Wi-Fi's Biggest Upgrade in Decades is Starting To Arrive (theverge.com) 104
Wi-Fi is about to get a lot better. Many of this year's new phones, laptops, TVs, routers, and more will come with support for Wi-Fi 6E, a new upgrade to Wi-Fi that's essentially like expanding your wireless connection from a two-lane road to an eight-lane highway. From a report: It's the biggest upgrade to Wi-Fi in 20 years, and connections should be faster and a lot more reliable because of it. The Wi-Fi Alliance, the industry-wide group that oversees Wi-Fi, is now starting to certify the first wave of products with support for Wi-Fi 6E. Phones, PCs, and laptops with support should start hitting the market in the first months of 2021, according to the IDC research group, and TVs and VR devices with support are expected to arrive by the middle of the year. Some of the first devices are likely to be announced over the next week.
But does it cause COVID? (Score:5, Funny)
Or maybe susceptibility to conspiracy theories?
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This day and age, there isn't anything that cannot be susceptible to conspiracy theories.
People today seem to have a hard time existing in a world, where they are things happening that they may not fully understand, and actively distrust those who do understand those topics.
I don't care how smart you are, but they are things happening beyond your comprehension, but they are people who may understand them, but those people may not understand something that you truly know.
To compound the problem we have an eg
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Say you were an Auto Mechanic.
If your goal is to convince people to be more trusting, I don't think you could have possibly chosen a worse example.
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Say you were an Auto Mechanic.
If your goal is to convince people to be more trusting, I don't think you could have possibly chosen a worse example.
Sales, marketing, legal, politicians, religious leaders, stock brokers, hell its like shooting fish in a barrel.
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Ironically, you just made their point. Mechanics think, if the customers are going to be jerks, I might as well make as much money as I can. And when the customers discover they were ripped off, they start being jerks.
I just went through something similar -- The mechanic recommended a replacement, I asked questions, he got upset and kicked me out. The recommendation was in fact correct, but I wanted to be sure so I asked all the questions I could. But since I don't know how these things work, my questions w
is the range the same or is it like 5g where it's (Score:3)
is the range the same or is it like 5g where it's less?
Re:is the range the same or is it like 5g where it (Score:5, Insightful)
Higher frequencies effectively attenuate more quickly, especially through anything solid. Just like 5 GHz WiFi signals have less range than 2.4 GHz WiFi signals, WiFi signals in the 6 GHz extended band will have even less range. Going from 5 GHz to 6 GHz should be less than going from 2.4 GHz to 5 GHz, but it is likely to be noticeable.
On the other hand, you are likely to have less co-channel interference, especially at the start of WiFi 6E rollout. This tends to improve range and increase throughput at a fixed distance.
Re:is the range the same or is it like 5g where it (Score:4, Informative)
5G does not mean 5ghz. It means Fifth Generation (which itself is arguable). Most 5G signals are 3.3–4.2 GHz, however its all over the fuckin place [wikipedia.org] including in the 5ghz range.
I feel like wireless and wifi's use of the letter G is intentionally confusing. Wait until 2 revisions later when we have wifi 6G and things will get really confusing.
Re:is the range the same or is it like 5g where it (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, I know 5G does not mean 5 GHz. But "5G" by itself doesn't have a range issue.
Millimeter wave (mmWave) 5G runs at 26+ GHz, and has truly terrible range problems. 5G NR at low frequencies (600 MHz) can have better range, and better spectrum efficiency, than 3G and 4G connections. 5G at 3.5 GHz will usually have worse range, because 3G and 4G was mostly between 800 MHz and 2.3 GHz, but 5G base stations are more likely to have MU-MIMO and beamforming, which compensates.
The next revision of WiFi will likely be branded "WiFi 7", not "WiFi 6F". The "E" is for extension, because it is mostly just adding frequency bands to the baseline standard. It is not a substantial change in protocol like WiFi 5 (802.11ac) to WiFi 6 (802.11ax).
Re: is the range the same or is it like 5g where i (Score:2)
Thank you. I was waiting on someone to post the actual ieee number. Things like 802.11ac, 802.3af, etc, are easier for my mind to label than marketing terms like 5G, LTE, and some other intensionally elusive names to sound cutting edge. At least with ieee designators It works a bit like the dewey decimal system. 802.2 and 802.3 specs refer to ethernet framing specs and the physical layers of wired ethernet, while 802.11 specs deal mostly with wireless.
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Ha, thanks. I had managed to confused the spec 802.11xx with the marketing wifi 6.
