Wi-Fi 6E Standard For 6 GHz

I like that they're finally improving scheduling between client devices, but I haven't heard much about range.

Will I need to be < 10f' from my router to see speed the benefit? Because, if that's the case I'd rather just use a cable and be happier with lower latency any way.
 
I like that they're finally improving scheduling between client devices, but I haven't heard much about range.

Will I need to be < 10f' from my router to see speed the benefit? Because, if that's the case I'd rather just use a cable and be happier with lower latency any way.
If it does end up that way, it'll probably be reserved for mesh networking devices, and maybe those kiosky things at restaurants. Of course, client devices like laptops and phones will have to support it as well, but desktops may be left out if getting a signal from behind a desk ends up being a big problem.
 
I like that they're finally improving scheduling between client devices, but I haven't heard much about range.

Will I need to be < 10f' from my router to see speed the benefit? Because, if that's the case I'd rather just use a cable and be happier with lower latency any way.

It shouldn't be much less range than 5GHz. The upper 5GHz band is actually around 5.8GHz, and the new 6GHz stuff will be in the 5.9-7.1GHz area. So higher frequency, and thus less penetration, but not a lot. It isn't like 60GHz WiFi which is technically a thing (802.11ad) but nobody uses because you do have to be in the same room for it to work. So I would expect range to generally be similar to 5GHz, though it'll diminish with the upper most bands. However there's a lot of spectrum in the lower 6GHz range that should effectively work just like the existing 5.8GHz WiFi, just more channels.
 
I figure it'll be a year or 2 before i consider it. Pries will be high, and it's almost always best to wait for the kinks to be ironed out. Besides, for now, I'm not bandwidth limited.
 
So, I told the new guy he'd be testing 800VAC ground fault circuit interruptors for USB5.1 over twinax.
Told him the spec wasn't finished aside from being able to deliver 250W over 250 yards. Comms were
expected to resemble Ecotooth Black, only over a wire. He needs to start studying up for it, start with
taking apart the GFCI outlet in the men's room. Let me know how that goes...

Not actually gonna let him attempt anything dangerous, unsupervised, untrained, or unisolated.
We got legit high voltage products to put him on later.

Special
High
Intensity
Training

-edit- So, wifi 6e is like an actual thing now? Not just funnin me? Googlieyed it, therefore
must be true. Can't put stuff on googlieye if it ain't true. Like twatter, or twiddle, whatever.

TPLinkC5400X.png


If I woke up one day as the anti-christ, I'd be wearin one of these fo sure. Better check...
Nevermind. 6lbs shipped, not 6e. Not even 6 gigglyhurts. Damn Googlieye.
 
Last edited:
I like that they're finally improving scheduling between client devices, but I haven't heard much about range.

Will I need to be < 10f' from my router to see speed the benefit? Because, if that's the case I'd rather just use a cable and be happier with lower latency any way.

well just got a WIFI 6 router. The TP Link AX50 my wired connection gets 180Mb/8ms in room over garage. downstairs on other side of 2 story house now gets 170Mb/10ms Haven't tested outside yet but don't have any mobile devices w/ 802.11ax nic in it. guess i can check range on my tablet tomorrow and let you know if it's any better but i'm assuming it is. Upgrading from 802.11g network :)
 
well just got a WIFI 6 router. The TP Link AX50 my wired connection gets 180Mb/8ms in room over garage. downstairs on other side of 2 story house now gets 170Mb/10ms Haven't tested outside yet but don't have any mobile devices w/ 802.11ax nic in it. guess i can check range on my tablet tomorrow and let you know if it's any better but i'm assuming it is. Upgrading from 802.11g network :)

Mb or MB?
 
I read where each channel is 160mhz. Wonder how wide the allocated band will be? If the channel count is low, we will have the same problem current wifi has, too many devices fighting over too few channels, only the fights will be faster.
 
Soon faster than straight copper aside from the latency:

"Wi-Fi 6E is a new standard that signifies which devices support 6 GHz Wi-Fi. These devices will be able to interact on the soon-to-be-released 6 GHz spectrum. Once the 6 GHz band receives the necessary regulatory approvals, the Wi-Fi 6E standard can go live."

https://www.tomshardware.com/news/wi-fi-alliance-announces-wi-fi-6e-standard-for-6-ghz-support

Technically it's only faster in 4 x 4 configurations.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11ax

160mhz, 800ns GI, 1024 QAM on MCS11 nets you a 1201mbps connection rate in half duplex. Take off the overhead, (1201 x 60%) 720.6mbps for real data usage per channel.

1 spatial stream
720.6

2 spatial streams
1,441.2

3 spatial streams
2161.8

4 spatial streams
2,882.4

Gigabit Ethernet is defined as 1000mbps per direction, so 2000mbps. So in a real world test I would guess that a 3 x 3:3 configuration would be almost tied with a gig connection (probably still slower honestly), but I would actually expect a 4 x 4:4 connection to outpace a gig link. The two main caveats is that for most people full duplex doesn't matter, so a 2 x 2:2 is likely close enough to be considered equal for them, and that it's very possible that my overhead calculation is wrong now. For the past 15 years or so, real world tends to suggest that a 60% is a fairly decent number for determining how much speed is lost due to overhead. (Overhead is about 40% with WPA2, it used to be over 50% back in the WEP days) With the advent of WPA3 and the newer modulation on AX, I'm hoping that overhead number will be going down again and we'll have more bandwidth for the same connection speed. I haven't seen any articles talk about this yet, so it will be interesting to see when someone does.



