About WiFi 6

[EchoBlue]

Hello 

About WiFi 6

To get started you need a WiFi 6 enabled router 

And your device needs to support it? 

That's it right?

Thanks

[LienusLateTips]

Yep! But not all WiFi 6 enabled routers/WiFi cards are greated equal; some will give more performance than others. That's all!

[EchoBlue]

Any suggestion on which router to get? 

[Donut417]

2 hours ago, EchoBlue said:

Hello 

About WiFi 6

To get started you need a WiFi 6 enabled router 

And your device needs to support it? 

That's it right?

Thanks

WiFi standards are backwards compatible. If you use older WiFi devices on a WiFi 6 router, then those devices will work at the lower standard. Though to my understanding some parts of the WiFi 6 spec may not work at all if all the devices are not WiFi 6. But in generally older WiFi devices should work with the new standard. 

[EchoBlue]

Now I am hearing about WiFi 6E?!!! 

Also if someone can suggest some good router brands... Please.

[Donut417]

3 minutes ago, EchoBlue said:

WiFi 6E?!!! 

They are looking to add 6Ghz in to the mix. 

[EchoBlue]

What is so special about 6Ghz?? 

[Donut417]

4 minutes ago, EchoBlue said:

What is so special about 6Ghz?? 

It will be faster, or at least that the general correlation when going up in frequency. Though it will likely have less range and penetration power than 5Ghz. 

[EchoBlue]

Less range and penetration power than 5Ghz but faster than 5Ghz? 

If it's range you care about then there is no point looking at WiFi 6E Routers?

I am planning to switch my ISP. I had enough getting ripped off... They keep raising the monthly bill... Luckily found a ISP that is honest and very friendly pricing for the speed that you get. But they require you to have your own modem and router and I think the router is the most important part. 

Is it worth buying a WiFi 6 router now? I will be buying devices that is WiFi 6 enabled.

[Donut417]

4 minutes ago, EchoBlue said:

Is it worth buying a WiFi 6 router now? I will be buying devices that is WiFi 6 enabled.

Thats a decision you have to make for yourself. I myself won't touch WiFi 6 for at least a year. Giving time for them to work out the bugs and to figure out if 6Ghz is important or not. I figure that a decent quality router will also be cheaper in a year. But you have to make that choice. Are you going to be a first adopter or you going to wait? 

[EchoBlue]

1 hour ago, Donut417 said:

Thats a decision you have to make for yourself. I myself won't touch WiFi 6 for at least a year. Giving time for them to work out the bugs and to figure out if 6Ghz is important or not. I figure that a decent quality router will also be cheaper in a year. But you have to make that choice. Are you going to be a first adopter or you going to wait? 

I would normally wait for moments like this but... Maybe buy a cheap WiFi 5 router for now??

[StDragon]

4 hours ago, Donut417 said:

Thats a decision you have to make for yourself. I myself won't touch WiFi 6 for at least a year. Giving time for them to work out the bugs and to figure out if 6Ghz is important or not. I figure that a decent quality router will also be cheaper in a year. But you have to make that choice. Are you going to be a first adopter or you going to wait? 

THIS! So this. Sage advice!

 

That said however. If I personally had to get a WiFi 6 router today, I would be pulling for the AmpliFi (Ubiquiti, Inc) ALIEN. But agreed, I'd wait for all the hardware bugs to be cleared up from 1st gen product launches of any new standard. Future firmware patching can only go so far.

[Alex Atkin UK]

1 minute ago, StDragon said:

THIS! So this. Sage advice!

 

That said however. If I personally had to get a WiFi 6 router today, I would be pulling for the AmpliFi (Ubiquiti, Inc) ALIEN. But agreed, I'd wait for all the hardware bugs to be cleared up from 1st gen product launches of any new standard. Future firmware patching can only go so far.

Most importantly for the WiFi 6 specification to actually be ratified so that we know the chipsets in use actually support 100% of the final specification.

Its disgusting that the manufacturers can sell hardware as WiFi 6 under their own branding (the WiFi alliance) when its not an official standard yet.  Everyone buying WiFi 6 hardware right now are effectively beta testers with no guarantees their hardware will be fully supported on full WiFi 6 clients.  They are making a mockery of the procedures we have in place to officially define WiFi specifications.

I got burned with early 802.11n phase where none of that hardware was compatible with the final specification so had to be replaced to get the speed improvement.  At least back then they did say it was pre-n, as in not guaranteed to work with the final specification (not that your casual user would understand that).  They aren't even bothering to warn people this time around.

I mean apart from 6Ghz there's a good chance the specification wont change so everything will be fine, but its not guaranteed.

[Alex Atkin UK]

5 hours ago, EchoBlue said:

Less range and penetration power than 5Ghz but faster than 5Ghz? 

If it's range you care about then there is no point looking at WiFi 6E Routers?

Poorer range is actually part of the advantage of 6Ghz, you're less likely to interfere with your neighbours so should get more consistent speeds.

https://www.duckware.com/tech/wifi-in-the-us.html#wifi6e

It also doesn't use DFS, which is where if your WiFi picks up RADAR in use nearby (eg if you are on a flight path) it drops you back to channel 36 where every other network will also be the same channel, causing a huge speed reduction and latency.

I almost always use my laptops in the same room as the WiFi AP so I'm hugely looking forward to 6Ghz and am a little disappointed 60Ghz wasn't included.  I don't want to ever have to physically plug them in to transfer files between them at top speed, because if I have to do that I will be right next to the WiFi anyway (as its where the ethernet ports are) so why not just use a very short range, super fast wireless link instead?

Another advantage of 6Ghz is its a much wider frequency range which again means less likely to be treading on the toes of nearby networks, in a business this is even bigger as you might want a WiFi transmitter in every room on a different channel to each other for optimum performance.

