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Wi-Fi 6 is designed to reduce congestion from devices
- haspoken 6y agohttp://archive.is/ukkYu http://archive.is/ukkYu
- the-dude 6y agoSo, NYT dude is not very much impressed, but at the end of the article he says he is seeing dramatic improvements in latency of his light bulbs and garage door, which apparently took seconds with his old Wifi. That sounds odd.
- cbozeman 6y agoI've always felt that's why this kind of reporting is pointless. I don't care what some guy I don't know, who doesn't post his credentials, says about a technology that's very complex. I'd rather wait for Wendell Wilson to do a video and I'll watch it on Level1Techs channel on YouTube. This whole model seems pointless and strange to me. We no longer need "tech journalists" when you can have literal tech experts creating videos that cover all this stuff in far greater depth. I'd love to see the metrics on this article versus the best tech expert YouTubers.
- azinman2 6y agoMost people aren’t technical experts, so this has a much broader appeal using language and scenarios that’s more familiar to everyday people.
- cbozeman 6y agoThat's not my point. My point is why should anyone listen to this guy. None of his qualifications are on display. Does he build out WiFi networks for a living? "He works for the New York Times" is not a qualification anyone should give a shit about after how they've conducted "journalism" since 2015. I want to hear from experts, not journalists. Maybe articles wherein journalists consult with a range of experts and then convey those experts' opinions to me, but I definitely don't care what a guy with a degree in journalism who happens to love tech has to say. I want to hear from people from work with these technologies from day to day. If you want to know about heart health, you ask a cardiologist, not a health journalist.
- FactCore 6y agoI think the issue your ideal world of communication runs into, is that experts can't dedicate all of their time to public outreach. That's where journalists come in. If you want to know why your chest hurts a bit on the regular, you talk to your doctor. If you want to learn a few interesting facts about a heart condition, you read an article written by a journalist.
- roywiggins 6y agoMost people have no idea how to evaluate YouTuber credentials, and they subscribe to outlets like the NYT to do the filtering for them. You're not the intended audience for these pieces so it's not weird that you don't find them very useful. Most people just aren't interested in the depth of detail that you are. Imagine if they replaced all the articles on topics you are just peripherally interested in with wonky deep-dives. You'd probably give up after the first few because you aren't equally interested in everything, and sometimes you just want a breezy high-level overview of what's happening. NYT is writing to audience that just wants to know whether they need a fancy new router or whether they should stick with their current one for a while longer. That's it.
- cbozeman 6y agoI'm not debating the audience, I'm debating the qualifications of the person writing. I know Wendell is the real deal because Dr. Ian Cutress wouldn't have had him on AnandTech livestreams if he wasn't. I also know Wendell's the real deal by watching Level1Techs YouTube videos. I also know he's the real deal because he literally builds out networks for companies for a living (Wendell Wilson Consulting in Kentucky). I don't know shit about this NYT writer. His credentials aren't listed on the NYT website. Does he have a degree in business information systems? Electrical engineering? Computer science? I don't know. That's the whole point. I don't want to hear heart health advice from a "health journalist", I want to hear what an actual cardiologist has to say. Same with a "tech journalist". No thanks, I'll trust the opinion of someone who builds networks for a living when it comes to my network equipment. In the past, finding people with these qualifications was difficult, and then you had to find time to liaise with them. Now you can find some of the best people in the world and gain their insight just from reading or watching YouTube.
- Laforet 6y agoBack in the old days there were media outlets for the general public and the specialists. One just has to be pointed to the right direction. I don't think today's media landscape is that different - the professional youtubers are just today's trade journals. Though there is definitely a much larger barrier of entry when it comes to video because product is much more involved than just writing an article. I've noticed over the past few years was that pros from the few non-tech hobbies have been trying to get into video and many are clearly struggling. I often wonder how much talent is out there that we don't get to see.
- oblio 6y ago> I'd rather wait for Wendell Wilson to do a video and I'll watch it on Level1Techs channel on YouTube. I watch a ton of tech Youtubers and I have absolutely no idea who those folks are. The world is a lot bigger than you imagine.
