What is WiFi 6 and why it will improve your home WiFi network (or when you connect to a public one)

Specials TODAY WE TALK ABOUT

Subscribe to Xataka

Receive an email a day with our articles:

37 comments Javier Penalva@solenoide

This year 2020, after the official approval last year by the Wi-Fi Alliance, it is expected that the new Wifi 6 will end up taking off in the home. In addition to the change in the way we refer to the devices and networks compatible with this new standard, Wifi 6 brings many interesting new features in increasingly common situations where we have many devices that want to access the Internet at the same time.

We tell you about its technical characteristics, improvements and advantages of WiFi 6.

Why Wi-Fi 6 and not Wi-Fi 802.11ax?

Although it will take a while for us to get used to it, the Wi-Fi Alliance introduced in 2019 a new name for the devices and networks compatible with each standard . The objective is clear: to facilitate the identification and differentiation between WiFi networks in a direct and unique way in the consumer market.

New logos that will now identify WiFi standards

In this way, products and networks that are capable of operating under the 802.11ax standard will actually operate under WiFi 6. Previous standards, such as the current 802.11ac , include other denominations, in the latter case Wifi 5. This will happen from now on with the standards of the Wi-Fi Alliance, although only standards destined for the consumer market will receive simple denominations such as Wifi 6.

The new WiFi 6 standard is backwards compatible, so if you buy one of the new WiFi 6 or 802.11 ax routers, your current equipment will be able to connect to it. However, in order to obtain the advantages and advances of the new WiFi 6 we need that both the transmitter and the receiver are compatible with WiFi 6.

In XatakaWhat is Wi-Fi 6 and what advantages does it have compared to the previous version

More range and coverage even in saturated spaces

As we see in the following table, WiFi 6 does not improve the speed of original link data that we have in the 802.11 ac standard. A stream goes from 433 Mbps in WiFi 5 to 600 Mbps in Wifi 6. Nor is there a very large quantitative leap in the theoretical maximum data speed that we can achieve using 8 streams (160 MHz), since WiFi 6 goes up to 10 Gbps when with Wifi 5 the maximum we could get was about 7 Gbps, .

The progress it achieves is thanks, in part, to its 1024-QAM modulation, which allows a greater amount of information per symbol to be sent in a given bandwidth than with previous WiFi protocols. This is especially interesting in scenarios of high density of connections to a WiFi network, which is where the new standard is expected to increase the average performance per user by 4 times compared to the previous one.

	Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac)	WiFi 6 (802.11ax)
Bands	5GHz	2.4 and 5 GHz
Channel bandwidth	20, 40, 80, 80+80 and 160 Mhz	20, 40, 80, 80+80 and 160 Mhz
FTT sizes	64, 126, 256, 512	256, 512, 1024, 2048
Higher modulation	256-QAM	1024-QAM
Data rate	433 Mbps per stream (80 MHz) Max. 7000Mbps	600 Mbps per stream (80 MHz) Max. 10000Mbps

The interest in the future WiFi 6 is therefore not in the maximum speed per device but in the overall improvement that users will experience in increasingly common situations and where we want to have many devices connected to the same WiFi network. Even at home. There will also be an improvement in latency, which will be much lower, and of course in security, as it is prepared to use WPA3.

Intel

How the next WiFi 6 achieves it must be found in different technologies that launch or improve the 802.11 ax standard. Among them, the most relevant are OFDMA, bidirectional MU-MIMO or Color BSS.

The true value of Wi-Fi 6 is in the increased efficiency and maintenance of connections even when the network is highly congested.

Another important feature of the new Wi-Fi 6 is that, unlike Wi-Fi 5 or 802.11 ac, the new standard can operate on both the 2.4 Ghz and 5 Ghz frequencies. The current WiFi 5 can do it too, but in reality it does so by "taking" the 2.4 Ghz band of the 802.11 an protocol.

In XatakaWhich router is faster: understanding home Wi-Fi networks

Better management of several devices at the same time

At home it is common for us not only to have smartphones, consoles or televisions connected to the Wi-Fi network, but increasingly, different gadgets and devices that require and need network or Internet connections. From refrigerators to thermostats or speakers with virtual assistants.

ODFMA is a technology that increases the amount of data that can be sent and received simultaneously with WiFi 6

The technology that will significantly improve these conditions of use is OFDMA (Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiple Access). Thanks to it, WiFi 6 networks offer lower latency when there are many devices that want to access the router.

In a simple way, until now, when a router sent information to a device, it used the entire bandwidth of the channel, regardless of the type of data or the amount of information that needed to be transmitted. With OFDMA technology, these channels can be subdivided in turn to offer access to different clients or devices, thus achieving the desired lower latency and better efficiency of the WiFi network when there are many devices that want to use it.

In XatakaWiFi Mesh networks: what they are, how they work and why they can improve your WiFi network at home

Other technology such as MU-MIMO, already used in previous standards, becomes essential in WiFi 6 to achieve consistency in the flow of data to many users. Now it is also bidirectional, with Downlink and Uplink for multiple users. The multi-user upload mode is exclusive to the new standard and did not exist in any of the previous ones.

In environments with a high density of devices and connections, reducing interference that reduces the efficiency of the data flow has also been taken into account in the Wi-Fi 6 standard. For these situations, a very curious technique has been used: BSS coloring.

Its operation is very intuitive and the name is not accidental. What happens with this spatial reuse technique is that in a multi-network location different colors are assigned to each network so that their identification is easier. Thus, when access points detect an 802.11ax frame, they check the BSS color bit and make decisions to avoid interference.

Less consumption for connected devices

The third pillar on which WiFi 6 is built is one of the most important as it affects the autonomy of the devices that will be connected to the wireless network. Target Wake Time (TWT) technology takes care of this improvement.

In XatakaRouter Wi-Fi 6, which one to buy? Tips for choosing the best one

With WiFi 6, instead of having devices connecting and turning off every so often in search of transmissions from the access point, there is a negotiation to set specific times in advance to access the channel of communication, knowing at all times the expected durations of network activities.

With this operation, devices can stay in sleep mode (and save power) until their fixed and negotiated time arrives.

More information | Wi-Fi-Alliance | TP Link | National Instruments.

Share What is WiFi 6 and why it will improve your home WiFi network (or when you connect to a public one)