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Unless they take the same path as USB, in which case "really confusing" would have been a better alternative.
"Wi-Fi 6GX Ultra Pro Max", anyone?
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Don't forget USB's habit of renaming older specs, and in a way that makes them sound better "USB 1 is now USB2-Full Speed"
And I still mix up USB Full Speed and High Speed.
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"Full speed" has to mean the highest possible speed, otherwise it weren't "full". So "high speed" could be the same as "full speed" or less, but certainly not more.
Kind of like bicycle wheel rims:
27.5 inch 29 inch = 28 inch 27 inch
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I feel like wireless and wifi's use of the letter G is intentionally confusing
What is confusing about calling Generation? I doesn't say 5GHz. 4G didn't run in 4GHz, 3G didn't run in 3GHz, and GSM or TDMA based Digital (which was 2G) didn't run at 2GHz. These terms have been used for 40 years. People aren't confused, they are at this point willfully ignorant.
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5G doesn't have less range. 5G has the same range as 4G when used on the same frequencies.
Higher frequencies generally have shorter range and less penetration. This is a general property of EM waves and has nothing to do with the protocol that you're using to talk on those frequencies, so although support for higher frequencies was added in 5G and 802.11ax, that doesn't mean that 5G or .11ax have shorter ranges than their respective previous versions.
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Football fields? (Score:5, Funny)
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Fuck imperial and fuck metric. We should measure things in atoms!
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Metres are defined using the definition of the second, which is defined as " "the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom (at a temperature of 0 K)."
So measuring things in metres *is* measuring things in (terms of the characteristics of ) atoms.
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I prefer to understand this in multiples of 802.11g to 802.11ac. At least then it would be in units that make sense.
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Or use a more appropriate analogy, like "on ramp".
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I don't understand "a two-lane road" metric used in the article. Please use standard journalistic measurement units of football fields.
I thought it was a series of tubes.
Re: Football fields? (Score:2)
Sorry, I'm from out of town. Can I get that translated to Libraries of Congress per Second?
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The other parameter we need to consider (Score:5, Interesting)
The new standard will increase WiFi bandwidth by using higher frequencies. But what is the effect on range?
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So roughly speaking, the 6 GHz band should reach at least 80% of the distance as the 5 GHz band, and probably more. I repeat - this is a rough estimation based solely on the observation that h
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Frequency has exactly nothing to do with signal attenuation and distance. Please stop.
You can see this for yourself by closing the door (Score:5, Informative)
Try this experiment to see for yourself.
Turn in the light in the room where your WiFi router is.
Exit the room and close the door.
Then try using your wifi, from the other side of the wall.
I think you'll find that the 5 GHz waves from the wifi make it into the next room just fine.
I think you'll also find that the the 500 THz waves from the lightbulb do not make it into the adjoining room so well.
The difference is frequency, specifically wavelength vs the size of the molecules obstructing the wave. The lower-frequency waves are longer wavelength. These large waves aren't stopped by small molecules. You can think about a fly in a rainstorm vs a truck in the same rainstorm. A 2mm raindrop will stop a small fly, it won't stop a large truck. Similarly, a 1nm molecule of drywall, humidity, or whatever won't stop a 780 nanometer wave.
Btw, I'd venture to guess that the majority of people here on Slashdot already knew that in the frequency bands being discussed, higher frequencies have less range, because they are more attenuated by walls, moisture, etc.
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I was going to say that to some degree ArchieBunker could be correct, if you are talking about WiFi communications in deep space (where only free space loss is a factor). When I stated that range is frequency-dependent, I was certainly meaning to address absorption by walls, etc., which are demonstrably frequency sensitve.
To go full-on pedantic, I might entertain the unique pro
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I was talking about unobstructed you dipshit. Sub mm frequencies are meant for large public events and stadiums. 5G uses many frequencies so people claiming how it has terrible range don't know what they're talking about.
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> unobstructed you dipshit. Sub mm frequencies are meant for large public events
Humans are bags of water, dipshit.
Try making a connection with 6Ghz wifi underwater. Let me know how that works. In a large gathering of people is conceptually the same as underwater.
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There's water vapour in the air, which will absolutely attenuate signal in an open space with atmosphere.
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You can think about a fly in a rainstorm vs a truck in the same rainstorm. A 2mm raindrop will stop a small fly, it won't stop a large truck.
Actually, that's not true. Mosquitos (which are technically small flies) aren't stopped when hit by falling raindrops [smithsonianmag.com]. Otherwise, a monsoon would wipe out malaria in no time...