- teddyh 6y agoWendell did a video with Linus Tech Tips a few years back, and they’ve collaborated a few times before and since, too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsgI1mkx6iw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsgI1mkx6iw
- mobilemidget 6y agonetwork chuck too, was my first video of him I watched, and probably most interesting too, but that's probably personal thing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cmmVEoftEM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cmmVEoftEM
- teddyh 6y agoI can’t find any appearence or mention of Wendell in that video, nor could I find any other video by the same person featuring Wendell.
- cbozeman 6y agoI know exactly how big the world is, thanks. The guy personally built a new workstation for Linus Torvalds and sent it to him. Maybe the world's a bigger than you imagine.
- oblio 6y agoI'm not sure you get my point. Your internet celebrities are not as famous as you imagine and thus not references the layperson would know of let alone trust. A major newspaper, despite its defects, is much more of a known quantity.
- wccrawford 6y agoAnecdata, but I recently went to wifi6 and even though I didn't notice until now, I'm pretty sure our wifi lights respond quicker than they used to. It's maybe only a second or 2, but I remember being annoyed at how long they took sometimes before, and I haven't felt that way since I got this new router. However, the old router was a Google mesh and 1 of them definitely died slowly, so that could have been causing the delay for a while before it fully died on us.
- trashcan 6y agoIf your lights take seconds to turn on, invest in better technology. Lutron Caseta switches take milliseconds to turn lights on.
- sp332 6y agoFor a network that's already working fine, it's only going to make marginal improvements. Who's going to spend $230 on a new router for slightly faster lightbulbs?
- beart 6y agoThis comment made me laugh. My light bulbs turn on at the speed of electricity right now.
- hansel_der 6y agothx for pointing that out, you two made my day!
- Nextgrid 6y agoThe fact that lightbulbs took seconds to turn on suggests something was very wrong and he's getting much more than marginal improvements.
- marderfarker2 6y agoMost likely due to slow ARP resolution. My custom firmware power switch would take a long time to respond until I turned on gratuitous ARP broadcast.
- yjftsjthsd-h 6y agoI'd be curious to know whether that's a wifi problem or a "your IoT devices are run by very small computers running very unoptimized software" problem.
- azinman2 6y agoIt does. I have a hard time believing Wi-Fi itself could cause such a large swing in latency, but perhaps all those back and forth round trips do add up? Is WiFi 6 known for major latency improvements? Or is this just related to less congestion? It would be interesting to compare it to Ethernet usage of these devices.
- jolan 6y agoYes, WiFi 6 has a lot of major improvements to reduce latency. Intel has a good write up here: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/gaming/resources/wifi-6.html https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/gaming/resources/wif...
- hfjtktkf 6y ago> seconds to turn on a light bulb What a time to be alive! We truly are living in the future!
- cardiffspaceman 6y agoWe used to have to take several seconds to walk over and back to a light bulb to turn it on. Now it's just as fast but we don't have to even stand up.
- jayd16 6y agoSounds like a placebo or he had terrible wifi before. Alexa and the old bulbs wouldn't be running Wifi6 so its just a newer router running in backwards compatible modes. The only Wifi6 device the author owns is probably an iPhone.
- josefresco 6y agoGreat, but my local ISP monopoly will be instituting data caps in 2022 (only after massive public pressure to delay) and therefore speed won't be my major issue but instead overall data consumption. In fact, I'm looking into routers (UniFi Dream Machine) to throttle devices in order to prevent them from streaming 1080/4K video. I don't need technology to increase the speed at which I exhaust my data cap, I need legislation to outlaw data caps and create ISP competition.
- zamadatix 6y agoWi-Fi for home use was pretty well solved with AC nearly a decade ago now. The newer solutions focus on high desisty busness (local data need or call center/auditorium density) and newer direct high bandwidth device<->device connectivity.
- wp381640 6y agoApartment buildings can have very noisy public spectrum which 6 will help with
- stagger87 6y agoUnless people are sharing access points, WIFI 6 doesn't really help with this use case. You wouldn't get to take advantage of OFDMA or MU-MIMO in this scenario. At that point it's basically 802.11ac with 1024-QAM.
