Wifi-6: Are you ready? What should you do now?

Wifi-6 is a new standard that’s been talked quite a lot lately. What is it? and should we all go out buy the router or AP that supports and get the benefit?

Wifi-6 is the next-gen wifi standard, that could help you to connect to the internet more efficiently. In theory, it can deliver maximum of 9.6Gbps vs wifi-5’s 3.5Gbps top speed. But it’s not all about the TOP speed. In fact you can’t reach to the 3.5Gbps for your single device connection, as your internet connection and other factors are limiting your speed to only about a few hundred Mbps. The true benefits for the Wifi-6 is really the performance when you have MANY devices within the same network and competing for connectivity and bandwidth.

Here are some of the distinctive features with Wifi-6:

1. MU-MIMO: Capable 8x Multi User, Multi-Input, Multi-Output.

In stead of Access Points (or router) communicates with devices one at a time, MU MIMO could communicate to multiple devices at the same time. With Wifi-5, it supports up to 4x MU MIMO. With Wifi-6, it supports up to 8x MU MIMO. The added capability will be able to support better in a dense environment with many devices even if you only have Wifi-5 devices, but with a Wifi-6 capable Access Points.

2. OFDMA: Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access

This is a feature to allow one single transmission reaching to multiple devices at once. Again this will greatly improves the capability in dense situations. However, you need to have Wifi-6 capable devices to take full advantage.

3. Other battery and security updates

There are also other benefits that new standard would deliver, like better battery life for the devices to minimize the transmitting, and also optional WPA3 standard.

Conclusion:

1. If you are managing an existing home network or existing office network that have minimal users connected at a time, there is no urgency to buy a wifi-6 Access Point or wifi-6 capable devices. You will not get benefits in those situation.
2. If you are out to deploy a wifi network, and when possible, do check out wifi-6 Access Points or routers. It might be a bit expensive for some brands, but it’s really affordable for other brands. At the time of writing, Unifi has the U6 Lite @ $99, and U6 LR @ $179. So it’s really comparable to their other offering. You would be surprised to find out the price is getting down quickly. Even though you may not have that many devices at this time, you may run into scenarios with too many devices simultaneously connecting, when you have more IoT devices, gatherings down the road. Do keep in mind, check the exact MIMO specifications on the Access Points. The wifi-6 spec supports up to 8x MIMO, but does not mean every device will have the capability. Just like not every wifi-5 Access Points have 4x MIMOs.
3. On the device side, it’s really hard to purposely go out to buy a wifi-6 enabled to be able to take advantage at this time, as other devices are not all capable wifi-6 standard with connected to a wifi-6 access point. The availability of wifi-6 device will become available and less expensive as time goes by quickly.

All in all, it’s still at “Hype” stage as of this writing (@January 2021). In next 12 month, things may change a bit as more and more affordable Access Points, and devices become available, and hence the reality.