WiFi 6, known as the "next generation of WiFi", has attracted the attention of the public as soon as it came out. What makes WiFi 6 so different? What is the difference between WiFi 5 and WiFi 6?
WiFi is a WLAN technology based on IEEE 802.11. Therefore, 802.11n is named WiFi 4. WiFi 5 and WiFi 6 also stand for IEEE 802.ac and IEEE 802.ax respectively. WiFi 6 is developed based on WiFi 5 and has better performance. Nowadays, more and more WiFi 6 devices are appearing on the market. WiFi 6 will become mainstream in the near future. But at present, due to technical problems, it is also a bit difficult for some industries to upgrade their products to support WiFi 6. Once the problems are solved, WiFi 6 will cover all aspects of our lives. It is obvious that WiFi 6 is better than WiFi 5. In this article, we will introduce the aspects in which WiFi 6 is better than WiFi 5.
Compared to WiFi 5, the maximum transmission rate of WiFi 6 reaches 9.6Gbps, which is 3 times the rate of WiFi 5. If 9.6Gbps is converted to the download speed we have been using, it is 1228.8MB/s or 1.2 GB/s.
Note:
The speed we mentioned here refers to the speed at which you connect devices such as mobile phones or computers to the router, not the actual Internet speed. If your broadband speed is low, WiFi 6 cannot greatly improve your Internet speed. But WiFi 6 is different in LAN transmission.
As for frequency, WiFi 5 only supports 5GHz, and WiFi 6 covers 2.4GHz and 5GHz. As we all know, the coverage range of WiFi signals becomes narrower as the frequency increases. Therefore, 5GHz is faster than 2.4GHz, but the coverage area is smaller. WiFi 6 dual-band, 2.4GHz covers a larger area, and 5GHz gets higher speed.
Compared with WiFi 5, the biggest change of WiFi 6 is improved efficiency and reduced latency. For 802.11 a/b/g/n, they adopted OFDM as the main transmission solution. However, WiFi 6 improves it to OFDMA, which can provide services to multiple users at the same time.
More importantly, the spatial data stream of WiFi 6 is increased from 4 in WiFi 5 to 8, which means that WiFi 6 can support up to 8×8 MU-MIO, and the average latency of WiFi 6 is 20ms, which is 10ms lower than that of WiFi 5. Therefore, the efficiency is greatly improved and the latency is reduced. The Internet can remain stable and even more devices can be connected to the router.
WiFi 6 adopts WPA 3. In 2018, the WiFi organization released a new generation of encryption protocol WPA 3, which was upgraded from the previous WPA 2. The security of WPA 3 has been improved, which can better prevent brute force cracking.
The working mode of WiFi 5 is that when the terminal device transmits data to the router, other devices wait to receive data in an unordered manner. The difference is that WiFi 6 introduces a new technology TWT. This means that when one device is working, other devices will enter sleep mode, thereby reducing power consumption and increasing the battery life of the device.
As we mentioned above, WiFi 6 supports 2.4GHz and 5GHz dual bands. 5GHz supports 160MHz bandwidth and the maximum access rate reaches 9.6Gbps. In addition, 5GHz has relatively less interference. These features make WiFi 6 more suitable for large broadband video transmission.
Online games have high requirements for bandwidth and latency. Generally speaking, the best access method for VR games is to use wireless networks. WiFi 6 can provide special signal channels for games. So the high efficiency and low latency of Wi-Fi 6 are just right for games such as VR games.
There are more and more smart home devices such as smart door locks and cameras, which greatly improves the convenience of our lives. Now many router manufacturers are producing and promoting WiFi routers that support WiFi 6, such as Huawei's home WiFi 6 router and V-SOL's 5G CPE with WiFi 6.
Note:
Your mobile phone and other terminal devices also need to support WiFi 6. With a WiFi 6 router, you can enjoy WiFi 6 services. At present, the chips of WiFi 6 routers are better developed than those of terminal devices. Most mobile phones that only support WiFi 6 are 5G phones.
After comparison, we know that the performance of WiFi 6 is better than that of WiFi 5. WiFi 6 is entering our lives, optimizing our Internet experience and bringing us more convenience.