- hansel_der 6y agoi'd say the average house has only one wifi-ap and since 5ghz (AC) just barely pentrates a solid built wall, 2,4ghz-N is where the majority of wifi usefullness originates, which is even older ... but yea, cell confinement and directional interference optimisation is the way to go for high density applications.
- vel0city 6y agoIn terms of frequencies used for WiFi and the dates standards were ratified, 5GHz is technically older. 802.11a was ratified just before 802.11b, but came to market a little bit later and hardware was a bit more expensive.
- zamadatix 6y agoPantiently awaiting https://www.netgear.com/home/wifi/routers/raxe500/ https://www.netgear.com/home/wifi/routers/raxe500/ to actually be purhacasable so the 40-60 other wireless networks near me just "disappear". Already have all my non-wired clients upgraded with 6E m.2 chips, phones aside
- rektide 6y ago> I usually have more than two dozen internet-connected devices running, including smart speakers, a thermostat and a bathroom scale. That appeared to make my home an ideal test environment for Wi-Fi 6. mu-mimo (802.11ax) requires client side support, since it's a way to make clients use different channels than the main channel they would have used pre-802.11ax. i'm skeptical this test actually tested mu-mimo, that the wifi 6 router was doing anything new or better. not impossible though. it helps that some pre-wifi 6 devices (802.11ac, 2014) started getting mu-mimo/802.11ax support but only on 5GHz bands. so some not fresh devices may have support. i believe anything with 802.11ax support on both bands qualifies as wifi 6. haven't found good links to support this though! i wonder when the first client 802.11ax devices emerged!! the Wikipedia reference is pretty solid: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11ax https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11ax
- t0mbstone 6y agoI have a Ubiquiti Unifi UAP‑AC‑HD wifi access point for my home. It's not WiFi 6, but it can handle 500+ concurrent users while delivering 800 Mbps on 2.4 ghz and 1733 Mbps on 5 ghz. All in all, I have around 70 wifi devices in my apartment. That might sound like a lot of devices (it is), but I'm a nerd and I like to tinker with lots of smart home stuff and I also have a lot of computers and gadgets. Also, because I live in an apartment complex, there is a ton of WiFi noise from other neighbors. There are around 20 different WiFi networks within range. I went through multiple WiFi routers (including high end $300 ones), but I was rarely able to get over 100 Mbps. When I upgraded the Unifi UAP‑AC‑HD, it was like flipping a light switch. All of my wifi problems went away, and I was able to get 300-400 Mbps in pretty much every room. I get that WiFi 6 is great and all, but at this point, I'm not really sure what I would be gaining by upgrading. The UAP‑AC‑HD is on the high end of the previous generation, and at least for now, it's good enough for me.
- NikolaNovak 6y agoAny clue "How" did it fix everything? With everybody's router blasting at High Power, what can you actually do on your side with just one router to compensate? Thx muchly!
- SteveNuts 6y agoThe Ubiquiti stuff has a lot of automatic channel selection stuff built in to use the best frequencies for your conditions.
- zachberger 6y agoMost APs do this already.
- pstrateman 6y agoMost APs do this once at startup. Gives you good benchmarks when you start it but over time fails in a noisy environment.
- vmception 6y agoI’ve been looking for a Wi-Fi 6 router with 10GBe ethernet ports too. Its kind of silly to have wireless that is faster than the wired options. One use case is that I want to store larger files on a NAS but I don't want throughput to randomly drop such as during large image backups and restorations to a cloud server.
- PragmaticPulp 6y agoWiFi specs refer to the maximum theoretical link-layer rate in perfect conditions. The actual amount of data (not link-layer bits) transferred is less than the headline number. In the real world, 1G ethernet isn't going to hold back a WiFi 6 router. The only exception might be a multi-radio WiFi 6 AP that is within several feet of WiFi 6 clients on both radios.
- hansel_der 6y agowas going to say this. feels kinda weird that wifi marketing speek is taken at face value two decades into the bullshitting with theoretical maximum agregates.
- sbierwagen 6y agoThe AXE11000 and RAXE500 both have 2.5G ports, at least.
- SamuelAdams 6y agoAnd the EAP660 HD.
