20 years of WiFi: launch of the Wi-Fi 6 standard

Although some manufacturers - like Apple - have not had Wi-Fi devices certified for some time, there are already 30 billion certified devices on the market after 20 years. That's incredible; 10 years ago, there were just one billion devices. But not only is the number of devices growing all the time, but the technology is evolving too - this year we've already reached the IEEE 802.11ax aka Wi-Fi 6 standard. Certification of the new standard begins this week.

Here's what Wi-Fi 6 brings

The new 802.11ax standard is given the name Wi-Fi 6. This was decided by the Wi-Fi Alliance before its introduction to put an end to the cryptic designations of before. As a result, the 802.11n and 802.11ac standards can now also be referred to as Wi-Fi 4 and Wi-Fi 5 respectively.

In addition to the new name, Wi-Fi 6 now supports the WPA3 encryption and authentication protocol. This support should offer much better security than its predecessor - thanks in part to the introduction of Simultaneous Authentication of Equals WPA3 should be more robust against attacks. Of course, the new standard should also improve performance in terms of wireless connection quality. Thanks to the OFDMA (Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiple Access) modulation method, the new technology should bring greater efficiency with lower latency times on the 2.4 and 5 GHz frequency bands. The new standard also allows more data to be sent and received simultaneously.

Various improvements to Wi-Fi 6 bring new theoretical transmission speeds of up to almost 10 Gbps. What's more, the standard works better in environments with many connected devices. So, in theory, nearby devices using the same channels and frequencies cause less congestion and data delays. However, this feature only works properly if all the devices in use, ideally those of neighbours, are also equipped with Wi-Fi 6.

Various Wi-Fi 6 devices already available on the market

As we mentioned at the beginning, not all devices that support the new standard are certified by the Wi-Fi Alliance. But since the start of the week, interested manufacturers have had the opportunity to brand their products with the standard.

So far, there are only a few devices on the market that support Wi-Fi 6. For smartphones, it's the Samsung Galaxy models S10, S10+, Note 10 et Note 10+. In addition, all Apple models of the iPhone 11, the forthcoming Google Pixel 4 and all Snapdragon 855-powered devices support the new standard. In addition, other laptops with 10th Generation Intel processors (Ice Lake and Comet Lake) will also support it. As far as routers and access points are concerned, Netgear is offering the new standard with the [RAX80, RAX120 and AX6000 (Orbi Mesh kit). At TP-Link, new products from the Archer and Dexo ranges are announced with support.