Wi-Fi 6 Will Upgrade Your Workhorse Wireless Network (cnet.com) 66
Wi-Fi 6, the consumer-friendly new name for the tech standard actually called 802.11ax, won't just boost data-transfer speeds -- though it'll do that, by a factor of three or so. It'll also reach into corners of our house farther away from network gear, better handle the crush of people at airports and stadiums, and sidestep interference from your neighbors' noisy network. On your phone or laptop, it should save your battery life, too. From a report: No wonder wireless chip designer Qualcomm is betting big on Wi-Fi 6. The company on Tuesday showed off a quartet of processors that'll bring Wi-Fi 6 to a new range of network equipment -- and a number of partnerships designed to telegraph its clout with the technology. "Wi-Fi is ubiquitous and widely accepted," said Rahul Patel, leader of Qualcomm's Wi-Fi chip division in an exclusive interview with CNET ahead of Qualcomm's Wi-Fi event. But with more devices in our houses, and activities like gaming and streaming video putting new demands on networks, there's a network traffic jam, he said.
"Cord cutting is real. What was typically one TV in the average home is now five or six different screens," Patel said. "There's a tremendous amount of content sourced through the home that wasn't before. There's a congestion problem." One of Wi-Fi 6's biggest advances is OFDMA -- orthogonal frequency division multiple access, if you must know -- an efficiency-boosting technology purloined from mobile networks. Another is MU MIMO, short for multiple user, multiple input, multiple output. And then there's 1024 QAM -- quadrature amplitude modulation -- which bumps up data rates by 30%.
"Cord cutting is real. What was typically one TV in the average home is now five or six different screens," Patel said. "There's a tremendous amount of content sourced through the home that wasn't before. There's a congestion problem." One of Wi-Fi 6's biggest advances is OFDMA -- orthogonal frequency division multiple access, if you must know -- an efficiency-boosting technology purloined from mobile networks. Another is MU MIMO, short for multiple user, multiple input, multiple output. And then there's 1024 QAM -- quadrature amplitude modulation -- which bumps up data rates by 30%.
My vision is blurry (Score:1)
I'm not sure there were enough buzzwords in that block quote. I think it's only missing 'paradigm'.
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I'm not sure there were enough buzzwords in that block quote. I think it's only missing 'paradigm'.
Indeed. Even when I went to the presumed explainer of the technical aspects, https://www.cnet.com/news/wi-f... [cnet.com] I got more happy speak.
This is somehow going to allow 4 users at a time to access 1 channel, and since they are claiming they are going to "flood" your house with better coverage, they are either making the error correction say 4X better, or whomping up the power. I'm not certain what "flood" actually means. Ima be skeptical until I hear some more information of how they are going to perform thi
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I'm not sure there were enough buzzwords in that block quote. I think it's only missing 'paradigm'.
Indeed. Even when I went to the presumed explainer of the technical aspects, https://www.cnet.com/news/wi-f... [cnet.com] I got more happy speak.
This is somehow going to allow 4 users at a time to access 1 channel, and since they are claiming they are going to "flood" your house with better coverage, they are either making the error correction say 4X better, or whomping up the power. I'm not certain what "flood" actually means. Ima be skeptical until I hear some more information of how they are going to perform this feat. Until then, Ima gonna issue a writ of probable bullshit.
Ars Technica has a pretty good explanation [arstechnica.com] on some of the new concepts.
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Ars Technica has a pretty good explanation [arstechnica.com] on some of the new concepts.
That's much better. I wonder how it deals with intermodulation? The prospective crowding appears to address the digital aspect.
My concept of the future of Wi-Fi is to get as many devices off of longer range Wi-Fi as possible, have wired to the room, the transmitter/receiver in the ceiling, and then a protocol similar to 802.11ay. Bandwidth is not infinite, and if present trends continue, we'll need as short a range as possible. 60 GHz should handle that.
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That would be PAM: "paradigm amplitude modulation". It increases the broadcast distance of your synergistic linguistics by 30%
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30% - That's a factor of 3 over your current paradigm, shifted to a new synergistic, modular, multiple linguistic amplitude of attitude! My dude.
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I'm not sure there were enough buzzwords in that block quote. I think it's only missing 'paradigm'.
That's because the paradigm was shifted.
