hey everyone welcome back to today in tech I'm Juliet Beauchamp I am here with
Network world senior writer Jon Gold and today we're going to be talking
about Wi-Fi six and Wi-Fi 6e so stick around alright John thank you so much
for calling in so Wi-Fi six we know maybe a little bit
about but I want to talk about first what Wi-Fi six is and why Wi-Fi five
wasn't good enough well I mean the short answer is when is any of this stuff good
enough you know it takes about iterating and improving you know that sort of
thing Wi-Fi six is such a big deal largely
because it's just it's probably the biggest evolution of you know you the
basic Wi-Fi standard in a long time it's the way it handles you know it has two
technologies in it that are particularly they're called OFDM a and mu-mimo
if I can probably remember it's
orthogonal frequency-division multiple access which I'm going to pretend I
remember it off the top of my head but in essence what these are are just
clever ways to help subdivide you know the amounts of spectrum that Wi-Fi is
using to send the information back and forth and it's just the with the upshot
being that it's just a lot more efficient and you know a lot better able
to handle really dense deployments of devices so can we also talk a little bit
about what the first acronym that you mentioned the multi-user mimo because
that's also a pretty big deal on a slight upgrade from Wi-Fi v right yes
it's a know technology is multiple-input multiple-output single-user mimo is just
the ability to use multiple antennas at one end of the device to add one out of
circuit to send information to you know to somebody with somebody else
multi-user mimo is you know the ability to use all those different antenna to
you know make a bunch of different connections so you know it's just that
much more able to you know again have one access point being incredibly able
to deal with like a lot of connections at the same time
great so the short answer of why y56 is such an upgrade from Wi-Fi five and why
it's perhaps more desirable than Wi-Fi five is basically more efficient more
channels speed and density basically yeah that's about right okay so it's
obviously a really appealing solution and I know I talked about this maybe a
week or so ago when I did a video with Jack old who is not you and we time so
we talked a little bit about how everyone's working from home now and
everyone's also relying therefore on their home networks which in some cases
maybe is enough maybe someone is really into getting you know the
top-of-the-line highest speeds that there are ISP offers and maybe some
people are still working off of their Wi-Fi networks or routers that are years
and years old I mean it's potential that they're still working off of Wi-Fi for
right so something that we talked about is the appeal of Wi-Fi six-four
I mean potential employers to have their employees their remote employees upgrade
to Wi-Fi 6 how easy is that transition right now for just you know your
layperson Wi-Fi user oh I mean just if you're talking about upgrading remote
workers to that sort of to the new standard yeah it's um it's pretty easy
you just need to buy them a new router and they can plug it in if they're able
to do this I would imagine most remote workers can handle it so it's yeah it's
quite easy and that's and that's a really good way I think I think the only
issue was that with home connections a lot of the time what's gonna happen is
that Wi-Fi 6 is going to be just almost like too much capacity and of itself
like you're gonna be you're still gonna be bottlenecked by however fast your
home internet connection you know is to begin with so I wonder how much exactly
how much it will help but you know it's it is you know better newer technology
it certainly couldn't hurt and I think another big caveat and I talk about this
so much especially in regards to 5g I mean with 5g seems like it's you know
that hype wireless technology of the moment but if you don't have a wireless
device that is equipped with 5g capabilities you can't really benefit
from these 5g networks is that similar for Wi-Fi six um it was until fairly
recently but we've actually got Wi-Fi six capable endpoints on the market now
some of the latest laptops latest flagship phones from like Apple and
Samsung I'll have it I believe um so it's we're hitting that inflection point
where it's gonna start being you know sort of the you know the common standard
for everything so let's shift gears a little bit now and talk about Wi-Fi 6e
which so how is that different from wise five six I feel like that's the most
important question right now well broadly what happened was um this is you
know a new tech know the wireless industry's been angling for this for a
long time it's and the FCC recently just made a big decision that opened this
huge amount of spectrum in the six gigahertz range which again they've been
after for a long time too you know so this is I believe I was reading that
it's something like four or five times as much spectrum as no Wi-Fi in general
has had in the past so this is you know just an enormous amount of new bandwidth
for them to play with you know it Wi-Fi 60 will let you use just huge
channels and lots of them at once to send data around so again you know the
advantages are going to be you know faster speeds and you know better and a
better ability to handle multiple connections so it's just you know been a
big improvement over the top what's a real world scenario that maybe our
viewers can look at to better understand how Wi-Fi 6ii is different than Wi-Fi
six and even Wi-Fi five well I don't know what a I guess a real-world
