 6" branding by introducing "wifi 6e". 802.11 802.11a 802.11b 80
by RL_Quine 7y ago
I 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, ...
- gpm 7y agoI propose using a 3 digit date, no one will even realize if they aren't a tech person. Our 2020 router supports wifi 018
- RL_Quine 7y agoIt can be done in the same way that specifications for consumer electronics currently work. This router supports WiFi Hyper-Speed 5 Super Tough Technology with Ultra Frequency Crystals (R) for enhanced frequency modulation GAMING EDITION ULTIMATE FATALITY RGB. The rise of this sort of branding is very intentionally to make comparison possible, as you don't really know anything about the Ultra Frequency Crystals and why their competitor doesn't have them, just buy whichever ones have flames and a dragon on the box and it'll work itself out.
- lebrad 7y agoThe auto industry deals with this by assigning cars a "model year" which is the year after the calendar year in which they start being sold, thus you can buy 2021 cars in 2020.
- echelon 7y agoMonotonic version numbering is the way to go, and years are the most consistent and best understood mechanism for something with a release cadence such as WiFi or a language spec. We should adopt this as an industry.
- Osiris 7y agoECMAScript does this (ECAMScript 2015, 2017, 2018, etc) and I also really like it.
- angrygoat 7y agoFortran has been doing it longer.. Fortran 66, 77, 90, 95, 2003, 2008, 2018. It really is a very helpful approach.
- jfoster 7y agoIt also gives an indication of whether two things were produced around the same time or not. (Eg. You'd know that Windows 2015 probably wouldn't support WiFi 2019 without support being added)
- echelon 7y agoNow that's just brilliant. It hasn't seen wide enough adoption for this to happen yet, but imagine all the USB standards and processors and whatnot did the same. That's just so simple it's genius. "That 2020 motherboard won't run USB 2025" We really need this. Please Intel, Broadcom, Nvidia, etc. folks reading this. Please.
- PaulHoule 7y agoThose firms don't have much control of the rate technology is adopted. Look at how slow USB-C has been to come on. Look at how 802.11ax has gone nowhere. Or how Intel has been dragging its feet with PCIe4.
- 7y ago
- pacaro 7y agoI have fond memories from the mid nineties of a compiled xBase language that did this, their dominant version was Clipper Summer'87 — their last year numbered version, their next version was 5.0 and was so bad they lost most of their market advantage — in the mid nineties talking about a product called Summer'87 sounded really bad to me, humorously this was when Microsoft moved from a numeric scheme to years, which itself only lasted from 95-2000 (longer for server releases of course)
- paranoidrobot 7y ago> Microsoft moved from a numeric scheme to years, which itself only lasted from 95-2000 (longer for server releases of course) Their commitment to it even for servers is only half-hearted. Windows Server 2003 (April 2003) Windows Server 2003 R2 (December 2005) Windows Server 2008 (February 2008) Windows Server 2008 R2 (October 2009) Windows Server 2012 (September 2012) Windows Server 2012 R2 (October 2013) Windows Server 2016 (September 2016) Windows Server 2019 (October 2018)
- reaperducer 7y agoI'd rather they just use the years the standards were ratified Worked for Microsoft... for a while. And then later, lazy programmers forced it to skip Windows 9. People ruin everything.
- Jaruzel 7y ago> People ruin everything. 'Marketeers' ruin everything.
- reaperducer 7y agoIt's my understanding that the reason "Windows 9" was skipped was technical, not marketing. I read (I think on HN) that lazy programmers would test whether the environment was Windows 95 through 98 by only checking for "Win9" or something similar, rather than a list of strings. Thus, if Microsoft released an actual "Win9," many programs would think they were running on Windows 95.
- WorldMaker 7y agoTo name and shame at least one example, such code was included in some versions of the Java Development Kit itself and could be found in easy Google code searches at least at the time Microsoft skipped Windows 9. Microsoft and Apple and others also prefer to skip 9 for the international marketing reason that 9 is a very evil number by superstition in most of Asia, like how some of the west believes 13 to be unlucky and things like elevators tend to skip 13 in the US/Europe.
- Dylan16807 7y agoThat works for the version but tells you very little about what frequencies are supported. And it's the complication of frequencies that's hard here, not figuring out that wifi 6 comes between 5 and 7.
- zamadatix 7y agoWiFi 6 works on 2.4 as well.
- bjoli 7y agoWhich is one of the major benefits of it! It brings all the goodies back to 2.4ghz.
- tzs 7y agoHah...you can't even get rid of the possibility of confusion by switching to wavelength instead of frequency to talk about the bands. 5 GHz is 6 cm, and 6 GHz is 5 cm, and so using wavelength would probably actually be more confusing.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- maxerickson 7y agoThe nice thing is where we are well past the point where figuring out if 2 devices are compatible is something most people will bother doing.
- zamadatix 7y agoI think it is less confusing than IEEE designations were to a consumer but it could have been a lot cleaner than what they replaced it with.
- reaperducer 7y agoThis is why we should let Apple name everything. Wifi Mesquite Wifi Mistletoe Wifi Kangaroo Rat Wifi Roadrunner Wifi Rattlesnake Wifi Great Horned Owl That way it's easy to keep track because we just follow the food chain. And with Apple in charge, it will be instinctive to know that Mac OS X Leopard is incompatible with Wifi Minnesota Big Game Hunter Dentist.
- georgyo 7y agoOr! WiFi WiFi 2 WiFi 3 New WiFi WiFi WiFi WiFi
- reaperducer 7y agoWifi Wifi 3G Wifi 3GS Wifi 4 Wifi 4S Wifi 5 Wifi 5C Wifi 5S Wifi 5SE Smells like Apple is a member of the Wifi Alliance.