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Stop != Kill
The raindrop normally won't KILL the mosquito, if it has sufficient altitude. That's because the mosquito gets carried along with the raindrop, as opposed to a truck-on-truck impact where both objects slam to a stop.
It very much stops their progress and sends them rushing toward the ground, however.
I think the article you linked to probably links to a video. A video I was thinking about when I wrote that. :)
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In the most common use cases, poor. Higher frequency means higher throughput yes but it is also going to have a hider time when you don't have line of sight with the antenna. Walls will become a slightly bigger enemy for WiFi. The good news is with a bigger spectrum allotment people will have more room to spread out in channel selection so hopefully congestion wont be quite as bad as it has been. I think we are close to the high water mark in terms of number of deployed WiFi access points in the developed w
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Yeah. Every time my boss asks why how to make the wifi better I tell him to build a faraday cage around the building. I can see 250 wifi networks from my desk. Of course the wifi sucks. That's why I gave you that nice blue cable sticking out of the wall.
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That's why they use the highway lanes analogy. It's 8 lanes, but some of those lanes are only 3 feet.
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The best solution is still to have multiple access points in your house, each with it's own wired backhaul. Even if you don't have a wired backhaul, having fast wifi between the nodes can make things work a lot better. I installed a 3 unit mesh network in my house without wires, because my house is old and doesn't have existing ethernet, and the speed and reliability of my network has improved alot. If you only have a single access point, and you have items that are far from the access point, it's like b
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The higher you go in frequency, the better you can make your beam-forming with the same size antenna. In the theoretical limit, range is the same for all practical frequencies. This breaks down if you need to curve around the Earth, bounce on the ionosphere, or go through solid objects (like walls).
2.5GHz, 5GHz, and 6GHz are about equally lousy at going through walls. The real-world difference in indoor range between 2.5GHz and 5GHz (or 6) is because our 5GHz and 6GHz antennas are not good enough yet.
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GHz (Score:4, Interesting)
The main reason WiFi started out on the 2.4GHz bands, besides that the FCC allowed unlicensed broadcasting on those frequencies, was that it was a high enough frequency to get decent data rates, but low enough that it could pass through moderate obstructions, like walls and floors. Higher frequencies get you faster transmission rates, but lower range through obstructions.
So, unless they are doing some really weird multi-band spread-spectrum thing, I'm not sure how adding another higher-frequency band is going make WiFi connections more reliable. To extend the highway analogy, adding more super high-speed lanes doesn't help when they are prone to flooding all the time.
Re:GHz (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not sure how adding another higher-frequency band is going make WiFi connections more reliable.
In crowded urban areas, and especially high-rise apartment buildings, a lot of AP's in close proximity end up using the same channels and interfering with each other. And with that density of AP's, even frequency-hopping would still result in overlap. 6E could help in two ways. First, it provides a bigger pool of channels, therefore the likelihood of mutual interference is less. Second, its reduced range lowers the physical area over which one AP can interfere with another.
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Re:GHz (Score:5, Informative)
The main reason WiFi started out on the 2.4GHz bands, besides that the FCC allowed unlicensed broadcasting on those frequencies, was that it was a high enough frequency to get decent data rates, but low enough that it could pass through moderate obstructions, like walls and floors. Higher frequencies get you faster transmission rates, but lower range through obstructions.
WiFi started out in two bands - 900 MHz and 2.4 GHz. Both bands were (and still are) classified as "Industrial, Scientific and Medical" (ISM) bands. This means tha there are devices that emit RF in these bands for purposes other than communications. The 900 MHz band was also used for location determination (e.g. LoJack) and paging, if I recall.
These are U.S. designations I'm talking about. The 2.4 GHz band is and always has been pretty much global, but the 900 MHz band is more U.S. than anywhere else.
The 900 MHz band also was home to "diathermy machines" (medical equipment that performed heating by RF). The 2.4 GHz band is home to one very common non-communications RF emitter - microwave ovens. Did you know that microwave ovens only emit RF half of the time? Every 1/60th of a second (US, 1/50th of a second in Europe etc.) the magnetron turns on and emits RF. The other half of the AC wave cycle time the magnetron is off. WiFi was specifically designed to accommodate this and will transmit information during the time that a microwave oven is not emitting RF. In effect, WiFi devices synchronize their transmissions to slip into the "off" times of the microwave oven duty cycle. This works fine unless you have two microwave ovens operating at the same time, but on opposite phases of the AC power. This can happen for instance in restaurants. In 1999/2000 I lived in a small town and used WiFi for Internet. The antenna-to-antenna distance was only about 1/4 mile. But I had the misfortune of the ISP's base station being in the same building with a restaurant. I learned that I could fairly reliably count on the Internet being unusable from about 11 AM to 2 PM, which I attrributed to the restaurant "firing up the microwaves."