scenario would look like but I guess just the thing to remember is that it's
you know again it's like Wi-Fi but you know with you know a huge amount of
extra capacity you know just you know access to these airwaves that they
haven't had access to before and it's yeah they're very excited we've got you
know there's been a lot of celebrating my inbox from wireless equipment makers
lately they're very pleased it was in the interesting thing is actually done
you know partially over the objections of no other sort of stakeholders there's
been you know had licensed use of the six gigahertz band for a long time and
it's I believe it sort of butts up against things like GPS and GLONASS
and so I think for example like the Defense Department wasn't happy about it
but you know just the potential for you know opening up this huge new area of
spectrum to unlicensed use guess the FCC decided it was it was worth it so so
who's gonna be able to use that new band so previously the available bands were
2.4 and 5 gigahertz right yes so who is going to be able to now use the 6
gigahertz band is it any provider is that what makes it sort of unlicensed
yeah it's it's it's there for Wi-Fi so anybody who makes you know you can make
a router that will you know label it Wi-Fi six beam and if it has the right
radios and everything and it's up to standard it will be able to use those
those new frequencies so let's think a little bit now about consumers okay
great they now have their Wi-Fi six enabled iPhone 11 and they have a Wi-Fi
six router at home and they're it's great it's awesome they can connect you
know tons of iPhone 11s to their Wi-Fi six router but can they connect to this
Wi-Fi 6e yeah you're gonna need that's going to require you know it's gonna
require a new kinds of radios in everything in access points and in
endpoints I from what I'm hearing I believe we'll probably see you know sort
of first-generation possibly even pre standard Wi-Fi 60 access points hit the
market you know maybe in time for the holidays
this year which is already pretty quick and in the grand scheme of things and
then they start seeing endpoints and then probably you know more enterprise
focus Matz's points you know pro early ish next year I would say so obviously
before any of this happens you know device
makers need to make the actual router devices clients or other sort of it user
devices you know laptops phones maybe IOT devices need to those need to be
created but let's talk first about the standards water I mean just because it's
unlicensed doesn't really mean it's gonna be a free-for-all right
no the the I Triple E is the group that you know sort of handles all the
standard making for this and they they you know they move at their own pace and
you know their ton of industry stakeholders in there so it's you know
at least partially driven by the industry itself but you know sometimes
you'll get you know companies with they're you know if they're particularly
confident that you know they can make some you know a piece of equipment
that's going to be compatible with you know the eventual official Wi-Fi 60
standard they'll make it solid as Wi-Fi 60 even since that is technically still
a marketing term I believe they still use the 802 double 11 whatever
officially but yeah so you'll get pretty standard gear like that in some place
alright so before I let you go John I think I just want to sort of you know
set our viewers expectations in order so if they are if they are looking to
deploy you know once all of their employees are back into the office and
they're they work in the IT department can they deploy Wi-Fi six now what is
what sort of devices do their employees need and then I also want to thank a
little bit about Wi-Fi six when and what is the benefit for some types of
enterprises to use either or I think broadly everyone's gonna want to upgrade
to Wi-Fi six at some point it just a lot of it's going to depend on what your
upgrade cycle looks like it which in turn will depend on what industry are in
you know any number of variables specific to your business itself so
that's you know I'm sorry not to be more specific but the upshot is everyone's
gonna want it eventually um you know every every endpoint is eventually going
to have it it's just you know it's gonna be the new standard and it's gonna be
and it's already starting to happen frankly so and
just one more thing I'm curious about since this now six
secure band is going to be unlicensed how will some companies or departments
agencies who have been operating now on this six gigahertz band how are they
going to be dealing with any potential interference is there a potential for
interference that the answer to that depends largely who you ask the why
wireless industry says of course not there are many safeguards built into
this new the standard there's no there's no potential for interference at all
the current stakeholders who are in there say well actually no there's a lot
of potential still for interference but it's to be honest it's tough to tell you
know analysts I've spoken to seem to think that the potential for you know
seriously impacting something like GPS is fairly remote but you know again this
is there's a lot of back-and-forth about that still well thank you so much John
for calling in and talking Wi-Fi six and Wi-Fi six II I really appreciate it
thanks for having me and thank you all so much for watching this episode of
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or even Wi-Fi five please leave a comment below and I'll get back to you
or I'll get back to you on John's behalf thanks again for watching and we'll see
you next time