The One Huge Difference Between Wi Fi 6 and Wi Fi 6E

 

The next generation of Wi-Fi is now available. It's called Wi-Fi 6 and, by extension, Wi-Fi 6E, and it's been around for a while. Actually, the exact word is 802.11ax, but I think they found it out. The number system performs slightly better. So, 802.11ac was the prior one.is available for Wi-Fi 5, however the most recent version is Wi-Fi 6.You may not be familiar with the other, Wi-Fi 6E.It's still part of Wi-Fi 6, but it has one key difference. This is a significant characteristic.

 

So, first and foremost, let me explain what that significant distinction is.Then there's how Wi-Fi 6 and 6E are both superior to Wi-Fi ac and Wi-Fi 5.the one before it Of course, I'll do my best to break down the more technical aspects and explain them as clearly as possible. So, what exactly is the difference between Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E?

 

For the sake of context, I'd like to point out that they both have the same name.features and enhancements compared to Wi-Fi 5.I'll go through all of them later, and they encompass everything. However, it's crucial to note that 6 and 6E do have these features. The functionality is roughly the same.The distinction, however, is in the frequency spectrums.

While Wi-Fi 6 will support the same 2.4 and 5 GHz bands as Wi-Fi 5, Wi-Fi 6E will also support a third 6 GHz band that was recently opened up by the FCC and registered for unlicensed use, allowing Wi-Fi to use it.

 

All nations are releasing a portion of the 6 GHz band for Wi-Fi use"Oh, we already have dual bands, why do we need three bands?" might not seem like a huge concern. However, that is a significant issue, as I will explain.But, in terms of application, what does this mean?Is it any better now? IN spectrally loud environments, the most advantage will be realized.

And by that, I mean locations with a lot of Wi-Fi signals bouncing around several access points and routers.For instance, workplaces, apartment complexes, public events, and other places where a large number of people will be using their phones and connecting to comparable Wi-Fi hotspots.

 

 

With this extra spectrum, Wi-Fi channels will have a lot more room to spread out.As a result, various access points won't have to compete for it, and there will be far less interference.When you set up a router, you must pick, or have it choose for you, a single channel on which it will function, and then all of your devices will connect to that one channel.And the channel is essentially a portion of the 2.4, 5, or 6 GHz spectrum.You just get to pick a little portion of it.

 

The fewer the channels, the more they'll have to be shared with neighboring access points like your neighbours.There will be some overlap if you have more than three neighbours, such as an apartment complex nearby, and you will both have to possibly utilise the same channel, which will create a lot of interference.And the present 2.4 GHz, as well as the 5 GHz spectrum, both have flaws that 6 GHz will address. Consider the 2.4 GHz band.Ironically, this is the most prevalent.Did you know that on 2.4 GHz, there are only three non-overlapping channels? It's also utilised by a lot of other things besides Wi-Fi.

Bluetooth, baby monitors, vehicle alarm sensors, garage door openers, microwaves when they're turned on, and a whole host of other smart home protocols like ZigBee and other things all use it.It's a complete disaster. Now that the 5 GHz spectrum is available, issue should presumably be resolved.It has the complete 5 GHz spectrum to operate with, which is a lot more than the 2.4 GHz's 100 MHz.So, why is 6 GHz so much better, despite the fact that 5 GHz is essentially the same amount of frequency, and we already have it?In actuality, only a small portion of the 5 GHz spectrum is actually useable.isn't quite as large as you may believe.It is now considerably larger than 2.4 GHz.

For example, 2.4 only has three 20 MHz wide non-overlapping channels.There are 25 channels at 5 GHz.Except that's not the case.You'll see that 16 of the 25, 5 GHz channels are DFS channels (Dynamic Frequency Selection).These are channels that share the same frequency as radar from airports, weather radar, and other similar devices.

And, although though Wi-Fi can technically utilise these channels, there is a legislation in the United States and elsewhere that stipulates that, because radar was previously used and they don't want Wi-Fi to interfere with it, all Wi-Fi devices and routers must have technology built in to detect radar signalsAnd if it does, it'll have to turn off the Wi-Fi, which means if you live near one, you'll be out of luck.If you live near an airport or a weather radar station that sweeps by all the time, those DFS channels will most likely be worthless to you.A number of consumer-grade routers don't work due of these constraints.You may even choose the stations you want to watch.Because if individuals were unaware of this and began using such channels,If their Wi-Fi continued going off at random, they'd probably blame the router.When it's only obeying the rules, a router is blamed for having poor connectivity.As a result, they don't even allow you to connect to those.

So you only have a small number of 5 GHz channels to work so you don’t have any restriction.So really you only end up with nine truly free Wi-Fi channels, which is still better than 2.4, but with five GHz ac Wi-Fi.There's actually a technology that a lot of routers use, or are able to use, whereit combines different multiple channels.So you can have 40 MHz channels made of two 20 MHz channels or even 80 or 160 MHz wide channels, combining a whole bunch.And usually, an ac router is going to try and by default do about 40 MHz wide.And considering the DFS channels, that means there are only aboutfour 40 MHz wide usable channels if you're going to do that.It's not required, but it will get you the higher speeds.If you are in a very, very crowded environment, then you will probably haveto only use 20 MHz wide, even on 5 GHz.And then if you wanted to use a 80 MHz wide channel, there's only two of those.And with the 160 MHz, then both of them are either completely engulfed orpartially engulfed by those DFS channels,so you might not even want to use those.But again, 5 GHz is still way better than 2.4 in prettymuch every way, except range.It's faster, there's more channels.But since those non DFS channels, which are limited, are pretty much the standard ones, then it might not cut it going forward to be future-proof.That's where 6 GHz comes in. And the 6 GHz full spectrum is actually from 5.925 to 7.125 GHz.That's actually 1200 MHz, a little bit more than a full GHz. And that means it supports a whopping fifty-nine 20 MHz channels.And then those can be divided into twenty-nine 40 MHz,fourteen 80 MHz or seven 160 MHz.However, there are some caveats.

For example, in the United States, the FCC did regulate which parts of that fullspectrum can be used outside with standard or higher power Wi-Fi access points.And which can be used in lower power indoor use.Now the good news is that for indoor use consumer uses, youcan use any of the channels.All of them are allowed.It's just that on outside routers, which might be used on venues andstuff, then those are restricted and only 41 out of the 59 are usable there.But still you don't have to worry about that restriction unless you're running a business or something like that.And it's still a whole bunch, 41 it's still a lot.The other major caveat, which is the most unfortunate, is that if you're outside theUnited States and Canada and some other countries, most of Europe, for example, is not adopting yet the full 6 GHz spectrum.They have only adopted an unlicensed use of 5925-6425 MHz range,which is half of what the United States and Canada have done.That means that those of you who are in Europe or elsewhere on thismap where it's labeled, are only going to have twenty-four new 20MHz channels supported worldwide.

Now I'm really hoping, and it does seem like this is the case for now,that Wi-Fi chip manufacturers are just going to by default add in the capability for all of these chips to support the full 6E / 6 GHz spectrum.And not just limit it because it's limited halfway in Europe, but they shoulddefinitely at least add the capability to have the full thing and maybe enable it by software later in case Europe does end up adopting the full 6 GHz spectrum, which there has been some pressure to do that.Though they haven't really talked about it yet.But anyway, the basic huge benefit of 6 GHz is that you're going to have way more space and able to not only have more channels, if you need lessinterference, but you can also have way bigger channels that are going to have a lot more bandwidth, especially if you're not in such a crowded area.But what's also cool is with this many channels, say you're an outdoor concert venue where there's thousands of people all on their phone. And you, as the venue set up person, you could set up 40 different Wi-Fi access points, basically right next to each other. And each of them could have their very own individual channel.

So even though they all connect to the same network, as people use their devices to connect to the same Wi-Fi network, it'll show up as one as a mesh network, but their phone will automatically connect to one with the least interference. It'll be able to balance across 40 different things and just to have way less interference for all those people.If that makes sense. Now, there are only a handful of Wi-Fi, 6E devices so far. I believe for in terms of routers, asus, Linksys and Netgear have a few.And as for devices, I believe the Galaxy S21 Ultra has it.And I believe the upcoming iPhone is supposed to be rumored to have it.So it's coming along, just you know, it's going to take a little while andyou will have to upgrade your router to be able to use that, by the way.

Now I did say I'd go over some of the big ways that Wi-Fi 6 and 6E are both way better than Wi-Fi 5, more than just having this extra new frequency. First of all, it's a lot faster potentially .So you can have up to 3.5 *Gigabits* per Wi-Fi stream, spatial stream  they're called, and you can have four of these (up to), depending on how high-end the device is. And therefore theoretically, one Wi-Fi router could have a throughput of like 14 Gigabits per second, which is kind of insane. The other big technological feature of Wi-Fi 6 is something called OFDMA. This basically allows the router to split one channel into many subunits and broadcast to several devices at once, for like every broadcast "pulse", I guess you could say for every "time unit", it can then do multiple devices. Whereas right now, they only send data on the whole channel to one device. And if it does, it'll have to turn off the Wi-Fi, which means if you live near one, you'll be out of luck. an airport or a weather radar station that is constantly cruising past,

 

Technically, if the router supports MU-MIMO (multi-user multiple-input multiple-output multiple-output multiple-input multiple-output multiple-input multiple- If it has many users, multiple inputs, and multiple outputs, it can technically communicate with them. numerous devices at the same time, however OFDMA will be a different approach and will be merged with it. So it'll basically be a lot more efficient and connected to the rest of the system. a slew of different things all at once Then there are a few more technological enhancements, all of which are aimed at improving the user experience. Wi-Fi 6's efficiency in high-density situations will be improved. When they were developing Wi-Fi 6, the major objective was to make it as simple as possible. when there is a lot of density

Because we're kind of experiencing that right now and just Wi-Fi devices becoming more ubiquitous. Internet of things, lot more devices are going to be crowding our waves, we need more space.