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Wi-Fi Alliance introduces Wi-Fi 6

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Re: Wi-Fi Alliance introduces Wi-Fi 6

#61

Post by zamadatix »

ricardobeat wrote: post #53
mrb wrote: 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…

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 a real world situation are going to be from OFDMA allowing concurrent use at slower speeds.

Re: Wi-Fi Alliance introduces Wi-Fi 6

#62

Post by [deleted] »

ericd wrote: post #41
jessriedel wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect for most WiFi users, the overwhelming need is more reliable and fast establishment of connection. I waste vastly more time trying to deal with flaky connections, reconnection after wake from sleep, and network priority issues than I do waiting in the rare cases the WiFi is limiting thd data transfer rate (rather than the wired connection). The timescales involved in making Wifi connections should be ms or l…

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.

[deleted]

Re: Wi-Fi Alliance introduces Wi-Fi 6

#63

Post by rayiner »

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #38

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…

802.11ax (or WiFi 6) is going to primarily benefit you at 5 GHz, which is best where you have line-of-sight between the device and the AP. If you're looking into range extenders, you probably don't have line of sight and it's not worth it.

Mesh Wifi sucks.[1] It takes Wifi unreliability and latency and compounds it by adding hopes. Just bite the bullet and put in multiple APs, all connected to a router via Ethernet.

[1] Mesh [any sort of wireless] sucks.

Re: Wi-Fi Alliance introduces Wi-Fi 6

#64

Post by piotrkubisa »

reaperducer wrote: post #55
joemi wrote: 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…

Maybe there's someone with a sense of humor there and Wifi 9 will be skipped as a dig at both Microsoft and Apple. Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10 iPhone 7, iPhone 8, iPhone X Wifi 6, Wifi 7, Wifi 8, Wifi Ten

Well, I think they have already skipped 802.11ad which initially looked like a next version. Personally, I know only one router available to casual consumer made by Netgear [1].

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11#Standards_and_amen...

[1]: http://www.za.netgear.com/landings/ad7200/default.aspx

Re: Wi-Fi Alliance introduces Wi-Fi 6

#65

Post by rayiner »

mtgx wrote: post #4

802.11ax is 802.11n's true successor and I hope it will be adopted quickly by everyone. 802.11ac for the 5GHz band was a faux successor, in my opinion, as you couldn't use it in the same scenarios. It came with some higher performance, but with major compromises in reach for a typical home. Wi-Fi 6/802.11ax should last for a while, so I hope the Wi-Fi Alliance starts focusing on an actual long-range standard that's m…

> Wi-Fi 6/802.11ax should last for a while, so I hope the Wi-Fi Alliance starts focusing on an actual long-range standard that's more of a competitor to LTE but that works in the unlicensed spectrum and for distances of 1km or longer.

These are totally conflicting goals. The reason LTE works at those ranges is that a cell tower puts out tens of watts, so that the size-optimized electronics in a phone can receive the signal at that range. That's tens of times more than the limit in the unlicensed band (1W).

Furthermore, the bane of the unlicensed band is that it's full of uncooperative signals. The hard power limit keeps a lid on that, minimizing the number of uncooperative signals any given receiver/transmitter pair has to contend with. Jacking up the range to a kilometer compounds that problem exponentially.

Physics hates mesh networks. To optimize performance, you need a single network (or at least cooperative networks) using each chunk of spectrum.

Re: Wi-Fi Alliance introduces Wi-Fi 6

#66

Post by DiabloD3 »

kalleboo wrote: post #40
DiabloD3 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WiMax is an LTE alternative designed by an IEEE 802 committee. It is designed for last mile delivery and also meets the requirements to be considered a 4G and 5G protocol. Although technically superior to LTE, phone companies (outside of Sprint, in the US at least) chose not to deploy it as it was not based on existing protocols (GSM and CDMA), even though that isn't an actual legitimate reason, as "true" LTE require…

WiMAX may have had technical potential in its standards (I am not equipped to evaluate that) but all the actual deployments of it were just worse than existing HSDPA networks. 10-20 Mbit WiMAX in the US got falsely branded by Sprint as "4G" which caused companies like T-Mobile and AT&T to also brand their faster HSDPA networks as "4G" which caused massive confusion in the the market (iPhones in the US will still show…

4G's sticking point is speed. Specifically, the ITU-R IMT Advanced proposal requires several things, of which, today, are easy to meet. What wasn't easy was 100mbit peak speeds for mobile users, gigabit peak speeds for fixed users.