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Re:Will it penetrate walls (Score:4, Funny)
Of course. Have you ever seen an ax that doesn't cut through walls?
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I'm pretty sure the stuff in the spray can has to be paired with a lighter to make a hole in a wall.
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Not if it's a cell wall.
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Not if it's a cell wall.
Isn't that good cell service?
I'll just show myself out now...
Re: Will it penetrate walls (Score:2)
Or a cat that walks through walls [wikipedia.org].
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Oh, man, I was so sure this was going to turn out to be some sort of Schrödinger thing involving either detecting or not detecting the Wi-Fi signal.
Client support is still lacking... (Score:1)
If your client doesn't support 802.11ax you're not going to gain much, I'd wait 6-12 months before deploying any 802.11ax. iPhone doesn't support 802.11ax and the only Android device I believe that supports it is the S10 and Note 10.
Re: Client support is still lacking... (Score:1)
But wait! The title implied it would upgrade itself? We have to (again) buy all new gear?
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Chances are the hardware probably supports it already, just the firmware isn't ready. After all, pretty much everyone's using software defined radios (SDR) nowadays, so implementing the new stuff is writing new DSP algorithms into the firmware. The only limit would be the DSP processing power and firmware memory.
Of course, no one would actually offer the upgrade.
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I disagree that all you need is just firmware. The manufacturers of communications adapters will always try to give you the least amount of processing power required for the advertised specs. But what about the processing power required to support higher performance modulation? I would dare to argue that this slow progress in wifi technology is entirely related to what the consumers can afford. In 2010, a typical wireless adapter costing 10-50 dollars had just enough processing power to support the speeds o
Re: Client support is still lacking... (Score:1)
For some reason I'd prefer 802.11ad.
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When I look at existing client wireless network connections, I still see a shit ton of B & G traffic on the 2.4 Ghz band despite the APs configued for 5 Ghz steering and 802.11ac capable.
There's a ton of ancient protocol devices out there, some even actually new. The chipsets are dirt cheap, the software that drives them reliable and the device maker's engineering and finance departments decided 802.11b is good enough.
I think 802.11 wifi will be a bit of a shit show of alphabet soup marginal technologi
Snake Oil Salesmen ... (Score:1)
Stick to wires. Far more reliable and secure than "WiFi is for kids".
Advantageous only for crowded environments (Score:5, Informative)
802.11ax is specially crafted for crowded environments. OFDMA shares the tones on the OFDM modulation between different concurrent users -- but only when most of them use Wi-fi 6. With the rest of the users, traditional MAC contention is used.
The thing is, when only some users get their new device with WiFi 6, there will be no difference, or even some degradation in absence of congestion (because of the additional messages required by OFDMA to transfer upload traffic; basically, the AP needs to win the MAC contented slot, then send a message to assign tones to devices to transmit, and then they can transmit, instead of directly transmitting).
Oh, and by the way, in practice 1024-QAM (MCS modes 10 & 11, ref [wikipedia.org] ) can only be used in the same room with line-of-sight, otherwise signal attenuation and Shannon force a lower transmission speed.
So, while it will be great for airports and stadiums in the medium term, I believe it will probably disappoint some eager enthusiastic users when they benchmark their new devices. Let's see what happens...
location location location (Score:2)
its actually all about Wi-Fi Round-Trip-Time (Wi-Fi RTT)
which will give you meter (6 foot) accuracy for location
if you have every wandered around a office/school/mall or department store wondering why they dont have a decent map...
its all about Wi-Fi Round-Trip-Time (Wi-Fi RTT) and location location location...
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They will likely divide up old an new users by frequency band. Wifi 6 supports from 1 to 7 GHz, limited by which bands are legal in a particular jurisdiction and by the capabilities of the AP and devices.
For public spaces they might do something like divide the 5GHz bands up into two blocks, one for legacy AC devices and one for new Wifi 6 devices. Adjust the ratio as the number of Wifi 6 devices increases over time.
WIFI 6 - backwards support? (Score:2)
Will any of WIFI 6 provide any benefits to non-WIFI 6 devices? If not, then it may take time for people to fully appreciate the benefits.
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Will any of WIFI 6 provide any benefits to non-WIFI 6 devices? If not, then it may take time for people to fully appreciate the benefits.
My WiFi is at WIFI 11.
