The latest generation of Wi-Fi is here.
It's actually been around for a little bit recently, which is
Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E by extension.
Now the technical term is actually 802.11ax, but I guess they figured the
number system works a little bit better.
So the previous one, 802.11ac
is there for Wi-Fi 5, but the latest one is 6.
Now the other one, Wi-Fi 6E, you might not have heard of.
It's still part of Wi-Fi 6, but has one important additional
feature which is actually huge.
So what I'll do is first explain what that big difference is.
And then also how Wi-Fi 6 and 6E are both way better than Wi-Fi ac or Wi-Fi 5,
the previous one.
And of course, I'll try to break down the really technical stuff and
explain it as simply as possible.
So you don't have to be some kind of expert.
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And now let's continue.
So what is the deal with Wi-Fi 6 and 6E?
Well for context, I do want to point out they both do have the same
features and improvements over Wi-Fi 5.
I'll go over what all those are afterwards, and they include all
of these things, but it's important to know that 6 and 6E do have
basically the same functionality.
However, the difference comes in the frequency spectrums.
So while Wi-Fi 6 supports the same 2.4 and 5 GHz bands as previous Wi-Fi 5, Wi-Fi
6E will actually support an additional third 6 GHz band that was just recently
opened up by the FCC and registered for unlicensed use, meaning Wi-Fi can use it.
And other countries are also opening up part of the 6 GHz
band, all for use in Wi-Fi.
And this might not sound like a big deal, "oh we already have dual
bands, why do we need three bands?"
But it actually is a huge deal and I'll explain why.
Practically speaking though, what does this mean?
How is it any better?
Well, the biggest benefit is going to be in spectrally noisy areas.
And what I mean by that is areas that have a lot of Wi-Fi signals bouncing
around a lot of access points and routers.
For example offices, apartment buildings, public venues, stuff where a lot
of people are going to be on their phones and all connecting to similar
Wi-Fi hotspots.
With this new spectrum, it's going to allow a whole bunch
more space for Wi-Fi channels.
So different access points don't have to be competing over it, and it's
going to have way less interference.
You see when you set up a router, you have to choose, or have it auto
choose, a single channel it's going to operate on and then all your
devices are going to be connecting
on that single channel.
And the channel is basically a certain range of the full 2.4, 5, or 6 GHz range.
You only choose a small part of it.
The fewer the channels, then the more those are going to have
to be shared by nearby access points such as your neighbors.
If you have more than three neighbors, like an apartment complex nearby,
then there is going to be some overlap, and you're going to have to
both be potentially using the same channel, it's going to
cause a lot of interference.
And the current 2.4 GHz, especially, but also 5 GHz range, both have some
shortcomings that 6 GHz will solve.
Consider 2.4 GHz, for example.
The most common one, ironically.
Did you know that there are literally only three non-overlapping channels on 2.4 GHz?
And it's used by a whole bunch of other stuff,
not just Wi-Fi.
It's used by Bluetooth, baby monitors, car alarm sensors and stuff, even
garage door openers, microwave's when you run them, and not to mention a
whole bunch of different smart home protocols like ZigBee and stuff.
I mean, it's a mess.
Now the 5 GHz spectrum should theoretically have fixed this.
I mean, it's got the entire 5 GHz to work with, so that's way more
than the basically 100 MHz of 2.4.
So why is 6 GHz so much better, even though 5 GHz is basically the same amount
of frequency, and we have that now?
Well, in reality, the actual really usable amount of the 5 GHz spectrum
is not as big as you might think.
Now it is significantly bigger than 2.4 GHz.
For example, where 2.4 only has three non-overlapping, 20 MHz wide channels.
5 GHz has 25 channels.
Except not really.
You see 16 of those 25, 5 GHz channels are what are called DFS
channels: Dynamic Frequency Selection.
These are channels that happen to share the same frequency used by radar from
airports, weather radar, stuff like that.
And there's actually a law in the United States and elsewhere that basically says
because radar was used before and they don't want Wi-Fi interfering with it,
even though Wi-Fi can technically use these channels, all Wi-Fi devices and
routers have to have technology built in to be able to detect radar signals.
And if it does, it has to shut off the Wi-Fi, which means if you live near
an airport or near a weather radar station that's sweeping by all the time,
then those DFS channels are probably going to be completely useless to you.
And also because of these restrictions, a lot of consumer grade routers don't
even allow you to select these channels.
Because if people didn't know about this and they started using those channels,
and then their Wi-Fi kept randomly cutting out, then they would probably blame the
router for having crappy connectivity when it's just following the law.
So they don't even let you connect to those.
So really you have a very limited number of those 5 GHz channels that
don't have this restriction in there.
So really you only end up with nine truly free Wi-Fi channels, which is still better
than 2.4, but with five GHz ac Wi-Fi.
There's actually a technology that a lot of routers use, or are able to use, where
it combines different multiple channels.
So you can have 40 MHz channels made of two 20 MHz channels or even 80 or 160 MHz
wide channels, combining a whole bunch.
And usually, an ac router is going to try and by default do about 40 MHz wide.
And considering the DFS channels, that means there are only about
four 40 MHz wide usable channels
if you're going to do that.
It's not required, but it will get you the higher speeds.