I guess I should stop posting and go back to bed, but this tickled my nostalgia nerve, seeing as I served on the 802.11 committee during its first two years.
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I don't remember 900MHz wifi being a thing before 802.11ah in 2015 or so. Am I wrong?
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I still have 900MHz pre 802.11 pcmcia wifi cards made by Zoom. They didn't even have a infrastructure mode. I also have some original 802.11 cards too.
The range was great, and they were so easy to connect without all of this security overhead.
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I don't remember 900MHz wifi being a thing before 802.11ah in 2015 or so. Am I wrong?
I still have 900MHz pre 802.11 pcmcia wifi cards made by Zoom
WiFi is a name for 802.11. If they were pre-802.11, they weren't WiFi.
I also have some original 802.11 cards too.
They aren't relevant to the question unless they are both 802.11 and 900MHz.
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Wireless telephones from 20 years ago were 900MHz. The range of a Panasonic phone I had was awesome. I could walk across the street to a park on the other side of my apartment complexand get good reception. The higher frequency "upgrade" I got barely worked well on different floors in the same house.
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I don't remember 900MHz wifi being a thing before 802.11ah in 2015 or so. Am I wrong?
Wireless telephones from 20 years ago were 900MHz.
And also not WiFi.
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Well, I'm glad you stayed up to post that information because I had no idea about the whole sync'ing to the microwave ovens.
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In effect, WiFi devices synchronize their transmissions to slip into the "off" times of the microwave oven duty cycle.
Interesting! I imagine those first two years on 802.11 was something of action and adventure.
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Did you know that microwave ovens only emit RF half of the time? Every 1/60th of a second (US, 1/50th of a second in Europe etc.) the magnetron turns on and emits RF.
This is not always true. I specifically bought a microwave where this is not the case and it completely kills wifi while you are using it. However, your food heats up a lot more uniformly because it is always outputting energy regardless of what settings you have enabled.
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In short, if you are currently building or planning to build a house, put conduits in your walls. Wired connections will always be faster and more reliable than wireless ones.
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In the UK, electricians look at you funny if you ask for conduit :(
Re:GHz (Score:5, Informative)
I have found nobody under 50 knows of frequencies less than 500 MHz. I remember back in the days many cities talked about wifi systems providing wireless information superhighway connections throughout entire city. One thing certain, wireless stuff evolving very fast. 5G all sorts of stuff along with many rumors to confuse people even more. We'll have to see how all this pans out. Meanwhile small groups that use wireless mics hope they don't lose 500 MHz.
Other day chatting with someone about wifi, I did a search and found this from
https://www.lifewire.com/wirel... [lifewire.com]
802.11a: 54 Mbps standard, 5 GHz signaling (ratified 1999)
802.11b: 11 Mbps standard, 2.4 GHz signaling (1999)
802.11c: Operation of bridge connections (moved to 802.1D)
802.11d: Worldwide compliance with regulations for use of wireless signal spectrum (2001)
802.11e: Quality of Service support (2005) to improve the delivery of delay-sensitive applications, such as Voice Wireless LAN and streaming multimedia
802.11F: Inter-Access Point Protocol recommendation for communication between access points to support roaming clients (2003)
802.11g: 54 Mbps standard, 2.4 GHz signaling (2003)
802.11h: Enhanced version of 802.11a to support European regulatory requirements (2003)
802.11i: Security improvements for the 802.11 family (2004)
802.11j: Enhancements to 5 GHz signaling to support Japan regulatory requirements (2004)
802.11k: WLAN system management
802.11m: Maintenance of 802.11 family documentation
802.11n: 100+ Mbps standard improvements over 802.11g (2009)
802.11p: Wireless Access for the Vehicular Environment
802.11r: Fast roaming support using Basic Service Set transitions
802.11s: ESS mesh networking for access points
802.11T: Wireless Performance Prediction — recommendation for testing standards and metrics
802.11u: Internetworking with cellular and other forms of external networks
802.11v: Wireless network management and device configuration
802.11w: Protected Management Frames security enhancement
802.11y: Contention-Based Protocol for interference avoidance
802.11ac: 3.46Gbps standard, supports 2.4 and 5GHz frequencies through 802.11n
802.11ad: 6.7 Gbps standard, 60 GHz signaling (2012)
802.11ah: Creates extended-range Wi-Fi networks that go beyond the reach of a typical 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz networks
802.11aj: Approved in 2017; primarily for use in China
802.11ax: Approval expected 2018
802.11ay: Approval expected 2019
802.11az: Approval expected 2019
Re:GHz (Score:4, Informative)
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
It was legacy mode that was being developed when I served on the committee.
