2019 is looking like it will be a definitive year in the short 29-year history of Wi-Fi with the anticipated Wi-Fi 6 being ratified later this year and the first major wireless security update since 2004. Yes, it has been a long time coming. WPA 3 will start becoming the wireless security standard by the end of this year in this log I will discuss Wi-Fi 6
Wi-Fi 6 What is it ?
So, what is Wi-Fi 6 and should care about? Wi-Fi 6 is the new name given by the Wi-Fi Alliance for the new soon to be ratified IEEE 802.11ax wireless standard. This new naming convention aims to simply the 802.11 standards to the general Wi-Fi users. So, they can tell what the standard of Wi-Fi they are connected to. I feel it is a good idea to make users more aware of the quality of their wireless connection. So, like with your Mobile connectivity you can tell when it says 4G you have a fast connection and when it drops to 3G we know it not going to be as quick and that I need to move to somewhere with better signal to gain speedier connection.
Increased Speed. So, like every new technology being released it is almost always going to be faster then the predecessor and Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) is no exception to this rule. 802.11ax APs will be able to deliver up to 14Gbps (4x MIMO) of the air, which is incredible and will shift the long-standing view that the cable is faster than Wi-Fi. However, more realistic speeds with
four streams with 160Mhz channel width will be 3.5Gbps compared the 800Mbps on Wi-Fi5/802.11ac. This will mean that mobile devices with two or three streams will be easily achieving over 1Gb.
More efficiency
One of the ways of achieving the higher speeds in Wi-Fi 6 is the significant advancement in how efficient the APs handle different client of slower speeds. This accomplished by using a technic from 4G/LTE world which is orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA). Trying not to get into too much detail Wi-Fi6 now support Frequency division multiplexing. So due to the nature of Wireless being a shared medium and only able to run at half duplex (only one device can transmit data at any one time. So, imagine a bar with only one bartender (channel). Only one order can be taken at any time. With previous standards there was technology implemented called MU MIMO (Multi-User Multi Input Multi Output) meant we got up to 4 bartenders severing on the bar. This meant we got 4x the speed of drink delivery. However, we still have to queue up in 4 queues and have to wait for slow people ordering complex cocktails and paying with coins while there are people behind that want a simple pint. What OFDMA does it splits the channel into hundreds of sub-channels each on a different frequency The signals are then turned orthogonally (at right angles), so they can be piled on top of each other and de-multiplexed. This allows the AP to carve off a small partition of the channel to a slow client while giving the rest of the channel to another faster client. Back to the bartender analogy imagine now that each of the four (can be up to 8) can perform multitasking, and while one client is paying, they can take the next order. So, this allows more orders (data transmissions) to be completed which means more people have the drinks they ordered.
Spatial Reuse (BSS Colouring)
One of the most common sources of interference is something called Co-channel interference where you have two APs on the same channel. Which means that when one AP is transmitting the other AP must stop. This reduces the performance and speed of both APs. This particularly an issue in the 2.4Ghz. Where we only have three non-overlapping channels. One great feature of Wi-Fi6 is Spatial Reuse or BSS Colouring. This is where each AP on a channel is assigned a Colour ID. Creating different zones for each AP or BSS (Basic Service set) So, when a client that is between two APs on the same channel. The AP/client checks before it is about to transmit whether it is clear to send and detects that there is a transmission happening it check the Colour ID of the transmission and if it does not match its colour ID then it knows it for another zone(BSS), and it will then transmit.
This gives the clients and APs a bit more intelligence and will help to reduce the effect of having more than one AP on a channel. This should not be mistaken for a substitute to proper channel design. So to summarise Wi-Fi 6 will be a reality this year and will deliver higher speed and more capacity as a result of the higher efficiency work under the hood. Currently, 802.11ax/Wi-Fi6 has not been ratified yet, but this will happen by the end of this year. You might be asking so what there are no Wi-Fi6 clients. Well, Samsung has announced that it’s new flagship Galaxy S10 being the first mobile phone to be shipping with Wi-Fi 6. This will mean the rest of the vendors will bring out their own very soon after. So the Wi-Fi 6 clients are coming are you and your network ready to support them?
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