Wifi 6 has arrived!

Our opportunities to stay connected even wirelessly are gradually becoming more and more efficient.

In addition to connections 5 G What makes people talk so much in the world of cell phones, a big one progress It is also being done in the field of connections Wireless, with the new iteration of Wi-Fi protocols.

So let's talk about Wi-Fi 6 (which is the commercial name assigned by the Wifi Alliance; the 'official' name is 802.11ax)

What is it:

Wi-Fi 6 is proposed as an upgrade compared to current protocols (the previous Wi-Fi 5, or 802.11ac, was initially defined in 2013) and aims to be backwards compatible connected.

Some of its features (such as MU-MIMO) allow even older Wi-Fi clients to benefit from its features.

The updating of these standards involves a long process, especially for the definition of all the details and the compatibility and interoperability tests between the various manufacturers.

So let's see some of the salient features introduced by this new protocol.

1. Higher performance and efficiency, especially in areas with high density

The available bandwidth is about 37% more than the previous generation, but several measures have been taken to make the network more efficient, especially optimizing management with a large number of clients, and in areas with high density, such that the overall performance can reach four times the speed of the previous generation.

The protocol uses OFDMA, a feature that allows you to allocate more granular frequency subsets than the OFDM used by previous protocols, which allows you to manage multiple users (from 9 to 74 depending on the channel size used) and interferences with better efficiency.

(image source: Qorvo)

Classic traffic management aside Of access-point wifi occurs by rotating a time slot to each client.

Already with Wi-Fi 5, this limitation has been mitigated by proceeding with an allocation not per single access point, but FOR ANTENNA. So a recent access-point or Wi-Fi router with 2, 3, or 4 antennas can multitask a much larger number of clients. This feature is called MU-MIMO.

With Wi-Fi 6, this optimization has been further improved, allowing not only simultaneous management in download, but also an upload.

In addition, the protocol provides for better management of interference with other access points (the so-called 'co-channel interference'), using what is called”BSS coloring”. In practice, instead of verifying the availability of radio bandwidth on a given channel (which in densely populated situations - with dozens of routers configured to all use the same channel - is rather difficult), availability is verified only for frames that match YOUR “color” (which can be assigned by assigning a value from 0 to 7). It's basically like multiplying the number of channels without overlapping by 8.

2. Efficiency and battery life

A Wi-Fi client (such as a laptop or a telephone) is positively affected by the new Wi-Fi 6, also from the point of view of battery consumption, for two factors:

1) Most available bandwidth. For what has been said above, if the bandwidth is larger and managed more efficiently, a client can receive data faster, and once its antenna is received it can go faster in a low consumption mode

2) An access point manages multiple clients at the same time, and assign a 'time' at which it plans to transmit the requested data to a single client. This assignment, which is called Target Wake Time (TWT - “wake up” time), allows the client to set their antenna to a sleep state, further optimizing battery use, until “the alarm” rings; in addition, it significantly reduces the need for continuous scanning of the signal to verify when it is available.

3. Safety

The new generations of devices also bring a further improvement, not closely related to WiFi6, but more linked to the technological update and their greater power.

In fact, the new devices tend not only to be compatible with Wi-Fi 6, but also to be compatible with the new WPA3 security protocol, which replaces the now old one (The specification dates back to 2004!) WPA2.

WPA3 brings with it significant improvements in terms of security, and management:

1) More robust encryption algorithms are introduced

2) The old system with a shared password (now called SAE - Simultaneous Authentication of Equals) becomes less susceptible to brute force attacks aimed at recovering the password, and even access without a password (the so-called “open” of the old WPA2) is still encrypted.

3) A simplified network connection system is introduced, so that an IoT device can be added to the network by simply scanning a QR-code with your mobile phone.

Conclusions

As seen, Wi-Fi 6 brings significant benefits in several aspects, and will spread more and more, together with its WPA3 counterpart, offering users a user experience adapted to modern connectivity.

Many of the home routers are already certified, and we are also beginning to see the first laptops and mobile phones compatible with these new standards.

And even the big ones Vendor specialized in wireless (such as Aruba and Ruckus), as well as the main chip manufacturers (such as Broadcom or Qualcomm, which are the engine of our PCs and mobile phones) are adjusting their offer.

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