Welcome to Brown’s Bytes! Your weekly insight from Mobliciti’s CTO Andy Brown. Follow #brownsbytes
26th August 2022
For this week’s Byte, I’m taking a break from talking about iOS updates, regular readers will be breathing a sigh of relief!
Today, I wanted to drill into Wi-Fi a bit. In particular, there seems to be quite a bit of (justifiable) confusion around Wi-Fi 6 vs Wi-Fi 6E out there – are they the same thing??
So, Wi-Fi 6E > Wi-Fi 6?
The first thing we probably need to do is talk about what Wi-Fi 6E actually is! A lot of the time I hear people interchanging Wi-Fi 6 with Wi-Fi 6E. This is a reflection of how something that is supposed to clarify the various flavours of Wi-Fi is now starting to confuse matters…
So back to basics. I’m not going to do the entire history of Wi-Fi! There is a decent Wiki page for that if you’re so inclined, in particular, the versions and generations section is worth a read to see how the Wi-Fi Alliance has tried to ‘simplify’ this…
Back in the day, we used to use IEEE standards to describe Wi-Fi, anyone who has bought any kind of wireless in the past will remember terms like 802.11g and the like. These terms were considered fine for over a decade, but we now have Wi-Fi Generation Numbers instead. In summary, this looks like this:
|
Wi-Fi Generation
|
IEEE Standard Name
|
Radio Frequencies (GHz)
|
|---|---|---|
|
(Wi-Fi 1)
|
802.11b
|
2.4
|
|
(Wi-Fi 2)
|
802.11a
|
5
|
|
(Wi-Fi 3)
|
802.11g
|
2.4
|
|
Wi-Fi 4
|
802.11n
|
2.4 / 5
|
|
Wi-Fi 5
|
802.11ac
|
2.4 / 5
|
|
Wi-Fi 6
|
802.11ax
|
2.4 / 5
|
|
Wi-Fi 6E
|
802.11ax
|
2.4 / 5 / 6
|
In the past, it was easy to track between IEEE naming and Wi-Fi generation (note the versions in brackets above were never actually used at the time). It really was only around Wi-Fi 5 that we started to use the new terminology, a bit… you’ll still see plenty of kit labelled 802.11ac for example, but that is also Wi-Fi 5.
Note the BIG difference – 6 GHz!
In the table above you’ll see that Wi-Fi 6E actually shares an IEEE standard with Wi-Fi 6…
And 6 GHz has just appeared in the list above, this is a very big deal!!
But also note, that the naming of Wi-Fi 6 really has nothing to do with 6 GHz! It just happens to be the version number where it appears for the first time!! In fact, the original Wi-Fi 6 doesn’t have 6 GHz… only Wi-Fi 6E does!! Confused yet??
So, what is Wi-Fi 6E then?
The clue is in the E… it’s an extension to Wi-Fi 6. Wi-Fi 6 Extended (or E) is basically to ratify the use of the existing Wi-Fi 6 standards but using the 6 GHz spectrum for the first time.
And this is a very, very big deal. 6Ghz is the first new spectrum for Wi-Fi in 20 years. Simply put, more spectrum = more channels = more throughput = better network. And because it is a new spectrum it will also be quieter… which matters in densely populated areas like the areas where offices tend to be!
Many of our customers make multi-year investments when they look to refresh their Wi-Fi in the office, it is really important to make sure that you look at 6E for futureproofing and also to ensure the best user experience.
Sadly, even the Wi-Fi Alliance seem confused by this! They have Wi-Fi Certified 6 as a page which includes Wi-Fi 6E (remember to them, it is just an extension), but if you search their site they then have separate lists for Wi-Fi Certified 6 certified products and Wi-Fi 6E certified products. The whole point of the Wi-Fi generation numbers was to simplify things… sigh!
You can see why the terms are getting confused by everyone!!
If you’d like help untangling this mess and making sure you get the right solutions in place to futureproof your Wi-Fi, then get in touch.
Normal Service will be resumed shortly
Oh, and don’t forget… iOS 16 is coming… get ready!
