With WiFi 5 still a big enough deal for many people, what can a new generation of WiFi 6 networks do for people's lives?
5G network construction speed, WiFi 6 network has quietly arrived, more and more router manufacturers released a new generation of products based on WiFi 6 network, seems to urge people - your home router should be changed, the network should be upgraded. But the question is, has WiFi 6 really reached full popularity? In the case of WiFi 5, many people feel that WiFi 6 is still enough, but the new generation of WiFi 6 networks can bring what changes to people's lives?
Speed is not the only core competency
When it comes to WiFi 6, in addition to the change in naming convention, most people's first reaction is to increase speed.
WiFi 6 has full 8×8 MU-MIMO
WiFi 6 and WiFi 5 both support 20/40/80/80+80/160MHz bands, but WiFi 5 only covers the 5GHz band, while WiFi 6 covers both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands, with both low-speed and high-speed devices covered. WiFi 5 is 256-QAM and WiFi-6 is 1024-QAM, and the former supports a maximum of 4 data streams while the latter supports a maximum of 8. Therefore, the theoretical throughput of WiFi 5 can be 3.5Gbps, while WiFi 6 can be a staggering 9.6Gbps.
In addition to the speed increase At the same time, OFDMA redesigns the frame structure by subdividing it into a number of resource units (RUs) to serve multiple users. To describe OFDMA technology in terms of a truck pulling cargo, in the original OFDM technology (the scheme used in 11n/ac) it was shipped on an order basis. Regardless of the amount of goods, to an order to send a truck, the empty rate will be very high. Whereas OFDMA technology will aggregate multiple orders together. Getting the trucks on the road as fully loaded as possible makes transportation much more efficient.
And in the whole WiFi 6 network construction, distributed WiFi architecture is undoubtedly the core advantage of WiFi 6, the use of distributed WiFi or arrangement of Pod in Every Room can better realize the network coverage of the whole house, which means that the end device, whether it's 2G or 5G, can use a unique SSID to access all the room's devices and networks. For a truly connected smart home, the enhanced Pod in Every Room design serves as the optimal solution to enable a distributed WiFi architecture utilizing IoT communication technologies. With WiFi6, all devices can communicate with the wireless router in multiple channels. WiFi 6 would be great for smart home users with dozens or even hundreds of end devices.
With the gradual promotion of the smart home, our router is often connected not only to cell phones, computers and other terminals with high network requirements, but also to a variety of smart home devices with less obvious bandwidth requirements. These devices will also affect our network status to a certain extent, especially when they are transmitting data, which will also slow down the network response to a certain extent, for which WiFi 6 introduces the TWT also known as Target Wake Time mechanism.
The TWT mechanism is specialized for low-speed devices
The TWT mechanism is specialized for low-speed devices, and is mainly oriented towards smart home products that do not have high network bandwidth requirements, such as WiFi devices configured with only the 2.4GHz band, 20MHz band, and so on. The router sequences the wake-up time for different low-speed devices in advance to avoid waking up multiple devices at the same time causing network congestion, which is also a technical means to optimize network bandwidth utilization.
Actively preparing for the chip makers
WiFi 6 network characteristics are more in line with the current smart home and smart car and other emerging areas of application needs, which promotes the whole of the wireless hardware iteration at the same time, but also means that a huge market dividend, the upstream chip The upstream chip manufacturers layout action is actually very fast.
At the end of 2018, at Qualcomm's Technology Day, Qualcomm announced that it would bring its latest Wi-Fi 6 solution to the market. on February 16, 2019, Qualcomm launched a new Qualcomm Automotive WiFi 6 chip, QCA6696, in MWC, which can help Qualcomm Snapdragon products to complete the supplementation of the automotive 4G and 5G platform. Broadcom even announced the launch of 802.11ax-based BCM43684/BCM43694/BCM4375 as early as 2017 to meet the standard design of 4x download rate increase, 6x upload increase, and the world's first WiFi 6 cell phone, Samsung Galaxy S10, is the use of Broadcom's latest BCM4375 chip.
In addition to the above two earlier layout of the chip giants, MediaTek in January of this year, launched the latest WiFi 6 smart connectivity chipset for home and enterprise network services, the chipset will support a series of products including wireless access points, routers, gateways and repeaters, for the entire smart home to bring a faster, more reliable connectivity performance for the smart home market intentions It's very clear.
