Wi-Fi 6
Increased Streaming Content & New Devices Drive the Need for Wi-Fi 6
Streaming video over the Internet accounts for 82% of all Internet traffic. The 2020s will bring widespread use of IOT devices in every home and enterprise and more personal devices. Additionally, 8k video will become commonplace and streaming media bitrates will rise again. Wi-Fi 6 will meet the capacity needs going forward.
Key Features
Higher Capacity
Support significantly more users and connected devices without sacrificing performance.
Improved Efficiency
OFDMA enables more efficient spectrum utilization, especially in dense environments.
Lower Latency
Reduce delays for voice, video, collaboration, and interactive applications.
Built for IoT
Support growing numbers of connected sensors and devices while improving battery life.
The 802.11ax Standard
802.11ac improved Wi-Fi performance with wider channels, beamforming, and downstream MU-MIMO, allowing access points to serve multiple client devices at the same time.
802.11ax builds on those advances but focuses on efficiency in dense environments. Using OFDMA, scheduled transmissions, smaller channel allocations, spatial reuse, and improved power management, it supports more devices with better overall performance.
OFDMA Technology
OFDMA divides up the 20 MHz channel into 256 subcarriers. The smallest unit is 26 subcarriers in 2 Mhz of frequency. These subcarriers can be grouped together into larger units; at 52 (4 Mhz), 106 (8 Mhz), and 242 (20 Mhz) to support higher bandwidth applications. Each grouping of subcarriers are called a resource unit (RU).
Any single client device is assigned one or more RU. Each RU can be transmitted at a unique QAM level. Additionally, as the client device moves farther away from the access point, the number of RU and the QAM level can be adjusted to maintain a strong signal level even as throughput degrades.
When Should You Upgrade to Wi-Fi 6?
When evaluating an upgrade, consider:
- Availability of Wi-Fi 6 equipment and client device support
- The growing adoption of Wi-Fi 6-enabled devices
- Network congestion and the number of connected users
- Increasing use of video, cloud, and collaboration applications
- Future capacity and performance requirements
- Plans for your next network refresh
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