WiMAX in a lot of markets is not 4G, but neither is LTE in a lot of markets. In other words, a lot of markets do not, and seemingly never will, have 4G as defined by IMT Advanced. I live in a market that is LTE, is sold to me as 4G, will never meet 4G requirements.

WiMAX was developed with proposals like IMT Advanced in mind: ability to have MIMO, all IP packet switching (non-VoLTE LTE networks cannot ever qualify to be called a 4G network due to this, btw), 20mhz and higher channel widths, and spectral efficiency above a certain level (which put a lower limit on how big your modem's DSP has to be due to coding techniques), forwards and backwards compatibility of future specs, and smooth handover between heterogeneous technology (ie, tower to home femtocell and back). WiMAX's original specification (802.16e-2005, which was based on the original 802.16 spec from 2001) met the IMT Advanced requirements.

LTE was not developed from day one to do this, and did not really meet the requirements until LTE-Advanced. The original LTE specification (3GPP release 8 (2008); LTE-A was defined in release 10 (2011); LTE-A Pro was defined in release 13/14 (2016/2017); additions to LTE-A Pro for 5G (but does not meet 5G yet) were added to release 15 (2018)) fell short of the speed requirement.

What makes this all interesting is, WiMax could do fixed modems 10 years before LTE-A added it, was "true 4G" (as how ITU-R defines it now due to how everyone rushed to muddy the definition with HSPA+ and whatnot) 3 years before LTE was, and is currently the only protocol that has hope of deploying gigabit to fixed users currently (via 802.16m-2011/802.16-2012 aka WiMax 2 or WiMax-Advanced).

Also, they're trying to sell LTE as 5G, I've already seen ads saying 600/700mhz support is 5G (it is not, although it is welcome), just like how they tried to sell highest order (2x2 MIMO with dual cell and widest channels) HSPA+ as 4G (which would be more correctly be described as 3.5G, as newest spec LTE would be best described as 4.5G).

Re: Wi-Fi Alliance introduces Wi-Fi 6

#67

Post by walrus01 »

garmaine wrote: post #14
mtgx wrote: post #4

802.11ax is 802.11n's true successor and I hope it will be adopted quickly by everyone. 802.11ac for the 5GHz band was a faux successor, in my opinion, as you couldn't use it in the same scenarios. It came with some higher performance, but with major compromises in reach for a typical home. Wi-Fi 6/802.11ax should last for a while, so I hope the Wi-Fi Alliance starts focusing on an actual long-range standard that's m…

WiMax?

802.16d and 802.16e are dead and useless from a modern ISP perspective. WISPs are ripping it all out and upgrading to cambium pmp450, ubnt AC, mimosa, etc.

Re: Wi-Fi Alliance introduces Wi-Fi 6

#68

Post by [deleted] »

chipperyman573 wrote: post #60
mrb wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

Interesting. How come all the consumer routers I've used have always required 5ghz to use AC capabilities? Are the rest of the ac features enterprisey? Or have I just not interacted with enough routers to see these?

[deleted]

Re: Wi-Fi Alliance introduces Wi-Fi 6

#69

Post by fyfy18 »

rayiner wrote: post #63
Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #38

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…

802.11ax (or WiFi 6) is going to primarily benefit you at 5 GHz, which is best where you have line-of-sight between the device and the AP. If you're looking into range extenders, you probably don't have line of sight and it's not worth it. Mesh Wifi sucks.[1] It takes Wifi unreliability and latency and compounds it by adding hopes. Just bite the bullet and put in multiple APs, all connected to a router via Ethernet.…

> Mesh Wifi sucks.

As an alternative for what doesn’t suck, you want multiple hardwired access points. Obviously if you are renting that is tricky though. Ubiquti UAP-PROs are pretty good for home use, and a couple at each end of your apartment would be faster (and probably cheaper) than a prosumer mesh setup.

Re: Wi-Fi Alliance introduces Wi-Fi 6

#70

Post by dwighttk »

mtgx wrote: post #4

802.11ax is 802.11n's true successor and I hope it will be adopted quickly by everyone. 802.11ac for the 5GHz band was a faux successor, in my opinion, as you couldn't use it in the same scenarios. It came with some higher performance, but with major compromises in reach for a typical home. Wi-Fi 6/802.11ax should last for a while, so I hope the Wi-Fi Alliance starts focusing on an actual long-range standard that's m…

how is cranking out enough power to reach 1km going to effect battery life?
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