Reliance on wireless networks from laptops, mobile computers, wearables and IoT devices is increasing daily and projected to increase significantly in the years to come but what does that mean to you? Previous wireless technologies focused on increases in speed such as 802.11n and 802.11ac but as more and more users joined the wireless the speeds were reduced and the performance suffered equally. With 802.11ax (High Efficiency Wireless) the focus is not only on increasing speed but also in efficiency, ensuring that speeds are maintained while also maximizing the number of clients that each AP is able to support. Also, unlike 802.11ac, where the focus was primarily on 5Ghz, the advantages are passed along to both the 2.4Ghz and the 5Ghz spectrum with 802.11ax. Below are some of the advantages provided by the new WIFI 6 technology when used with WIFI 6 capable clients.
- Increase theoretical throughput from 3.5Gbps to 9.6Gbps
- Provide an increase of over 60% throughput on a 20Mhz Channel.
- Target Wait Time (TWT) to increase mobile client battery life by up to 65%
- MU-MIMO- Multi User-Multiple Input Multiple Output Uplink and Downlink
- Frequency segmentation from 312.5khz to 78.125khz.
- Increased support for higher densities of client devices
- Improved security with WPA3
- Backward compatible with 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac