FIVE REASONS YOU SHOULD UPGRADE TO Wi-fi 6
1 Connect more devices without bottlenecks
Ofcom’s latest survey of British broadband ( www.snipca.com/40466) calculated the UK’S average download speed to be 50.4Mbps. At that rate, you could download an album in 20 seconds, and a high-definition film in less than five minutes.
Those times are already impressive, and upgrading to Wi-fi 6 probably wouldn’t reduce them because Wi-fi 5 already supports a theoretical maximum of 3,500Mbps (3.5Gbps), and even Wi-fi 4 supports 600Mbps. So why splash out on Wi-fi 6 and its maximum of 9,608Mbps (9.6Gbps)?
Well, it should ease any bottlenecks in your home. Imagine that every device on your network is connected to the router by a pipe, and that rather than working with data, they send and receive water. It doesn’t matter how wide your pipes are between your devices and the router: if the pipe inside the router is too narrow, the flow of incoming water will be reduced, and everything on your network will suffer. Upgrading to a Wi-fi 6 router is like widening the pipe within the router so there’s more to share between each device that’s connected to it.
This should mean everything on your network will run at maximum speed. With Wi-fi 6, then, you should notice an overall improvement in the performance of your network – particularly if you use it for data-intensive activities like streaming high-definition video, playing online games, video chats and carrying out large downloads.
2 Reduce Wi-fi interference between devices
Wi-fi 6 doesn’t only move data more quickly, it also handles it more efficiently. For example, a Wi-fi 6 router can sub-divide your network signal, so it can communicate with multiple devices simultaneously. Better yet, the router can detect where each device is located. So, if it’s servicing a smart speaker in the next room and a stream to a smart TV on the floor above, it will direct the speaker’s data stream horizontally and the TV signal vertically, and apply any diagonal adjustments that are required.
This process, called beamforming, reduces the amount of data heading off in other directions, and potentially reduces interference. You should find a beamforming control in your router’s administration screens.
To make sure this is enabled in our Netgear RAX70 router we opened the Advanced tab in the control panel, then clicked Advanced Setup, followed by Wireless Settings. Next we scrolled to the bottom of the screen where we made sure the ‘Enable Tx Beamforming’ box was ticked (see screenshot above).
The data itself is encoded more efficiently, so less of it needs to be sent and received. This process is similar to when you compress (or ‘zip’) a file before attaching it to an email. Data is also assigned a distinct ‘colour’. This colour-coding isn’t physical, so you won’t see pink and blue streams flowing across your home, but it is used by the Wi-fi 6 standard to differentiate data on a busy network.
Imagine a postal worker is tasked with delivering half a dozen letters, each one sealed within a 6in square envelope. If all the envelopes are white, the only way to ensure each one reaches the correct recipient would be to carry them one at a time from the post office (router) to the letterbox (device) before returning for the next letter. That’s effectively what happens on non-wi-fi 6 networks, where the data isn’t colour-coded.
But if the 6in square envelopes were each a different colour, the postal worker could carry them all at once. The red envelope could be posted through the red letterbox, the blue one through the blue box, and so on, without the postie returning to base between each one, and the job would be completed more quickly.
By ‘colouring’ data, Wi-fi 6 can do much the same thing, by carrying and differentiating several streams simultaneously, and processing them in parallel. As you can see from Intel’s illustration left, each device will receive chunks of data as soon as they become
available, rather than having to wait its turn behind other devices on the network, and can start processing or using them sooner.
3 Access devices on 2.4GHZ and 5GHZ bands
Wireless devices communicate on one of two frequencies: 2.4GHZ or 5GHZ. The 2.4GHZ band arrived first in 1997 via the 802.11 standard, and was also in the 802.11b standard that followed two years later. 1999 also saw the launch of 802.11a, which opened up the 5GHZ band and used it to transmit data at significantly higher speeds.
In the years since, we’ve alternated between the two frequencies with each new standard. The 802.11g protocol adopted in 2003 used the 2.4GHZ band to provide the best of both worlds: ie, speeds comparable to those 5GHZ bands on 802.11a, but with the longer ranges of other 2.4GHZ standards.
Wi-fi 4 (2008) worked with both bands, while Wi-fi 5 (2014) supported only 5GHZ. But with Wi-fi 6 we once again have the benefit of both 2.4GHZ and 5GHZ in the same box.
Why is this important? Because many internet-connected home devices and older gadgets are compatible only with 2.4GHZ signals. Some smart doorbells, plugs and light bulbs, for example, won’t connect to 5GHZ, so anyone with one of those devices, running a Wi-fi 5 network, might also need to run a 2.4GHZ network alongside it.
With Wi-fi 6, this shouldn’t be a problem. Accommodating 2.4GHZ and 5GHZ signals simultaneously means the network should be accessible to any device, whichever frequency it’s programmed to use.
4 Use less battery power
We’re becoming more reliant than ever on efficient battery management. We want our smartphones to last from breakfast to bedtime on a single charge and our laptops to see us through a working day. Most devices can manage it when they’re new but, as they age and their batteries become less efficient, they may need some help – which is where Wi-fi 6 comes into its own.
Wi-fi 6 incorporates a technology called Target Wake Time (TWT) which effectively lets your battery-powered device hang up a ‘do not disturb’ sign for a specified period. So, while a streaming smart TV might need to be constantly communicating with the router, your battery-powered, internetconnected doorbell is more likely to need only the occasional check-in for system messages or software updates. The rest of the time, its interactions will only be triggered by a button push. This means it can tell the router not to interract with it until an agreed time at some point in the future.
This has two benefits. As well as reducing the amount of traffic on the network, which leaves the wireless signal free for other devices to use, batterypowered devices like your doorbell will use less energy because they can power down their wireless circuitry for a period of time safe in the knowledge the router will not bother it.
5 Stream multiple HD TV channels simultaneously
Maintaining a high-definition video stream currently requires less bandwidth than you might imagine. Netflix recommends a minimum connection speed of 25Mbps for 4K (ultra-high definition) video, which your existing routers should be capable of.
However, as networks get busier and we move from 4K to even higherdefinition broadcasts, we’re more likely to feel the strain, and this is when Wi-fi 6 will really prove its worth.
You can already buy 8K TV sets, which offer not twice, but four times the resolution of the ultra-high definition 4K panels that we’re just becoming familiar with. There’s not much content for 8K TVS right now but, as it becomes available, it’s likely to require data rates of around 100Mbps to 125Mbps.
Set three of these running on different TVS in the same home, alongside streamed radio, someone playing games at high frame rates and smart devices checking in with each other frequently, and Wi-fi 6 might soon become the only viable option.