If you are in a very, very crowded environment, then you will probably have
to only use 20 MHz wide, even on 5 GHz.
And then if you wanted to use a 80 MHz wide channel, there's only two of those.
And with the 160 MHz, then both of them are either completely engulfed or
partially engulfed by those DFS channels,
so you might not even want to use those.
But again, 5 GHz is still way better than 2.4 in pretty
much every way, except range.
It's faster, there's more channels.
But since those non DFS channels, which are limited, are pretty much the
standard ones, then it might not cut it going forward to be future-proof.
That's where 6 GHz comes in.
And the 6 GHz full spectrum is actually from 5.925 to 7.125 GHz.
That's actually 1200 MHz, a little bit more than a full GHz.
And that means it supports a whopping fifty-nine 20 MHz channels.
And then those can be divided into twenty-nine 40 MHz,
fourteen 80 MHz or seven 160 MHz.
However, there are some caveats.
For example, in the United States, the FCC did regulate which parts of that full
spectrum can be used outside with standard or higher power Wi-Fi access points.
And which can be used in lower power indoor use.
Now the good news is that for indoor use consumer uses, you
can use any of the channels.
All of them are allowed.
It's just that on outside routers, which might be used on venues and
stuff, then those are restricted and only 41 out of the 59 are usable there.
But still you don't have to worry about that restriction unless you're running
a business or something like that.
And it's still a whole bunch, 41 it's still a lot.
The other major caveat, which is the most unfortunate, is that if you're outside the
United States and Canada and some other countries, most of Europe, for example, is
not adopting yet the full 6 GHz spectrum.
They have only adopted an unlicensed use of 5925-6425 MHz range,
which is half of what the United States and Canada have done.
That means that those of you who are in Europe or elsewhere on this
map where it's labeled, are only going to have twenty-four new 20
MHz channels supported worldwide.
Now I'm really hoping, and it does seem like this is the case for now,
that Wi-Fi chip manufacturers are just going to by default add in the
capability for all of these chips to support the full 6E / 6 GHz spectrum.
And not just limit it because it's limited halfway in Europe, but they should
definitely at least add the capability to have the full thing and maybe enable it
by software later in case Europe does end up adopting the full 6 GHz spectrum, which
there has been some pressure to do that.
Though they haven't really talked about it yet.
But anyway, the basic huge benefit of 6 GHz is that you're going to have
way more space and able to not only have more channels, if you need less
interference, but you can also have way bigger channels that are going to
have a lot more bandwidth, especially if you're not in such a crowded area.
But what's also cool is with this many channels, say you're an outdoor
concert venue where there's thousands of people all on their phone.
And you, as the venue set up person, you could set up 40
different Wi-Fi access points, basically right next to each other.
And each of them could have their very own individual channel.
So even though they all connect to the same network, as people use
their devices to connect to the same Wi-Fi network, it'll show up as one
as a mesh network, but their phone will automatically connect to one
with the least interference.
It'll be able to balance across 40 different things and just to have way
less interference for all those people.
If that makes sense.
Now, there are only a handful of Wi-Fi, 6E devices so far.
I believe for in terms of routers, asus, Linksys and Netgear have a few.
And as for devices, I believe the Galaxy S21 Ultra has it.
And I believe the upcoming iPhone is supposed to be rumored to have it.
So it's coming along, just you know, it's going to take a little while and
you will have to upgrade your router to be able to use that, by the way.
Now I did say I'd go over some of the big ways that Wi-Fi 6 and 6E are both
way better than Wi-Fi 5, more than just having this extra new frequency.
First of all, it's a lot faster potentially.
So you can have up to 3.5 *Gigabits* per Wi-Fi stream, spatial stream
they're called, and you can have four of these (up to), depending
on how high-end the device is.
And therefore theoretically, one Wi-Fi router could have a
throughput of like 14 Gigabits per second, which is kind of insane.
The other big technological feature of Wi-Fi 6 is something called OFDMA.
This basically allows the router to split one channel into many subunits
and broadcast to several devices at once, for like every broadcast "pulse",
I guess you could say for every "time unit", it can then do multiple devices.
Whereas right now, they only send data on the whole channel to one device.
Now, technically if the router supports something called MU-MIMO, which is
multi-user multi-input multi-output, then it can technically talk to
multiple devices simultaneously, but this OFDMA will be another
way and be combined with that.
So it'll just be way more efficient and connect to a whole
bunch of different stuff at once.
And then there are several more technical improvements, all designed to
increase the efficiency of Wi-Fi 6 in particularly high density environments.
That was really the main goal when they were creating Wi-Fi 6, is to just be
used when there's a lot of density.
Because we're kind of experiencing that right now,
and just Wi-Fi devices becoming more ubiquitous.
Internet of things, lot more devices are going to be crowding
our waves, we need more space.
If you do want a much more full explanation of all the little
technical details and improvements Wi-Fi 6 does have, I did make a video
about that a couple of years ago.
So I went into detail there you can click on, I'll pop it out.
So yea, all that stuff though is for both 6 and 6E, it's just with
6E you get that extra bandwidth.
And I think that pretty much covers it.
So thanks again to Blinkist for sponsoring this video.
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I explained way more in detail the different advantages of Wi-Fi 6.
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