- w-ll 7y agoThe Wi-Fi 2 Wi 2 Fi The Wi-Fi: Tokyo Drift WiFi WiFive Wifi 6 Fi 7 The Fate of the Fi WiFi Presents: Facebook & Google
- periya 7y agoI laughed way too hard at this.
- ameixaseca 7y agoI laughed way too furiously at this.
- gibolt 7y agoJoke was a bit too fast for my taste :D
- gumby 7y ago> 802.11af You have to admire the poetry that 802 doesn't just go to 11 but it's as 11 AF!
- ftvy 7y agoGenius.
- gumby 7y agoHave they considered names like Low speed, Full speed, High speed, and Super speed? They are already familiar to consumers who will understand them as well for wifi as they do for USB.
- colechristensen 7y agoUSB has to keep inventing new, slightly more impressive words for "fast".
- mNovak 7y agoITU really got it bad here, having designated "Very High Frequency" at what we now consider pretty low frequency (<300MHz). Subsequently stacking on Ultra- Super- and Extremely-High Frequency bands before giving up at Terahertz.
- braindeath 7y agoThat still leaves ridiculous, ludicrous, and plaid.
- SamPatt 7y agoTrue, but considering how long ago the designation "high frequency" was made, it's understandable. AM was extremely low frequency (~1 MHz), but that was what they were comparing against when they started using higher frequency bands.
- jsjohnst 7y agoAM = amplitude modulation (as opposed to frequency modulation). It has nothing to do with a specific frequency range. In the United States for example, AM is commonly used from ~150khz all the way up into the low hundreds of megahertz. As an example, all aircraft transmissions in the US are AM and are in the ~120-130Mhz range.
- 7y ago
- woah 7y agoWhy is this? Is it standards body politics where new standards don’t want to step on the toes of whoever made the previous standard? Like WiFi 7 might imply that WiFi 6 isn’t good enough any more?
- thatsenough 7y agoTelecommunications engineers produce the worst naming schemes and acronyms of anyone, anywhere. Any cellular document is a mishmash of alphabet soup: UTRAN, UMTS, PS-CN, SGSN, RNC, RNS, eNodeB, EPC, MME, S-GW, X2-AP, S1, GTP-U, HSDPA, HSUPA, RRC, PDCP, RLC, OFDM, MU-MIMO, and on and on ad infinitum. You'd think the marketing people would at least get the public-facing stuff right, but they've likely been tainted by association with the engineers.
- jeroenhd 7y agoThey have though. They added 2G/3G/4G/5G (though some American ISPs like to call stuff the next G even if it doesn't qualify). There's also WiFi and now WiFi 1-6 (the F is just dumb) and Bluetooth 1-5. OFDM and MU-MIMO aren't user facing technologies, they can be applied in any wireless standard really. Just because router manufacturers put stickers on their boxes doesn't make the technology customer facing. Same with the protocols underlying the cellular industry. For all the engineers care, the people just call it by their Gs and be done with it. Cell phone manufacturers tried to advertise with specific technology names because "3G but slightly faster" doesn't sell well. Then the 4G debacle happened where LTE didn't even qualify to be called 4G at first except due to a technicality and now that LTE Advanced is available, which finally is fast enough to be called 4G according to the specification, people are already starting to call it 5G. I blame the marketeers for ruining any consumer facing schemes by their drive to have the biggest number the first no matter what. As long as people like that end up naming things, we'll never have concise naming schemes for consumers as all simplification efforts are ruined by trying to grab a quick buck.
- pilsetnieks 7y agoWhat debacle? As I recall, LTE was the actual 4G tech because, well, it was a new generation after all the 3G ones. The only debacle I remember was that some carriers decided to call HSPA+ 4G for marketing reasons.
- jeroenhd 7y agoWell, according to the original design specification for the 4G name, the standard had to support a certain throughput in rest (I believe it was 1Gbps) and a certain throughput while moving at a certain speed (something like 100mbps at 100km/h). LTE failed to reach the 1gbps threshold but managed to get the high speed while moving so it was basically declared "4G enough" and people just accepted LTE as 4G. This is why the ITU now has definitions for 4G (LTE at the moment it started being marketed as 4G) and "True 4G" (4G technologies that actually pass the requirements for 4G such as LTE advanced, which AT&T now markets as "5G E" because screw consumers I suppose)
- Aloha 7y agoThis is an improve meant over 802.11xx however.
- marcusjt 7y agoSurely the logical successor to 802.11af is 802.11wtaf?
- Ajedi32 7y agoAs hilarious as this sounds, it's actually not _that_ bad. It doesn't seem like 6E is a completely new standard so much as it is an existing standard being used on a new frequency band. In that respect, it wouldn't really make sense to call it "Wi-Fi 7", and the "add an arbitrary letter onto the end of the version number as an indicator of a different variant" naming scheme is already pretty well understood thanks to smartphones doing the same thing for years. (And Ethernet cables, come to think of it.) I suppose they could have incremented the version number anyway just to avoid the need for that sort of awkward naming scheme, but I'm not sure if that'd be any less confusing. It'd be simpler sure, but also somewhat misleading. In any case, it's still way better than the previous scheme of using non-sequential letters of the alphabet as version numbers.
- sammorrowdrums 7y agoPlease tell me your username is a combination between Real Life Quine and also the author of Goosebumps R.L. Stine? I been wondering about this for the last 11 days...