11 I tell you!
Seen it all before. 802.11d 802.11ac 802.11ax (Score:3)
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Indeed. Always the same empty promises of "everything will be great, just give us your money". In actual reality, things will basically continue to suck. Reminds me of a certain software company and their OS.
Re:Seen it all before. 802.11d 802.11ac 802.11ax (Score:5, Insightful)
In actual reality, things will basically continue to suck.
Jump in the old time machine and bring your 1998 self by for a visit, and ask him if he agrees that "things continue to suck". Or if you can't manage that, break out your old 200MHz PC with the 56k WinModem and Netscape 3.0 and see how web browsing on it compares to running WiFi on your cell phone.
The fact is, things do not suck, but you feel that they do, because you remain unsatisfied. But you remain unsatisfied only because your expectations quickly normalize whatever advancements are made, so that last year's new-and-awesome becomes this year's bare-minimum-requirement.
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The fact is that you are full of it. In some respects, things suck even more than they used to, in others they suck less, but overall computing continues to be in bad shape.
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Jump in the old time machine and bring your 1998 self by for a visit, and ask him if he agrees that "things continue to suck". Or if you can't manage that, break out your old 200MHz PC with the 56k WinModem and Netscape 3.0 and see how web browsing on it compares to running WiFi on your cell phone.
Including transfer caps, my bandwidth in 1998 was several times the "50 Mb/s" that I pay for now. Latency was several times lower as well.
Re: Seen it all before. 802.11d 802.11ac 802.11a (Score:2)
802.11ad and 802.11ay is what would bring up the speed in small apartments and offices.
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I've been using 802.11ac with DD-WRT for five years now. It was supported almost immediately using binary blob drivers from the manufacturers of the various chipsets.
APs do in fact use multiple radios. And multiple antennas for each radio. Even in the consumer space it's been common to have separate 2.4GHz and 5GHz radios and multiple antennas for a decade at least, since the N days. Those throughput numbers they quote on the box are for using both radios simultaneously.
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You're pretty much correct. Not even MU-MIMO helps with this (smallnetbuilder.com did a pretty thorough test of MU-MIMO recently).
I do want to add that while using a wire to link wireless access points is the most ideal solution, the logistics of running a wire in a large home between different floors can be a pain in a butt. This is now being partially mitigated by mess wireless access point systems which come with two 5GHz radios, and so they use one channel as a dedicated backbone to communicate and the
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802.11ac finally works with DD-WRT. You are at the mercy of the manufacturers each time.
Found your mistake right there. You should use Open-WRT. My router had 802.11ac support with Open-WRT out of the box in 2015.
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No matter how much multiplexing is done, it's still just a single pipe.
A fantastic comment made by someone who has no idea about the causes and remedies for air-wave contention.
No, it will not (Score:1)
Because I will not use it. Cabled networking is still vastly superior and my flat has Cat.7 everywhere I need it.
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Are you stupid or just an ass?
Re:No, it will not (Score:5, Funny)
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FWIW, you can connect many phones and tablets to ethernet with the appropriate adaptor(s).
Yaz
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FWIW, you can connect many phones and tablets to ethernet with the appropriate adaptor(s).
Yaz
I know, I bought an adapter the other day called a WiFi Access Point. It's cool. 2019, what a time to be alive!
Flawed Assumption ... (Score:1)
"We get it. 5G is a big deal. But honestly, you likely use Wi-Fi networks as much or more with your phone and PC, so tune out the 5G noise for a moment and appreciate what's coming with Wi-Fi 6."
I have one WiFi device that does not have a wired ethernet connection and it sits inside a faraday cage together with the WiFi it talks to -- and that WiFi is 802.11b.
Everything else uses either direct wired ethernet or connects to the cellular data network. WiFi is permanently disabled with maximum prejudice on al
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Let me guess, you are also one of those out of touch dweebs who comments "Windoze?! People still use that?!"?
My Unifi wifi setup works flawlessly, don't know what weird tech issues you're having maybe there's a senior citizen nearby who can help you troubleshoot.
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You would be wrong. It is immaterial how well your Unifi wifi setup works because, quite frankly, I will not be using it. In fact I will not be using WiFi anywhere with the one exception previously noted.
Why do you think that is a problem to be solved? Do you "support" (make money from) hawking WiFi?
Was this an ad paid by Broadcom? (Score:4, Informative)
Now there are some things one needs to be aware of when getting a 802.11ax.
