Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) wireless WiFi 6 (802.11ax) standard is the successor to the IEEE WiFi 5 (802.11ac) standard. WiFi 6 addresses the increasing number of devices in individual networks. WiFi 6 operates in the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands and features improvements in throughput, multiple-device support, and WiFi spectrum efficiency.
WiFi 6 and WiFi 6E are different. WiFi 6 is the latest WiFi standard that operates on the existing 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz wireless bands. WiFi 6E is an extension of the WiFi 6 standard that introduces a new 6 GHz wireless band. For more information, see What is the difference between WiFi 6 and WiFi 6E?
The following are major features of WiFi 6:
Efficiency and capacity improvements
- Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiple Access (OFDMA). This feature enables your router and devices to use your bandwidth more efficiently by reducing the time between data transmissions. As a result, more bandwidth is available for other devices. For example, the NETGEAR Nighthawk RAX200 supports several client devices per WiFi band with downlink and uplink OFDMA technology.
- High-bandwidth traffic efficiency with 8-stream Multi-User-Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MU-MIMO). This technology enables your router to communicate with many devices simultaneously. WiFi 6 also allows 8x8 access points (APs) to use all eight streams to transmit information.
Note: Downlink MU-MIMO is not new in WiFi 6. For more information about MU-MIMO, see What is MU-MIMO and how can this technology be useful in my network?.
Speed improvements
- Improvements in data speeds and signal encoding. WiFi 6 enables devices to send more data in one transmission, resulting in speed improvements of up to 20%.
- Improvements through higher order modulation (1024-QAM). Higher order modulation increases the efficiency and speed of data transmission on your network. This technology can give up to 25% improvements in speed.
Together, these two features provide up to 40% improvement in connection speeds.
Range improvements
- 20MHz-only devices and OFDMA’s ability to use smaller subcarriers means such devices can reach longer distances.
Future improvements
- Further improvements through uplink MU-MIMO. Uplink MU-MIMO allows more of your devices to transmit data to your AP, improving network efficiency.
- Better neighborhood, urban, and city-wide WiFi through spatial re-use (BSS color). BSS coloring enables devices operating in the WiFi 6 standard to differentiate between signals from their own network and signals from other networks. This feature increases the efficiency and capacity of your network.
- Extended battery for mobile and smart home devices with Target Wake Time (TWT). TWT makes communication between your devices and your router’s WiFi channels more efficient. Devices that support TWT enter a sleep state until their scheduled wake time. TWT reduces energy consumption and bandwidth use.
Note: Not all features are available in all products. Please refer to individual product documentation for more details.
For more information about WiFi 6 technology, see the following articles: