Do You Need Wi-Fi 6?

As always, the introduction of a next-generation network, whether fixed, mobile or wireless, raises the question of value, whether to upgrade and when to upgrade. For most consumers, the answer for Wi-Fi 6 is that the upgrade can occur naturally, over time.

Unlike decisions about smartphones, device damage or obsolescence are not so pressing. Smartphone generations come about every two years or so, and performance and features might be obvious.

Routers rarely actually break, and new features can be subtle. Also, no matter what the features of a router might be, bandwidth and speed are functions of the internet access connection. Rarely, in a private setting (home) does the Wi-Fi router itself impose a performance bottleneck. Public Wi-Fi arguably is a different matter.

The advantages of the new Wi-Fi 6 standard are said to include:

• More overall bandwidth per user for ultra-HD and virtual reality streaming
• Support for more simultaneous streams of data with increased throughput
• More total spectrum (2.4GHz and 5GHz, eventually bands in 1GHz and 6GHz)
• Said spectrum split into more channels to enable more routes for communication
• Packets contain more data and networks can handle different data streams at once
• Improved performance (as much as 4x) at the maximum range of an access point
• Better performance/robustness in outdoor and multi-path (cluttered) environments
• Ability to offload wireless traffic from cellular networks where reception is poor

That noted, does every consumer benefit from using Wi-Fi 6? The answer depends on a number of issues, including the internet access connection itself, the number of potential sequential users, the types of apps they require and the amount of ultra-high definition video they tend to watch. 

Comparing Wi-Fi 4,5 and 6
	802.11n (Wi-Fi 4)	802.11ac Wave 2 (Wi-Fi 5)	802.11ax (Wi-Fi 6)
Released	2009	2013	2019
Bands	2.4GHz & 5GHz	5GHz	2.4GHz & 5GHz, spanning to 1GHz - 7GHz eventually
Channel Bandwidth	20MHz, 40MHz (40MHz optional)	20MHz, 40MHz, 80MHz, 80+80MHz & 160MHz (40MHz support made mandatory)	20MHz/40MHz @ 2.4GHz, 80MHz, 80+80MHz & 160MHz @ 5GHz
FFT Sizes	64, 128	64, 128, 256, 512	64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048
Subcarrier Spacing	312.5kHz	312.5kHz	78.125 kHz
OFDM Symbol Duration	3.6ms (short guard interval) 4ms (long guard interval)	3.2ms (0.4/0.8ms cyclic prefix)	12.8ms (0.8/1.6/3.2ms cyclic prefix)
Highest Modulation	64-QAM	256-QAM	1024-QAM
Data Rates	Ranging from 54Mb/s to 600Mb/s (max of 4 spatial streams)	433Mb/s (80MHz, 1 spatial stream) 6933Mb/s (160MHz, 8 spatial stream)	600Mb/s (80MHz, 1 spatial stream) 9607.8Mb/s (160MHz, 8 spatial stream)
SU/MU-MIMO-OFDM/A	SU-MIMO-OFDM	SU-MIMO-OFDM Wave 1, MU-MIMO-OFDM Wave 2	MU-MIMO-OFDMA

source: Techspot

If the end user’s internet access connection only runs at 100 Mbps, it probably does not matter what Wi-Fi 6 can do, especially when there are few users and applications are not terribly bandwidth intensive or latency dependent (fast twitch gaming, for example). 

While Wi-Fi 5 can serve four users on downstream at once, Wi-Fi 5 can handle one user at a time upstream. By design, 802.11ax (Wi-Fi 6) will increase that to eight users on both up and downlink, with the potential to deliver four simultaneous streams to a single client.

Wi-Fi 6 supports Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access, which will reduce latency, boost capacity and improve efficiency by allowing as many as 30 users at once to share a channel.