I read where each channel is 160mhz. Wonder how wide the allocated band will be? If the channel count is low, we will have the same problem current wifi has, too many devices fighting over too few channels, only the fights will be faster.

The official post has this info:

6 GHz addresses Wi-Fi spectrum shortage by providing contiguous spectrum blocks to accommodate 14 additional 80 MHz channels and 7 additional 160 MHz channels which are needed for high-bandwidth applications that require faster data throughput such as high-definition video streaming and virtual reality.

https://www.wi-fi.org/news-events/newsroom/wi-fi-alliance-brings-wi-fi-6-into-6-ghz

7 is quite a lot. They are allocating the full 6ghz and then some for this. There shouldn't be any issues using 160mhz channels in this band and having plenty of reuse options for density. You could leave 2.4ghz open for old N devices, use AC only in 5ghz, then AX only in 6ghz. That would cover basically any device that anyone could have, and would allow you to optimize the performance for each one.
 
Mb or MB?
Mb but i'm paying the same for a plan that was originally 25 down/5 up so i can live w/ 180 on the wire and 170 to ax 2x2 intel wireless nic (GIGABYTE GC-Wbax200)

way faster internet w/ just a router upgrade

that's according to speedtest.net
 
Last edited:
As an Amazon Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
The official post has this info:



https://www.wi-fi.org/news-events/newsroom/wi-fi-alliance-brings-wi-fi-6-into-6-ghz

7 is quite a lot. They are allocating the full 6ghz and then some for this. There shouldn't be any issues using 160mhz channels in this band and having plenty of reuse options for density. You could leave 2.4ghz open for old N devices, use AC only in 5ghz, then AX only in 6ghz. That would cover basically any device that anyone could have, and would allow you to optimize the performance for each one.

7 x160MHz channels really is the killer app; with only 1 or23 160MHz channels available at 5GHz (depending on national regulation and if you're too close to a priority user of the band like an airport) would lead to a level of conflicts about as bad as the mess on 2.4Ghz.

Now we just have to hope wifi 7 doesn't come out with 320 and 640 MHz channels and collapse everything to tragedy of the commons fail again.
 
7 x160MHz channels really is the killer app; with only 1 or23 160MHz channels available at 5GHz (depending on national regulation and if you're too close to a priority user of the band like an airport) would lead to a level of conflicts about as bad as the mess on 2.4Ghz.

Now we just have to hope wifi 7 doesn't come out with 320 and 640 MHz channels and collapse everything to tragedy of the commons fail again.

Agreed. A not-already-compromised expanse of spectrum is a huge deal.

I truly don't think wifi 7 will go in that direction (single giant channel). It's going to be more about multiple radios and aggregating multiple subchannels. Everything is going wide with multiple radios.

That said, I'm sure someone will ruin it with some horrid early offering. MajorConsumerVendorA will make the Arecebo9900 and destroy wifi for an entire city block so someone can download cat pictures... no faster than they could otherwise.
 
I don't understand this mess, or why we need channels.
Spread spectrum wide till everything is below noise floor.
Mix with a secret key that is correlated in time brings
one relevant signal out of the floor by making it skinny.

Uncorrellated jamming noise (microwave oven) spread
wide and thin on reception by the same mixing process
that narrows the one signal you have the key to detect.

Intentional transmissions spread too thin to jam others.
And futher spread on reception with incompatible key.

Not anything new...
 
Last edited:
7 x160MHz channels really is the killer app; with only 1 or23 160MHz channels available at 5GHz (depending on national regulation and if you're too close to a priority user of the band like an airport) would lead to a level of conflicts about as bad as the mess on 2.4Ghz.

Now we just have to hope wifi 7 doesn't come out with 320 and 640 MHz channels and collapse everything to tragedy of the commons fail again.

Without a doubt I fully expect another generation to come along and spoil the party. We've already seen the push from 20mhz, to 40mhz where it shouldn't even be allowed. Then the push from 40 to 80, and finally 160mhz in yet another block that really shouldn't be supporting 160mhz channels. If you need that kind of bandwidth, you should be using more spatial streams to accomplish it. I'm hoping that maybe MU-MIMO becomes more prominent and actually worthwhile, because then there is an actual advantage to having a base station with 8 or even 16 antennas on it. That alone will make more bandwidth than going wide can if it works as intended. You simply won't need to go as wide if you have an AP with 8 antennas on it, and 4 2 x 2 devices are able to use the spectrum at exactly the same time. That means up to a 4x increase in bandwidth in best case scenarios.

One good thing is that 802.11ax brings along another important feature, "Coloring". "Coloring enables devices to differentiate transmissions in their own network from transmissions in neighboring networks."

"Without spatial reuse capabilities devices refuse transmitting concurrently to transmissions ongoing in other, neighboring networks. With coloring, a wireless transmission is marked at its very beginning helping surrounding devices to decide if a simultaneous use of the wireless medium is permissible or not. A station is allowed to consider the wireless medium as idle and start a new transmission even if the detected signal level from a neighboring network exceeds legacy signal detection threshold, provided that the transmit power for the new transmission is appropriately decreased."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11ax

This basically means that two devices using the same channel can detect if their transmissions need to be listened to or not. In the past if one wireless device saw another wireless device, it would try to communicate with it so that they would not transmit at the same time. Coloring lets two devices talk at the same time on the same frequency provided they can do it without causing interference with another device. This will be most important for office areas and apartment builds where the AP can see 3 other APs on the same channel. Even though they are there, as long as they can talk to their client both APs will now be able to transmit at the same time provided they lower the power level to not interfere with each other's transmissions.
 
Back
Top