1. MU-MIMO is almost a meaningless buzzwird, but the vendors sure love to mention it all the time.
2. 802.11ax availability on clients is almost nonexistent
3. The new modulation protocol speeds up the data transfer by about 30% compared to 802.11ac, so not by a factor of three like mentioned in the first paragraph.
All in all, Wi-Fi 6 is relatively mild update compared to the previous standard. If you already own a state of art 802.11ac setup, you shouldn't need to worry about upgrading any time soon. On the other hand, jumping from 802.11n made a lot more sense because together with faster modulation we got support for 80mhz and 160mhz wide bands.
Re: Was this an ad paid by Broadcom? (Score:4, Interesting)
3. The new modulation protocol speeds up the data transfer by about 30% compared to 802.11ac, so not by a factor of three like mentioned in the first paragraph.
You can probably get a 3x improvement in effective throughout, but only in crowded environments with most clients using WiFi 6. In such case, the arbitrated access control introduced by WiFi 6 is significantly better than the traditional distributed, contention-based mechanism. And the overhead caused by the MAC layer when the network is saturated (collisions, retransmissions, exponential backoff, etc) is HUGE. WiFi 6 reduces those overheads, so a 3x improvement is feasible, only in those situations.
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"but only in crowded environments with most clients using WiFi 6"
So, it's mostly 5+ years away.
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What happened to 802.11ad through 902.11ay? Didn't pan out?
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Wifi quoted figures have been lied about, since time began.
My general rule of thumb, has always been, find the max quoted speed in megabits, divide by 10 (not 8) for megabytes AND divide by 2, because of lies.
Gigabit network, with good hardware, you'll actually get a solid 110, sometimes even 120.
Wifi network though? Claims 450Mbit? Get 45MBytes / 2 = 22.5, if you're lucky.
Sweet! (Score:3)
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It can't be beyond the wit of TV manufacturers to support USB Wifi dongles for cheap upgrades. Most of them are Linux boxes anyway (Panasonic use BSD). It should be possible to plug in a 10 Euro dongle in a couple of years and be upgraded to the latest wifi version.
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Hopefully less bufferbloat (Score:2)
Don't need it yet (Score:2)
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4k stream is what, 20Mbps? An old 802.11n router would work well, even from across house.
What about radar detection? (Score:2)
It's a problem I have with 802.11AC. Driver put me on a frequency that all of my neighbors were using and my wifi speeds screeched to a near halt. I was able to fix it, but what about consumers that don't know how to do that?
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Grounded chicken wire around the walls?
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Radar detection is different (that's .11h) and is a long-solved problem. Getting steered to a crowded frequency set is a different problem, usually related to AP firmware since the AP is what decides which channel everyone will use.
five or six different screens (Score:2)
And new versions of wifi are only going to delay the congestion problem, and thats assuming all the devices connected actually get upgraded...
The real answer is to only use wireless technologies when its necessary - ie for portable devices...
For any device which sits in a fixed location, a wired connection should be used.
Even a device which usually sits in a fixed location but occasionally moves (eg a laptop) should be using wired while docked, and switch to wifi then you undock...
You also see wireless cctv
Let the exploits get discovered first... (Score:1)
No doubt there will be a plethora of vulnerabilities discovered in the first couple years of widespread consumer use (just like any other new protocol). I'll stick with 802.11ac until all the holes have been patched by vendors.
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It's mostly because wifi is developed in a closed process rather than open, so only a few eyes look at it.
The other problem is a billion idiots will show up shrieking about how this microwave signal is different from 802.11b and so even more likely to cause cancer, kind of like they're doing here protesting 5G.
OMG OMG OMG! (Score:2)
An upgrade to a currently existing tech will upgrade your tech! WOOOO! ROLL OUT THE NEWS CHOPPER!
More WIFI Range Necessary for Home? (Score:2)
I'm not a network expert by a long shot. So I'm asking, is extra range really necessary? I live in a suburban area with a fairly large home, and the last couple of wireless routers had no problem reaching the far areas of our house and even outside when I'm walking about with my iPad. I can also see about a dozen of our neighbors networks....wonder why they're not hiding their SSIDs, or is that no longer helpful?
As for speed, ~175M according to SpeedSmart on my through my wireless, and that's with the wi