- stordoff 6y agoI'd be surprised if it is much of a restriction in real world use cases. Accessing my NAS over 866Mbps WiFi[1] caps out around 60MB/s, the same devices over gigabit ethernet hit around 120MB/s (the NAS delivers around 650MB/s over a 10Gb link). [1] tested with multiple client/router devices, in close to ideal circumstances (few feet line of sight between devices, no other devices active on the network)
- jdeibele 6y agoSurprised that there's no mention of Wi-Fi 6E, which is rumored to be in the Apple phones coming in the fall. Having the 6GHz band as well as 2.4GHz and 5GHz seems like you'd get a year or two of having lots of room for your devices. With work-from-home and online school, I had to move an Orbi satellite so Wi-Fi 5 was more evenly distributed. 6GHz will have even less range than 5GHz but having it and the other changes in Wi-Fi 6E could make a huge difference for offices.
- S_A_P 6y agoI’ve an unusual layout in my house and WiFi placed in the middle of the home would not reach either side of the long narrow floor plan. I tried various mesh options including ubiquitis prosumer amplifi but that proved very unreliable. Before going full enterprise grade I tried the Linksys Velop WiFi 6 that has 2 Access Points. It has been tremendous thus far. I have WiFi well out into my yard(live in country area on acreage) and aside from occasional hangs the system has been stable and covers the entire home.
- dont__panic 6y agoFor me, 2.4 ghz has worked very, very well for penetrating pesky walls full of HVAC/washer/dryer/giant metal beams. I keep my office devices either plugged into ethernet or connected to 5 ghz where they're in clear view of my router. Especially if you're not right on top of other apartments or anything and don't require >500mbps download speeds, any decent router should serve you well on the 2.4 band.
- ozborn 6y agoIs anybody excited about Wi-Fi 6? I'm just not seeing a compelling use case for many residential users to upgrade given the number of legacy devices that don't support this protocol. More importantly, the impending release of WiFi6e routers that open up 6 Ghz makes me want to wait even more... That is a huge potential bandwidth increase.
- virtuallynathan 6y agoYep, not excited for Wifi6, i'll wait for wifi6e to upgrade. My AP-AC-HD works great.
- bjoli 6y agoI am not excited, but I am happy that the 2.4ghz band finally got an update. 802.11n needed to catch up to ac.
- mensetmanusman 6y ago5 GHz to 6 GHz is 6/5s faster bandwidth...
- gumby 6y agoI upgraded to a Wifi 6* router last month. We have Gb service. I could never get more than a few hundred Mbps from any of my devices on the 5 GHz bands but with ax I can get over 800 Mbps. I only have two ax devices and their performance is startlingly different (one gets about 400 Mbps but the other gets over 800). I do wonder how much of the issue is channel contention from my neighbors and how much is actual improvement. * Not mentioning brands because I don't want to look like I'm shilling. Anyway I only had a couple of dozen clients to test with, and only two (before and after) routers. Edit: I had "K" and "G" where I should have had "Mbs" -- thanks jeffbee and gratin for pointing these typos out.
- the-dude 6y agoThat is amazing.
- gumby 6y agoTwo typos made it extraordinarily amazing; if you were politely referring to those: I edited the post. However, even with the correct units I am astonished and gratified with the improvement.
- graton 6y ago> but with ax I can get over 800 Gbps Can I assume you meant 800 Mbps?
- gumby 6y agoThanks, an absurd typo; fixed.
- jeffbee 6y agoYou were getting a few hundred kbps per device on what kind of network? That's not even enough for CD-quality digital audio. That wouldn't have been acceptable performance even in the 1990s before 802.11.
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- twobitshifter 6y agoI bought a house and recently bought a router for our Comcast service. I wanted to “future proof” so I bought the ASUS WiFi 6 Router (RT-AX3000). Before at our apartment a little further down the road with the same Comcast service, we were always flipping WiFi on and off on our phones and tablets to reconnect because of hanging connections. I was blaming Comcast, but it’s now clear to me that it was the router and not the connection itself. Our new router has never dropped my connection and I get a signal throughout the house. Streams start instantly and downloads are as fast as at the office. I can work from home via VPN and it’s indistinguishable from sitting at my desk on a wired connection.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ed25519FUUU 6y agoI'm actually still surprised at how expensive Wifi5 routers are. I still see "top of the line" wireless routers which still use 8 year old technology.
- mark-r 6y agoI'd be happy to just have wifi that didn't lose its mind when you run the microwave.
- anamexis 6y agoDon't you just need any wifi at 5 GHz for that? 802.11n (aka Wi-Fi 4) has been around for quite a while.
- Nextgrid 6y agoYour microwave is probably leaking. I've never had issues with mine and it's a cheap one, so if even a cheap one can insulate against leakage then yours is most likely faulty.
- mark-r 6y agoI have two microwaves, completely different designs, and either one running will knock out the wifi.
- mensetmanusman 6y agoTry running both at the same time, maybe deconstructive interference will not harm your Wi-Fi
- kazinator 6y ago> Wi-Fi 6 reduces congestion by directing traffic. There are now multiple lanes: car pool lanes for the newer, faster devices and a slow lane for the older, slower ones. All of the vehicles are also full of people, which represent big batches of data being transported over the network simultaneously. Nice car analogy; how will that play out in a crowded condo building, where neighbors around you have multiple routers with umpteen "lanes"?
- ksec 6y agoOk, a few things. 1. WiFi 6 only improves / reduce congestions when all devices on the network are WiFi 6 only. As soon as you have older WiFi devices, the difference becomes negligible to non-existence. 2. WiFi 6 only improves / reduce congestions when all devices on the network support WiFi 6 OFDMA, which while being officially part of WiFi 6, it was not mandatory. And if you have one that doesn't support it or does not have a firmware updated to support it, read point 1. 3. WiFi 6E will mandate all those optional features that were intentionally missed out on WiFi 6 due to all sort of technical, economical, political reasons. So in realty if you dont have all your devices as WiFi 6E, read point 1. 4. It is not clear whether 6Ghz support is mandated to be certified as WiFi 6E. On paper it seems to be the case, In practice most part of the world dont have 6Ghz spectrum ready. And I am not sure how FCC ( or similar ) clearance will work for a product that are already shipped on the market. Could we get new spectrum support via Firmware update? I am sure that is how US intends to deal with it since Intel are already shipping WiFi 6E product with label that support 6Ghz. I am just not sure if EU, UK, or other part of the world would allow or follow similar route. That has an implications on how fast WiFI 6E could launch worldwide. 5. Finally, there is only so much you can do with WiFi spec. If you have an extremely noisy environment nothing could really help. In an ultra packed City like HK, I could detect at least a dozen AP at any given time.
- tradertef 6y ago>> It is not clear whether 6Ghz support is mandated to be certified as WiFi 6E. It is. >> Could we get new spectrum support via Firmware update? Yes. In US/FCC, the procedure is called "Class II permissive change". Also, US, Korea, EU/UK, Chile, Brazil have opened up 6 GHz band. More countries will follow in coming years.
- maguirre 6y agoI am confused. I thought "permissive change" referred to the ability of a device maker to avoid having to do a full fcc recertification when making changes to their device (hardware or firmware) that did not affect rf emissions
- Johnny555 6y agoI'm skeptical of his results, or at least that his results had anything to do with Wifi 6: For one, my Amazon smart speakers are now more responsive. In my bedroom, I ask Alexa to control a pair of internet-connected light bulbs. With the older router, whenever I said, “Alexa, turn on the lights,” there was a delay of about two seconds before the lights turned on. Now it’s less than half a second.
- bombcar 6y agoMuch of the improvements you get with upgrades are often just redoing the configuration correctly. A two second pause sounds like a timeout of some sort.
- blezalex 6y agoYeah. The garage door opener the author mentioned supports only 2.4Ghz networks
- rasz 6y agoIn other words author is a Hack Fraud. Reminds me of The Verge PC Build Video tutorial done by another "tech journalist" while wearing a _wireless anti static bracelet_ https://youtu.be/0vmQOO4WLI4?t=46 https://youtu.be/0vmQOO4WLI4?t=46 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-2Scfj4FZk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-2Scfj4FZk