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Wi-Fi Alliance introduces Wi-Fi 6

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Re: Wi-Fi Alliance introduces Wi-Fi 6

#71
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AC only supports 5gz, which has significantly worse range and is impacted much more by walls or other solid objects. But if there aren't a problem it's generally better

Those limitations are a good thing: they reduce interference from neighbouring apartments/offices, and even interference between overlapping cells of a mesh network or a base station and its extenders. In practice, this means that the extenders can extend longer, so something like a convention center or work-sharing space can use approximately the same number of base stations it did before. The only problem is that y…

> Those limitations are a good thing: they reduce interference from neighbouring apartments/offices

Sometimes. 5GHz is great for apartments (where you have lots of noise and a tiny area) and offices (where you have lots of noise and a large budget), but for a villa 2.4GHz usually hits the sweet spot between noise and coverage.

Re: Wi-Fi Alliance introduces Wi-Fi 6

#72
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found Macs to be vastly better at this than my Linux/windows laptops, for some reason, to the point where I almost never wait for them to connect. Might just be some aggressive workarounds they've implemented, though.

IME, Macs connect faster when the signal is strong. But on a weaker link, it takes just as long as my Windows and Linux machines.

True, this is mostly at home. In cafes and hotels it can definitely take just as long.

Re: Wi-Fi Alliance introduces Wi-Fi 6

#73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Due to the increased efficiency, the speed increase is supposed to be much higher. At CES they showed up to 11Gbits: https://www.zdnet.com/article/d-link-asus-tout-802-11ax-wi-f...

That's just the marketing, AC would have been 7 gbit/s if measured in the same ludicrous 8x8 160 MHz setup (though technically AC only specifies up to 4x4 it doesn't matter, clients are almost exclusively 2x2, even high end laptops). Even in a full greenfield ax deployment it'll be a rare sight to see your phy rate pop above 1 gbit/s half duplex as a client. Like the parent comment said the actual felt speed gains in…

I always took these numbers to be like a Switch's fabric speed. Not the speed an individual client would receive.

Re: Wi-Fi Alliance introduces Wi-Fi 6

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The larger problem with the 2.4 GHz ISM band is ... only one station being able to transmit at a time per channel Is there any Wifi tech for which that isn't true, sans beam-shaping and other tech that effectively puts stations on different physical networks? How do 5 GHz technologies handle multiple simultaneous broadcasts on the same channel? How will 802.11ax do it? Signal processing? My impression, based on onl…

Maybe this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11ax#Technical_improv... > Spatial frequency reuse > Coloring enables devices to differentiate transmissions in their own network from transmissions in neighboring networks. > Adaptive Power and Sensitivity Thresholds allows dynamically adjusting transmit power and signal detection threshold to increase spatial reuse. > Without spatial reuse capabilities devices refu…

Those along with downlink multi-user MIMO from 802.11ac allowed an AP to send to multiple clients at one time using spatial division multiplexing.

Re: Wi-Fi Alliance introduces Wi-Fi 6

#76
This time, maybe they hire some cryptographers too instead of letting the network engineers design the security features. For crying out loud, they took their sweet 20 years to actually create a protocol with forward secrecy and resistant to offline attacks - WPA3.

Re: Wi-Fi Alliance introduces Wi-Fi 6

#77
post #25

FINALLY. Confusing version numbering always annoys me, and wifi's "n", "ac", "g", etc version names (combined with the easy to get wrong "802.11") have been one of the biggest offenders for a while. When a version number is a marketable metric, it should not be confusing. Others notable offenders that jump to mind: the Xbox range (Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Xbox One X), iPhone SE and XR (since they break the pattern a…

Add the "Pixel" range to confusing version numbering:

    "Chromebook Pixel" (a Chromebook released in 2013, commonly called just "Pixel")
    "Chromebook Pixel" (a Chromebook released in 2015, commonly called "Pixel 2")
    "Pixel" (a phone released in 2016)
    "Pixel 2" (a phone released in 2017)
    "Pixelbook" (a Chromebook released in 2017)
Or even worse, the Moto ranges:

    "Moto G" (a phone released in 2013)
    "Moto G" (a phone released in 2014)
    "Moto G" (a phone released in 2015)
Luckily, they have learned from their horribleness and now officially include the generation in the name, making their new naming scheme one of the best:

    Moto G5 (5th generation of their mid-range phone)
Compare with Nokia:

    Nokia 1
    Nokia 2
    Nokia 2.1
    Nokia 3
    Nokia 3.1
    Nokia 5
    Nokia 5.1
    Nokia 5.1 Plus / Nokia X5
    Nokia 6
    Nokia 6.1
    Nokia 6.1 Plus / Nokia X6
    Nokia 7
    Nokia 7 Plus
    Nokia 8
    Nokia 8 Sirocco
I have no clue what is what and it's confusing enough that I don't want to buy their phones even though one of them is most likely exactly what I want (high-range but not top-range phone that has stock or near-stock Android and receives updates quickly).

Re: Wi-Fi Alliance introduces Wi-Fi 6

#78
post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AC only supports 5gz, which has significantly worse range and is impacted much more by walls or other solid objects. But if there aren't a problem it's generally better

"AC only supports 5gz." That's not an accurate statement. "802.11ac" denotes a set of features, and many of them apply to and benefit the 2.4 GHz band. For example 256QAM encoding boosts the max data rate by 20 or 33% on this band for, respectively, 20 and 40 MHz channels.

Isn't 256QAM on 2.4GHz a proprietary feature?

https://www.cwnp.com/forums/posts?postNum=307358

I always heard that 802.11ac was 5GHz only, and that on dual-band, stations would stick with 802.11n for 2.4GHz

Re: Wi-Fi Alliance introduces Wi-Fi 6

#79
post #46

Really good whitepaper on WiFi 6 (802.11ax): https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/products/collateral/wirele... Also: http://www.ni.com/white-paper/53150/en/ Main differences with 802.11ac: - denser subcarriers (or "tones") spacing; they are spaced by 78.125 kHz instead of 312.5 kHz, for example a 80 MHz channel now allows 980 data subcarriers, up from 234. That's a 4.19× improvement (4× higher density doesn't translate…

all I want to know is the maximum speed file transfer I can expect?

with unlimited pipes from my ISP, and a fat 802.11ax router, what can I theoretically expect on speedtest.net

I feel like your analysis neglected using multiple bands or channels or whatevers at once, and how the routers all can do double, tri quad bands already and might do more for this technology

so we talking 3 Gbit/s?

Re: Wi-Fi Alliance introduces Wi-Fi 6

#80

I have a quite long apartment with reception problems in some rooms, and was planning to buy a mesh system (like the TP-Link Deco M9 Plus or similar) to replace my aging range extender (which is stuck on 802.11n now that I have a 802.11ac router). I'm more of a software guy, don't know that much about hardware and networking, so can any expert on these things give an opinion as to whether this is a bad moment to buy…

I have 4 eeros in my house and they are amazing and we never have any issues. I'm so glad I ditched all the netgear/d-link/tp-link/whatever garbage. The hardware is fine but the firmware is always shit. Get a set of euros and stop worrying about wifi ever again.
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