More than speed, it will provide better performance in congested areas, from stadiums to your own device-packed home. Fortunately, it’s coming soon, slotted for a 2019 release.
Wi-Fi will now have version numbers as well. Doing away with those confusing Wi-Fi standard names like “802.11ac,” Wi-Fi names will be replaced with user-friendly names like “Wi-Fi 5” and “Wi-Fi 6.”
Faster Wi-Fi
As usual, the latest Wi-Fi standard offers faster data transfer speeds. If you’re using a Wi-Fi router with a single device, maximum potential speeds should be up to 40% higher with Wi-Fi 6 compared to Wi-Fi 5.
Wi-Fi 6 accomplishes this through more efficient data encoding, resulting in higher throughput. Mainly, more data is packed into the same radio waves. The chips that encode and decode these signals keep getting more powerful and can handle the extra work.
This new standard even increases speeds on 2.4GHz networks. While the industry has shifted to 5GHz for less interference, 2.4GHz is still better at penetrating solid objects. And there shouldn’t be as much interference for 2.4GHz as old cordless telephones and wireless baby monitors are retired.
Longer Battery Life
A new “target wake time” (TWT) feature means your smartphone, laptop, and other Wi-Fi-enabled devices should have longer battery life, too.
When the access point is talking to a device (like your smartphone), it can tell the device exactly when to put its Wi-Fi radio to sleep and exactly when to wake it up to receive the next transmission.
This will conserve power, as it means the Wi-Fi radio can spend more time in sleep mode. And that means longer battery life.
This will also help with low-power “Internet of Things” devices that connect via Wi-Fi.
Better Performance in Crowded Areas
Wi-Fi tends to get bogged down when you are in a crowded place with many Wi-Fi enabled devices fighting to receive and send data. Picture a busy stadium, airport, hotel, mall, or even a crowded office with everyone connected to Wi-Fi.
The new Wi-Fi 6, also known as 802.11ax, incorporates many new technologies to help with this.
Wi-Fi 6 can now divide a wireless channel into a large number of subchannels. Each of these subchannels can carry data intended for a different device.
This is achieved through something called Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access, or OFDMA. The Wi-Fi access point can talk to more devices at once.
The new standard also has improved MIMO, or Multiple In/Multiple Out.
This involves multiple antennas, which let the access point talk to multiple devices at once.
With Wi-Fi 5, the access point could talk to devices at the same time, but those devices couldn’t respond at the same time. Wi-Fi 6 has an improved version of multi-user, or MU-MIMO, that lets devices respond to the wireless access point at the same time.
This wouldn’t just apply to busy public places, but also at home if you have many devices connected to Wi-Fi or if you live in a dense apartment complex.