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I'm not sure how adding another higher-frequency band is going make WiFi connections more reliable.
Oh man, there's so much more to wireless signaling than simply bandwidth, especially in the reliability department. WiFi standards define a lot about how to handle the signals in said bandwidth, and receiver and transmitter properties, to say nothing of developments of signal processing and the management of the connection itself which has already done a lot to improve the reliability of WiFi from where it was back in the 90s.
To extend your analogy: It's not just added lanes. It's changing the lane width, i
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What I need... (Score:2)
What I am missing is a coordinated international effort to amend to the channels in the 2.4GHz band. It's difficult to understand why so little spectrum is set aside for something that means so much to so many. That band works much better for range and coverage. And the speed will come with more space.
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The spectrum wasn't set aside for WiFi. It was set aside as unlicensed for "Industrial, Scientific, and Medical" purposes. 900MHz was also a candidate. It's no coincidence that these are also the frequencies used by cordless phones. Nearly the rest of the spectrum rights had already been sold. At least in ranges of spectrum that had good coverage for a first generation of wireless.
Can you imagine coordinating the buybacks or forfeitures of spectrum all over the world? And that for 2.4GHz, where you'd
Latency (Score:2)
Any reduction in latency by any chance? Using more lanes sounds like it could create more delay just in order to establish and coordinate all 8 channels opposed to only 2.
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Can we stop this Megapixel BS? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is Bandwidth seriously the problem facing WiFi? Has gigabit+ home internet become so commonplace that the wireless connection is now the bandwidth limit? Are there really admins out there running 50+ wireless clients per access point that think that everyone videoconferencing at the same time with great quality is something that can happen if you just get ENOUGH bandwidth?
Am I the only person in the world who's problems with WiFi are easy hand-off roaming? Multiple AP overlap management? An authentication scheme that doesn't rely on passwords stored in plaintext or a preexisting PKI? Ability to penetrate a sturdy houseplant? Smart spectrum allocation that doesn't flip-flop constantly? Hell, how about just a high-certainty quality of service?
Wake me up when the next WiFi sales pitch is '100Mbps, with a QoS of Fast Ethernet. THAT would be revolutionary.
Re:Can we stop this Megapixel BS? (Score:4, Informative)
Wake me up when the next WiFi sales pitch is '100Mbps, with a QoS of Fast Ethernet. THAT would be revolutionary.
Well, most of those problems you list have already been solved. 802.11k, 802.11r, 802.11v. These days they are really easy to deploy for example with Cisco Mobility Express. Just buy a bunch of APs, configure one of them and set it up in your network, then just connect the rest to the same switch. They'll connect to the first AP and get settings from there. If you need to manage across multiple sites, then just get a controller.
For the QoS - well, 802.11e has been a thing for years, but Wifi 6 actually *does* something in that regard. Instead of the older spec where the illusion of QoS is created due to "higher priority traffic uses smaller inter-frame gap" (and it works to a degree) with Wifi 6 you actually can allocate dedicated sub-channels for each client. No more collisions.
Of course this doesn't really work until legacy clients are gone, but in enterprise environments you can probably enforce that as part of your normal equipment life cycle.
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"Ability to penetrate a sturdy houseplant?"
This. As someone who lives in a late-50s house with real lathe and plaster walls, I feel your pain, or at least lack of signal.
And the comment started my day with a chuckle matched only by Calvin's snow goon problems.
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As someone who has plaster-on-drywall walls (About an inch or more of solid rock, basically), it's rough getting ethernet cables run. Worse because I have a fairly inaccessible attic and drywall ceilings in the basement. But it's worth it.
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Classic /. poster. Doesn't bother understanding who he's responding to, doesn't bother understanding what he's talking about, lets petty insults do his talking. The problem with modern communications is that it enables people like you.
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I think you are the only person because we have solutions for the problems you listed in existing wireless standards. You just have to not "invest" in cheap Chinese routers.
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Has gigabit+ home internet become so commonplace that the wireless connection is now the bandwidth limit?
Yes, and that has been the case for years.
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No, it's not at least for residential. You've summed it up pretty well.
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So by saying "for residential" you're actually saying yes rather than no. Because all of the GP's problems have been solved and all users need to do is buy something other than Chairman Xi's favourite exported wifi access point.
The standard does not exist to mandate away cheap devices.
Yes, for offices and families, it is an issue (Score:5, Interesting)
Is Bandwidth seriously the problem facing WiFi? Has gigabit+ home internet become so commonplace that the wireless connection is now the bandwidth limit? Are there really admins out there running 50+ wireless clients per access point that think that everyone videoconferencing at the same time with great quality is something that can happen if you just get ENOUGH bandwidth?
Yes. On our office (pre-COVID), a huge percentage of our traffic is wireless and to servers on the network. For the dev-team, probably 75% of the traffic never left the building (local app servers, version control, DBs, etc). You want to do all you can to avoid them making the non-engineering team suffer.
Also, please consider that my company and many like us are moving to apple products where Jony Ive's sometimes great, but sometimes horrific design sentiment legacy has determined that wires are bad. Thus...every apple user needs a wireless mouse and wireless keyboard and Apple stopped making officially supported ethernet adapters long ago. I hate being a luddite, but I fucking love wires. I like things reliable, cheap, and efficient and I never really though a keyboard on my desk was a scenario where wires were a hassle...same with mice. However, try telling an Apple loyalist to go 3rd party....to them, it's like smearing crayons all over their perfect gucci handbags. They really take it personally and have to be Apple purists and our tech support is hesitant to go 3rd party for mission critical functions. I think of the ecological impact...a wire transmits signal reliably and nearly perfectly with less electricity/interference/error than wireless, but in my office, few think like me.
So...while if common sense ruled, we'd all be on a wired connection at our desk and wireless in a conference room, Apple's penetration has moved most traffic to wireless...also video streamers tend to rely on wireless more than wired, so both home and office have a lot more wireless than wired traffic in most cases.
Also, remember that's maximum bandwidth. Do you really get maximum bandwidth at most places in your house? I'm excited for next gen WiFi for range boost alone. However, the devil is in the details. I've been fooled many times in the past by promises of theoretical greatness that never really materialized in reality. I think bandwidth is one of those things you never can really have enough of. At the very least, it means you can spend less time on the network if you can complete your downloads faster.
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In crowded areas, yes. An apartment block with 20+ networks visible isn't going to get good bandwidth at all - not because of interference, but because of sharing. Interference leads to no one getting any bandwidth, but stations and networks using the same channels do listen for each other and avoid trying to interfere with each other so at least some traff
Lets hope for cooperative networks then (Score:2)
6E? Why not 7? (Score:3)
I thought we were supposed to move to representing advances in an incremental manner, eschewing suffixes like meaningless tacked-on letters.
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I don't need bandwidth (Score:2)
Bandwidth equates to more error, since my wireless network at home is used for internet, I don't need really fast speeds so I run 11Mbit/sec which seems to have a better error rate. If I do need speed I use wires and significantly lower the possibility of error or latency issues.
8 lane road to 2 lane road (Score:1)
Sure, on your LAN you'll have faster access... if you're in the right place with the right (new expensive) gear.
But none of that will change your Internet connection speeds, which in the US is slow and expensive.
Save your money. Even 802.11ac from 2013 (450Mbps) is fast enough to support streaming 1080p, playing your Spotify stuff, and downloading "the entire Encyclopedia Britannica" (how is that even a standard of measurement anymore) in no time. See https://www.bboxservices.com/r... [bboxservices.com]
Seriously, there's not
Higher carrier frequency means shorter range (Score:2)
Let's face it: WiFi was never all that great and they keep putting band-aids on it to shore it up. If you want reliable speed you need wired ethernet.
"two-lane road to an eight-lane highway" (Score:1)
More to 802.11ax than branding, bandwidth (Score:2)
The article is long on hype and short on detail. And it makes sense that there's a lot of skeptical posts here; increases in theoretical bandwidth with past WiFi standards often didn't translate to large real-world improvements.
But here's the thing: beyond just adding more available bandwidth, 6GHz will be unoccupied by any older clients, so the features of 802.11ax can really come into play. The better modulation scheme (OFDMA) and improved efficiency of 802.11ax can result in roughly 4x improvements in bo