You simply can't have really high speed AND really long range, they are mutually exclusive as the longer the range, the more interference from everyone else, the slower the speed and higher the chance of latency problems.

[StDragon]

33 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

You simply can't have really high speed AND really long range, they are mutually exclusive as the longer the range, the more interference from everyone else, the slower the speed and higher the chance of latency problems.

Yeah, that's the trade-off. Higher freqs give more throughput but at the expense of range and penetration through solid objects. It's just an attribute of physics.

 

That said, the appeal of WiFi 6 over WiFi 5 isn't so much the added throughput insomuch as the reduction in latency and packet loss. It's been often said that WiFi 6 will be the equivalent of wireless "Ethernet". For video streamers (where buffering is used) and general computing, WiFi 5 is fine. But WiFi 6 will be the stuff that gaming, telecommuting (Zoom meetings, etc) and VOIP demands for those UDP packets.

[Alex Atkin UK]

35 minutes ago, StDragon said:

Yeah, that's the trade-off. Higher freqs give more throughput but at the expense of range and penetration through solid objects. It's just an attribute of physics.

 

That said, the appeal of WiFi 6 over WiFi 5 isn't so much the added throughput insomuch as the reduction in latency and packet loss. It's been often said that WiFi 6 will be the equivalent of wireless "Ethernet". For video streamers (where buffering is used) and general computing, WiFi 5 is fine. But WiFi 6 will be the stuff that gaming, telecommuting (Zoom meetings, etc) and VOIP demands for those UDP packets.

The problem is you only get those WiFi 6 benefits if all clients are WiFi 6.  This is doubly frustrating as it FINALLY brings superior speeds to 2.4Ghz, but there are so many WiFi 5 networks on that frequency that you'd have to be living in the middle of nowhere to benefit. (granted, some people ARE and the improved speed at long range will be appreciated)

So ideally you'd have one 5Ghz channel for WiFi 5 devices, and another for WiFi 6.  Even then, some of those benefits are negated if your neighbours are also using the same channel as your WiFi 6 network.

This is another reason 6Ghz is good news, as you guarantee every single client will be WiFi 6.  This would finally make public WiFi more reliable as the devices will place nicer with each other, plus with more channels available two nearby networks are less likely to be on the same channel.

[StDragon]

8 hours ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

The problem is you only get those WiFi 6 benefits if all clients are WiFi 6.  This is doubly frustrating as it FINALLY brings superior speeds to 2.4Ghz, but there are so many WiFi 5 networks on that frequency that you'd have to be living in the middle of nowhere to benefit. (granted, some people ARE and the improved speed at long range will be appreciated)

So ideally you'd have one 5Ghz channel for WiFi 5 devices, and another for WiFi 6.  Even then, some of those benefits are negated if your neighbours are also using the same channel as your WiFi 6 network.

This is another reason 6Ghz is good news, as you guarantee every single client will be WiFi 6.  This would finally make public WiFi more reliable as the devices will place nicer with each other, plus with more channels available two nearby networks are less likely to be on the same channel.

IMHO, I've written the 2.4Ghz band off completely. It's so heavily used by all sorts of industries precisely because it's unregulated by the FCC. Totally crowded! I mean, it is regulated in terms of amplitude, but anything from 2,400 to 2,483.5 Mhz can be used for WiFi. The reason is because of the Microwave oven which operates around 2,450 Mhz with older/cheaper units having some form of leakage when in use. No kidding! So, the 2.4Ghz ISM band was created. FCC was basically, like "eff it, it's polluted, let's just turn it into an ISM freq range"

 

So that leaves 5Ghz which seems to be managed better and is less crowded. Although that's more to do with isolation from other sources due to SNR levels between client and WiFi AP/Router. But I agree, if 5Ghz band is heavily utilized, the benefits of WiFi 6 in that band would be little gained if any at all. Though, I still want to see how well it manages through it as a comparison between WiFi 5 and WiFi 6 standards, arguments of practicalities aside.

 

In the end, I'm not sure how well it will help until 2.4Ghz is freed up 10+ years from now of pre-WiFi 6 equipment. Due to range and issues of freq penetration, 5Ghz is very spotty in the home I currently live in; specifically when I'm as far apart as I can be. 2.4Ghz (for obvious reasons) works better at longer range, but the SNR is piss poor due to the aforementioned over-utilization.  So in my specific case, 6Ghz won't be all that much help to me. Might not be usable to me at all. Really through, it's probably me just being stubborn by refusing to install a mesh-point or extender 

[Alex Atkin UK]

23 minutes ago, StDragon said:

IMHO, I've written the 2.4Ghz band off completely.

Well its usable for low bandwidth devices.

I've had WiFi since WiFi 1 and I have noticed 2.4Ghz slow down as more people adopted it, but its also starting to speed back up again now people are using 5Ghz.  So never say never, its its still useful when its the difference between nothing and something.  But 6Ghz is going to be very useful to me personally as even 5Ghz is wildly inconsistent.

[EchoBlue]

Wow. Thank you guys for all those juicy info. 

I'll hold off on WiFi 6 router until next year or so. WiFi 6 seems very promising!!

Thank you.

[FarmerBob]

Although WiFi6 is backwards compatible, since the standard is not completely ratified and there is word of 7 & 8 in the works there are a ton of variables that either help or interfere with service. I have a higher end WiFi6 Mesh network and the protocol does help AC/Legacy gear and the increased radiation cloud via multiple APs, makes it easier to get service further out. But there are interpolation issues depending on how old the "Legacy Gear" is. As mentioned, "it is Promising" and will be more so once the standard is finalized. But it's not ready. Just a pricey toy to get "first adopters" to bite.

Oh, I didn't pay for mine . . .