Wi-Fi 6, The Difference

Wi-Fi 6 is the next-generation wireless standard that’s faster than  802.11ac. More than speed, it will provide better performance in  congested areas, from stadiums to your own device-packed home. Wi-Fi 6  officially arrived in late 2019, and Wi-Fi 6-enabled hardware was  released throughout 2020.

Yes, Wi-Fi now has version numbers! Even those old confusing Wi-Fi  standard names like “802.11ac” have been renamed to user-friendly names  like “Wi-Fi 5.”

Here are the versions of Wi-Fi you’ll  be seeing:

• Wi-Fi 4 is 802.11n, released in 2009.
• Wi-Fi 5 is 802.11ac, released in 2014.
• Wi-Fi 6 is the new version, also known as 802.11ax. It was released in 2019.

The Wi-Fi Alliance also announced would like to see these numbers appear in software so you can tell  which Wi-Fi network is newer and faster while connecting on your  smartphone, tablet, or laptop. You may be seeing Wi-Fi numbers on your  phone, tablet, or laptop soon.

Older versions of Wi-Fi aren’t widely in use and aren’t officially  being branded. But, if they were, here’s what they’d be called:

• Wi-Fi 1 would have been 802.11b, released in 1999.
• Wi-Fi 2 would have been 802.11a, also released in 1999.
• Wi-Fi 3 would have been 802.11g, released in 2003.

You don’t really need to know the details. A Wi-Fi 6 access point with  a Wi-Fi 6 device will work better. But here’s what’s going on under the  hood:

Wi-Fi 6 can now divide a wireless channel into a large number of  subchannels. Each of these subchannels can carry data intended for a  different device. This is achieved through something called Orthogonal  Frequency Division Multiple Access, or OFDMA. The Wi-Fi access point can  talk to more devices at once.

The new riderless standard also has improved MIMO—Multiple  In/Multiple Out. This involves multiple antennas, which let the access  point talk to multiple devices at once. With Wi-Fi 5, the access point  could talk to devices at the same time, but those devices couldn’t  respond at the same time. Wi-Fi 6 has an improved version of multi-user  or MU-MIMO that lets devices respond to the wireless access point at the same time.

Wireless access points near each other may be transmitting on the  same channel. In this case, the radio listens and waits for a clear  signal before replying. With Wi-Fi 6, wireless access points near each  other can be configured to have different Basic Service Set (BSS)  “colors.” This “color” is just a number between 0 and 7. If a device is  checking whether the channel is all clear and listens in, it may notice a  transmission with a weak signal and a different “color.” It can then  ignore this signal and transmit anyway without waiting, so this will  improve performance in congested areas, and is also called “spatial  frequency re-use.”

These are just some of the most interesting things, but the new WI-Fi  standard also includes many smaller improvements. Wi-Fi 6 will also  include improved beamforming, for example.

Source: https://www.howtogeek.com/368332/wi-fi-6-what%E2%80%99s-different-and-why-it-matters/