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At the risk of sounding like a mobile industry shill, what practical use case is there for 6 ghz wifi? The article mentions: >Calabrese said he expects the big

by gruez 1y ago

At the risk of sounding like a mobile industry shill, what practical use case is there for 6 ghz wifi? The article mentions: >Calabrese said he expects the biggest impact of reducing Wi-Fi's use of 6 GHz at "busy venues such as schools, airports, sporting arenas, shopping malls, all the different places where many people gather together and try to get on the same access points and unlicensed spectrum through Wi-Fi." but I don't think I can remember the last time I connected to wifi at some sort of public venue. In most cases I'm there to do something, and don't mind burning a bit of my data allotment to avoid going through the hassle of connecting to wifi. Even at places like airports I don't think bandwidth was ever an issue. I'm typically not doing bandwidth intensive tasks like downloading Steam games. The only other use case I can think of is wifi in apartment buildings, but most uses of home internet don't really require fast speeds. 4K streaming only takes around 25-30 Mb/s. Bandwidth heavy stuff like game updates can be done using wired, and in my experience 5 ghz's penetrating power isn't good enough that the airwaves end up getting congested.

jauntywundrkind 1y ago
It's nice to have files transfer fast. A lot of people have gbit or faster internet, and 6e makes actually seeing those download speeds a real world possibility, which might not feel necessary but sure is nice to have when you laptop is downloading a 120GB game!! But the real utility is that more spectrum means less congestion. At a school or stadium it's not about trying to get 4x4x2 multi-band MIMO and 1024qam pumping 2GBps to a device. It's about having sufficient spectrum so that lots and lots of devices can operate at once without frequent collisions. For many people in cities, wifi 6E has been a godsend, has made wifi usable. It's unbelievably forsaken to imagine giving up a sizable chunk of this spectrum to a bunch of cellular carriers (or other good parts of the spectrum!). As usual, this feels like another vile act do the worst possible things to the public. The one time (!!!! Auctions are insane rent seeking!!) pocket change the FCC collects for this spectrum is irrelevant, this is another act of pure malice. Sell off the land, sell off the airwaves. Hive of villainy.
- sidewndr46 1y ago
  Wifi 6E is only usable now because the band is under-utilized. Once hardware proliferates it will be just as unusable as the existing bands. It's the same thing with the existing DFS bands - I've never found any equipment in my area that will utilize it and stay on it. So when I switch my access point to it, it's great. Until it auto switches back to avoid interference. If there was actually equipment that was able to stay on it I think it'd be equally useless.

by gruez 1y ago

jauntywundrkind 1y ago

It's nice to have files transfer fast. A lot of people have gbit or faster internet, and 6e makes actually seeing those download speeds a real world possibility, which might not feel necessary but sure is nice to have when you laptop is downloading a 120GB game!! But the real utility is that more spectrum means less congestion. At a school or stadium it's not about trying to get 4x4x2 multi-band MIMO and 1024qam pumping 2GBps to a device. It's about having sufficient spectrum so that lots and lots of devices can operate at once without frequent collisions. For many people in cities, wifi 6E has been a godsend, has made wifi usable. It's unbelievably forsaken to imagine giving up a sizable chunk of this spectrum to a bunch of cellular carriers (or other good parts of the spectrum!). As usual, this feels like another vile act do the worst possible things to the public. The one time (!!!! Auctions are insane rent seeking!!) pocket change the FCC collects for this spectrum is irrelevant, this is another act of pure malice. Sell off the land, sell off the airwaves. Hive of villainy.

sidewndr46 1y ago
Wifi 6E is only usable now because the band is under-utilized. Once hardware proliferates it will be just as unusable as the existing bands. It's the same thing with the existing DFS bands - I've never found any equipment in my area that will utilize it and stay on it. So when I switch my access point to it, it's great. Until it auto switches back to avoid interference. If there was actually equipment that was able to stay on it I think it'd be equally useless.