It is worth mentioning that at MWC 2019, Huawei demonstrated the next-generation design of its first commercial WiFi 6 product, which supports ultra-broadband demand scenarios such as wireless VR, AR, 8K HD video transmission, and desktop cloud applications, organically combining the WiFi 6 product with application-side demand, and powerfully promoting the landing of WiFi 6 networks.
Routers in the lead
For every generation of WiFi technology mass market, routers are always the first to go. Asus, Netgear, and other vendors have launched flagship wireless routers that support WiFi6 technology. The high initial price may be out of reach for mass consumers, but with the infrastructure in place, WiFi6 networks can accelerate the mass adoption process.
RT-AX92U AX6100M Tri-band Gigabit WiFi 6 Wireless Router Mesh Kit is priced at nearly $4,000
In particular, the distributed WiFi architecture itself is a core highlight of WiFi 6, and a number of router vendors have updated their mesh products to address this technology, including Netgear's Orbi Mesh Wi-Fi. Netgear's Orbi Mesh Wi-Fi system and Asus' AiMesh system have left a deep impression on the market. The application features such as large home, wide coverage, and seamless switching make the Mesh routing kit the brightest star of the router camp in the WiFi 6 era.
In addition to the Mesh kit, Netgear, ASUS, and other brands have seized the opportunity to launch WiFi 6 products positioned for the mainstream consumer market, with Netgear's most introductory AX4 (RAX40,AX3000) lowering the threshold of its WiFi 6 products to $199.99, and ASUS RT-AX88U hitting the $2,499 price point. TP-Link, which has always been relatively low-priced, is rumored to be targeting the mainstream market with the launch of the AX1800/AX1500, two products priced at less than $1,000.
Endpoint Devices and the Awkwardness of the Networking Environment
Taking a step ahead of the curve The router allows people to see the attitude of market vendors towards WiFi 6 networks, but in addition to routers, PCs, cell phones, tablet PCs, smart TVs and other terminal equipment are also prerequisites for users to experience and use WiFi 6 networks, but the current situation is that Intel has only formally released its first WiFi 6 NICs at the beginning of April this year, and internally they use Intel Wireless AX22260, which is the most popular NIC on the market. NIC chip, and Killer (Rivet Networks is also in mid-April before the launch of support for WiFi 6 standard card Killer WiFi 6 AX1650, which means that notebooks to be fully upgraded to WiFi 6 I'm afraid that we have to wait a while, at present, only the Lenovo T490 / T490s / T590, HP EliteBook x360 and a few other notebooks support WiFi 6 networks.
Smartphones are considered to be the terminal equipment with earlier network specification changes and upgrades, and Samsung's Galaxy S10 series of phones became the first smartphones to support Wi-Fi 6, and from the end of June confirmed to the news, only high-end flagship processors such as Snapdragon 855, Hathi 980, etc. support WiFi 6, which means that only some of the flagship smartphones can let users to be the first to experience and use the WiFi 6 network.
Only high-end flagship processors such as Snapdragon 855 and Hathi 980 support WiFi 6
In addition to the small number of end-devices that support WiFi 6 at the moment and their higher positioning, the basic network is also the key to WiFi 6 landing. If your home is a 10M fiber, even with WiFi 6 full speed is only 1MB download speed, of course, with the home broadband speed reduction as well as fiber penetration into the home continues to improve, the basic network environment than the WiFi 6 landing will provide strong support.
Write in the end: waiting for WiFi 6 outbreak
The wireless network standard change is related to the overall situation, and therefore usually need a longer time to really realize the whole industry chain change replacement, when the 802.11ac network as early as the beginning of 2012 on the release of the network, in fact, the whole network environment upgraded to the 2017? 2018 before the basic realization, WiFi 6 want to fully popularize, I am afraid that the same need for a long time to drive. From this perspective, if the user's current router only supports WiFi 4 (802.11n) or earlier standards, it may be worthwhile to upgrade it to support WiFi 5 first, and then consider WiFi 6 when the price of WiFi 6 routers is reduced and the end device is universal will be more practical.