What is Wi-Fi 6 and why it is better

The new wireless technology will soon hit the market; here's what makes it much better than the previous iteration. Former Wi-Fi generations have focused on increased speed. While Wi-Fi 1 (802.11b) had a maximum data transfer speed of only 11 Mbps, Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac) is able to transfer data at 1 Gbps.

The new Wi-Fi 6 (a prettier name for 802.11 ax) hasn't been built with speed in mind, though. Sure, it provides greater speeds and improved signal ranges, but it focuses on efficiency and security.

You may still be wondering how fast this new wireless technology will be. Unfortunately, the answer isn't an easy one. In crowded networks, Wi-Fi 6 will provide a huge speed boost, because it can manage radio signals much more efficiently in comparison with the previous technology iterations. People who have fewer devices and use Wi-Fi 6-based networks in their homes should still see a 30-50% speed boost in comparison with what they're getting from their actual 802.11ac networks.

Several manufacturers such as Asus, TP-Link and Cisco are already manufacturing Wi-Fi 6 routers and mesh networks. We will need compatible devices (laptops, phones, tablets, etc.) to use them, of course, but a new router will increase network security levels on its own, protecting the older devices as well.

Wi-Fi 6 optimizes data packets by sending more information at once, and by routing those packets to their destinations much faster. While the current wireless communication standard uses 256-QAM (Quadrature Amplitude Modulation), working with 8 bits of data simultaneously, Wi-Fi 6 will utilize 1024-QAM, being able to transmit 10 bits of data at once. This feature will be of great help for people who want to stream high-resolution videos, play demanding online games, use data-intensive augmented reality applications, and so on.

But Wi-Fi 6 has got another ace up its digital sleeves. Orthogonal frequency-division multiple access, aka OFDMA is a complex mechanism which assigns subsets of data packets to individual devices, making wireless networks work in real multitasking mode for the first time ever. Your new router will utilize dedicated resource units for each device, allowing them to receive the data much faster, and thus reducing latency.

OFDMA will work in conjunction with MU-MIMO, a powerful feature that was introduced as a Wi-Fi 5 upgrade. However, the new version of the multiple-input, multiple-output technology will allow the router to handle both the outgoing and the incoming radio signals.

TWT (Target Wait Time) is another important feature, allowing Wi-Fi 6 routers to communicate with mobile devices and IoT (Internet of Things) gadgets on a preset schedule, thus helping extend their battery life. Most Internet-connected electronics don't need to connect to the network at all times, and TWT will reduce interference by scheduling the moments when the connected devices will wake up.

As a conclusion, Wi-Fi 6 will provide higher data transfer rates, increased network capacity, higher performance in networks that have many connected devices and improved power efficiency for mobile and IoT devices.

According to Wi-Fi Alliance, Wi-Fi 6 hardware should be available at the end of 2019. I wouldn't rush out and buy a new router yet, though; I am pretty sure that the first iterations will have some problems, and I'd rather wait until the major bugs are gone.