4 ms·

And what's this Wifi 6 business? Am still upgrading devices to 5! Is there a new 802.11x standard? If service is (barely) 1 gig, and most end users dont notice

And what's this Wifi 6 business? Am still upgrading devices to 5! Is there a new 802.11x standard? If service is (barely) 1 gig, and most end users dont notice degrading, why bother? Everyone also recommends the eero wifi mesh. But I'm hesitant. There's probably a hack to turn a jetson nano or rpi4 into a repeater ;)

oneplane 4y ago
Repeaters and meshes are generally a bad idea, repeaters specifically. Unless you live in a large concrete bunker, having 1 or 2 well-placed access points with wired connections is all you really have to invest in for most personal living scenarios.
xyzzy_plugh 4y ago
WiFi 6 makes a big difference in congested environments, in my experience. In an urban office, clients of our WiFi 6 APs get roughly 2x throughput (~200-300mbps) than peers on 5. It's borderline impossible to saturate the uplink at max speeds for any network when there's congestion, but the improvements to client isolation are substantial IMO.
Avamander 4y ago
> If service is (barely) 1 gig, and most end users dont notice degrading, why bother? Because there's really more to it than just raw bandwidth. Either with the new protocol itself or with the new hardware that supports the protocol, you'll get other improvements besides raw bandwitdh. A WiFi 6 AP in this case should in theory provide you better security (WPA3, PMF¹), antenna design², power savings³, lower latency and lower interference⁴. There are other improvements as well that might now be included with new AP's, but as they're not mandatory to implement it depends on the AP. Just like PMF was an optional feature with previous WiFi. -- 1 - Protected Management Frames (802.11w) simplified protection against deauth attacks. Could also mean it is enabled for WiFi 5 devices, previously a very enterprise/high-end only feature. 2 - The higher requirements of WiFi 6 will most likely mean that WiFi 5 clients will also reap some benefits. Lower packet loss, better range, actual MU-MIMO and better beamforming even individually might be a large step-up for some. 3 - Target Wake Time - scheduling better when targets wake up 4 - BSS coloring
andix 4y ago
I see wifi 6 as a mature version of wifi 5. It provides similar features, but is just much more reliable.
vetinari 4y ago
Wifi is a shared medium; just because it can keep up with your service, doesn't mean it can keep up with yours and your neighbors services. Wifi 6 brings better modulation schemes and OFDMA support, which helps with multiple devices co-existing. Also, wifi is not just last hop to the internet. Don't you have services in your local network, like NAS?
dzhiurgis 4y ago
Latest macbooks is a downgrade even when it got wifi6. Used to max out at 650mbps, now it’s 450mbps
- methyl 4y ago
  My MBP 16 m1 easily does 750mbps with Unifi 6 LR
  - vetinari 4y ago
    Up to 2019, Macbooks had ac 3x3 MIMO wifi. Since then, they have ax 2x2 MIMO. If you have a nice wifi 5 AP, let's say Unifi nanoHD, you get better speeds with the older Macbooks (I had slightly gigabite, with 80 MHz wide channel and three streams). With the new Macbooks, you need wifi 6 AP to achieve similar performance (MCS 11, OFDM, 80 MHz wide channel, two streams); otherwise, with Wifi 5 (MSC 9) and two streams, you get theoretical 866 Mbps max.
- Avamander 4y ago
  Are you sure it's not your AP? My 2013 Thinkpad with factory WiFi card reaches 700Mbps with an higher-quality AP from approximately the same era.
hedora 4y ago
Eero is set up so that Amazon can snoop your local network, and/or use it to create a shadow network to defeat IoT air gaps. I assume they do, or at least will eventually. Look at how they've been behaving over time with Nest.

oneplane 4y ago

Repeaters and meshes are generally a bad idea, repeaters specifically. Unless you live in a large concrete bunker, having 1 or 2 well-placed access points with wired connections is all you really have to invest in for most personal living scenarios.

xyzzy_plugh 4y ago

WiFi 6 makes a big difference in congested environments, in my experience. In an urban office, clients of our WiFi 6 APs get roughly 2x throughput (~200-300mbps) than peers on 5. It's borderline impossible to saturate the uplink at max speeds for any network when there's congestion, but the improvements to client isolation are substantial IMO.

Avamander 4y ago

> If service is (barely) 1 gig, and most end users dont notice degrading, why bother? Because there's really more to it than just raw bandwidth. Either with the new protocol itself or with the new hardware that supports the protocol, you'll get other improvements besides raw bandwitdh. A WiFi 6 AP in this case should in theory provide you better security (WPA3, PMF¹), antenna design², power savings³, lower latency and lower interference⁴. There are other improvements as well that might now be included with new AP's, but as they're not mandatory to implement it depends on the AP. Just like PMF was an optional feature with previous WiFi. -- 1 - Protected Management Frames (802.11w) simplified protection against deauth attacks. Could also mean it is enabled for WiFi 5 devices, previously a very enterprise/high-end only feature. 2 - The higher requirements of WiFi 6 will most likely mean that WiFi 5 clients will also reap some benefits. Lower packet loss, better range, actual MU-MIMO and better beamforming even individually might be a large step-up for some. 3 - Target Wake Time - scheduling better when targets wake up 4 - BSS coloring

andix 4y ago

I see wifi 6 as a mature version of wifi 5. It provides similar features, but is just much more reliable.

vetinari 4y ago

Wifi is a shared medium; just because it can keep up with your service, doesn't mean it can keep up with yours and your neighbors services. Wifi 6 brings better modulation schemes and OFDMA support, which helps with multiple devices co-existing. Also, wifi is not just last hop to the internet. Don't you have services in your local network, like NAS?

dzhiurgis 4y ago

Latest macbooks is a downgrade even when it got wifi6. Used to max out at 650mbps, now it’s 450mbps

methyl 4y ago
My MBP 16 m1 easily does 750mbps with Unifi 6 LR
- vetinari 4y ago
  Up to 2019, Macbooks had ac 3x3 MIMO wifi. Since then, they have ax 2x2 MIMO. If you have a nice wifi 5 AP, let's say Unifi nanoHD, you get better speeds with the older Macbooks (I had slightly gigabite, with 80 MHz wide channel and three streams). With the new Macbooks, you need wifi 6 AP to achieve similar performance (MCS 11, OFDM, 80 MHz wide channel, two streams); otherwise, with Wifi 5 (MSC 9) and two streams, you get theoretical 866 Mbps max.
Avamander 4y ago
Are you sure it's not your AP? My 2013 Thinkpad with factory WiFi card reaches 700Mbps with an higher-quality AP from approximately the same era.

hedora 4y ago

Eero is set up so that Amazon can snoop your local network, and/or use it to create a shadow network to defeat IoT air gaps. I assume they do, or at least will eventually. Look at how they've been behaving over time with Nest.