WiFi 6 Router

WiFi 6 refers to the IEEE 802.11ax standard, the successor of 802.11ac, indicating the sixth generation of WiFi.

WiFi 6 uses orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA), MU-MIMO, beamforming, enabling higher data rates at a given range to increase network capacity.

All WiFi 6 routers and clients are backward compatible with legacy devices and clients. This means that Wifi 6 Routers do have backward support for each of 802.11a, b, g, n, ac modes of operation.

• Higher data rates
• Increased capacity - It provides four times more capacity compared to older standards.
• Improved performance in environments with many connected devices.
• Improved power efficiency- The WiFi 6 routers can handle up to 12 simultaneous WiFi streams.
• It can send and receive data from multiple devices at the same time.
• TWT features help smartphones, and laptops save battery by negotiating the wakeup and sleep time of a device.
• Beamforming and OFDMA technique
• BSS color codes

WiFi 4 corresponds to 802.11n

WiFi 5 corresponds to 802.11ac

WiFi 6 corresponds to 802.11ax

WiFi 6 (802.11ax) will connect to 5 GHz frequencies. However, few routers can support WiFi 6 on 2.4GHz, but the standard is only ratified on 5 GHz radios for better efficiency.

The 802.11ac operates only at 5 GHz frequency.

If you have a dual-band router that supports 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz, it uses 802.11n (WiFi 4) on the 2.4 GHz frequency and 802.11ac (WiFi 5) on the 5 GHz frequency.

Yes! The EX220-G2u router supports band steering. It automatically assigns your devices to the best available band according to the WiFi environment, balancing the network load to give each device its optimum connection.

Note that not all WiFi 6 routers support the 2.4 GHz for AX. It will be as per the hardware specification of the specified router.

The ACT supplied EX220-G2u is an AX1500 Dual Band WiFi 6 Router. It supports WiFi 6 only on the 5 GHz band. The 2.4 band will have WiFi 5 support.

Yes, the user experience will differ based on specific hardware being used in the router, the specifications of the hardware, and lastly, the environment it is being deployed!

The device specifications will confirm the compatibility. If it mentions that the WiFi adaptor is 802.11ax, it is WiFi 6 compliant.

TWT increases the performance of the WiFi network by a factor of 4 while improving/not impacting power requirements. It allows devices to negotiate how long and how often they will need to transmit and receive data. This allows the transponder on the device to sleep when the transmission isn’t necessary. It helps smartphones and laptops to save battery by negotiating the wakeup and sleep time of a device. In summary, TWT makes the device use the spectrum more efficiently by saving time and power.

MU-MIMO, or Multi-User, Multiple-Input, Multiple-Output technology, allows multiple users to access a wireless network at the same time without interruption or throttling. MU-MIMO also allows more downlink data to be transferred at one time, enabling access points to handle more devices at one time concurrently.

OFDMA divides a signal carrier into multiple sub-carriers to minimize distortion and degradation, it further reduces overhead and latency. Access to various users is granted in OFDMA by assigning subsets of these subcarriers to individual users. Hence it allows up to 25 to 30 clients to share a channel simultaneously, thereby improving efficiency.

WiFi 5/ 4 adopts OFDM, an older standard to encode and transmit data that can dispatch traffic only to a single recipient at a time. Due to which it can create lag while client users have to wait their turn for data.

The WiFi 6 using OFDMA can transmit data to multiple devices simultaneously, splitting traffic into smaller packets to eliminate queues.