WI-FI 6E THE 6GHZ REVOLUTION
It’s not just humans that are hungry for more wireless bandwidth. A 15-billion-strong army of interconnected machines wants in on the action, too. Luckily, Wi-Fi 6E has every single one of them covered. Jeremy Laird explains
ACCORDING to recent research by networking specialist Cisco, nearly twothirds of the global population will have internet access by 2023. That’s around 5.3 billion souls, a huge leap from the 3.9 billion that had access in 2018.
But here’s the kicker. Wireless network growth is expected to be even more explosive. Cisco reckons that there were 169 million wireless hotspots globally in 2018, but the number is set to quadruple to 628 million by 2023. That’s a whole lot of new Wi-Fi.
Of course, it’s not just humans that are bandwidth hungry. In 2018 there were around 5 billion connected devices that fell into the M2M, or machine-tomachine, connectivity category. In other words, machines talking to each other with no humans involved. In 2023, the number of connected M2M devices is expected to be a colossal 14.7 billion.
The result is a staggering, almost incomprehensible demand for wireless bandwidth. And that’s a problem. Anecdotally, anyone who lives in a town or city will be all too familiar with the scroll-inducing litany of options available any time the airwaves are sampled for a list of local wireless networks.
More empirically speaking, there are ever more devices and access points competing for the same relatively narrow wireless airspace. Until now, that is. Because 2021 is the year of Wi-Fi 6E, the biggest step change in wireless technology ever, and the solution, very probably, to the looming wireless connectivity crunch.
WHERE DO WE BEGIN?
Billions of new users, tens of billions more devices, most of them wirelessly connected—this is the near future of the internet, and it’s incredibly exciting. But it’s also a major technological headache. The central problem is airspace. It’s over 15 years since the last significant chunk of spectrum was freed up for wireless networking use.
That’s right, we’re still using the same airspace today as we were when smartphones were barely a thing. At least, that was true until now, thanks to Wi-Fi 6E. In April last year, the Federal Communications Commission took the momentous step of opening up a huge swathe of bandwidth for unlicensed Wi-Fi use. This year, the first Wi-Fi 6E devices designed to use that epic chunk of new spectrum are coming online.
“This is the most monumental decision around [the] Wi-Fi spectrum in its history, in the 20 years we’ve been around,” said Kevin Robinson of the Wi-Fi Alliance, the industry group overseeing the implementation of Wi-Fi. In one fell swoop, the FCC’s decision literally quadruples the amount of airspace available to Wi-Fi networking. The new spectrum has enough room for up to seven simultaneous maximum-capacity Wi-Fi streams, with no interference and without using any existing airspace.
In dispassionate terms, more bandwidth, lower latency, and increased capacity are the immediate technical benefits, with touted applications ranging from whole home gigabit coverage, multigigabit Wi-Fi venue capacity, high-speed tethering, low-latency Wi-Fi calling, nextgen VR and AR experiences, and more. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. First we need to get under the hood of Wi-Fi 6E.
In most regards Wi-Fi 6E is merely an extension of the existing Wi-Fi 6 standard.
Indeed, the “E” in Wi-Fi 6E stands for “extended”—in this case extended into new airspace, specifically the 6GHz band. Previous Wi-Fi standards have operated in the 2.4GHz and 5GHz ranges.
Prior to that FCC decision, a total of 400MHz of usable space across those two bands has been available for unlicensed Wi-Fi devices. Wi-Fi 6E? It has access to the entire 6GHz band, and then some. The new airspace spans a huge 1,200MHz range from just below 6GHz to a little above 7GHz. In really simple terms, this new spectrum provides far more Wi-Fi capacity than all previous bands combined. It’s a dramatic addition.
However, that doesn’t mean that Wi-Fi 6E will automatically translate into higher peak speeds or devices. Like standard Wi-Fi 6, Wi-Fi 6E tops out at 9.6Gbps. But that’s a theoretical figure, not something you’ll get in the real world. Apart from anything else, there are few if any internet applications that supply that kind of bandwidth. Instead, what Wi-Fi 6 is about isn’t really top speeds, but improving performance in the context of high densities of access points and devices.
Peak speeds for individual devices are actually likely to improve with Wi-Fi 6E. You can expect real-world speeds of around 2Gbps, which is pretty spectacular. Partly that’s down to the inherent advantages of the 6GHz band over 5GHz and 2.4GHz, but it’s mostly a function of reduced interference and less congested airspace. Early Wi-Fi 6E devices in particular will have the 6GHz band to themselves, making multi-gigabit speeds a reality, rather than a claimed specification you’re never likely to achieve.
But rather than hitting the kind of multi-gigabit performance that few users really need, it will be improved reliability in a multi-device environment where Wi-Fi 6E truly delivers. Being able to reliably get the most out of that 300Mbps fibre connection, for instance, or support zillions of access points and devices in densely populated urban areas while maintaining decent speeds, is what Wi-Fi 6E will be really good at.
When Wi-Fi 5 (previously known as 802.11ac) came out in 2013, the average US household had around five Wi-Fi devices. Today, it’s around 10, and most estimates predict that number to continue increasing. Imagine all those devices in an apartment building, battling for limited airspace that was defined decades ago.
Maintaining speedy Wi-Fi performance in built-up areas, with noisy airwaves full of devices, is already hard. Without the new spectrum, the anticipated uptick in