The confusing alphabet soup of Wi-Fi versions got renamed. 802.11n became Wi-Fi 4, 802.11ac became Wi-Fi 5, and 802.11ax became Wi-Fi 6. Wi-Fi 7 is still in development so 6 is the best in-use version.
Never heard about Wi-Fi 4. Always ‘n’ letter was advertised.
Wi-Fi 5 kinda associated with 5 GHz bandwidth, but can be also used on the 2.4 GHz.
It’s a retroactive name just to keep the numbering scheme logical. It would be weird to start off giving the next version “1” so they added numbers to all of the old versions. 802.11n was renamed a full 15 years after it was released!
I wished they’d tidy up the clusterfuck that’s USB versions. Especially in combination with thunderbolt. Holy…
WiFi has literally gone the opposite of USB.
It used to be obvious what USB speeds were, whereas WiFi was 802.11b or whatever.
Now we have WiFi 5 or WiFi 6. And we have USB-C PD 10gbps with AltMode
USB has gotten more complicated and does way more now in more contexts. It charges laptops now, it carries multiplexed displayport signals, it does its own handshake and performs hardware level initialization protocols.
Meanwhile we’ve been wanting the same thing out of wifi since the start. Nothing’s really changed, we just want it to go faster.
You’re thinking of USB-C, not the USB standard. USB PD, Alternative Mode and Thunderbolt aren’t part of the USB spec.
Fair point.
USB doing everything requires significantly more description of what a port can actually do.
I just wish the USB foundation didn’t go with something that makes it difficult to find devices supporting specific features, and played directly into the marketing “upselling/shrinkflation” thing.
The ubs3.1, usb3.2, gen1, gen2, 10gbps etc. It’s a LOT, and everything is very similar.
I’m more confused now than before. I always knew what b, g, n and ac were, but now when people say Wifi 5 or Wifi 6 I don’t know which of the standards it corresponds to.
Just count them, that’s what I do. 1 is a, 2 is b, 3 is g, 4 is n, 5 is ac, 6 is ax.
You want to be really confused then? Because b is WiFi 1 and a is WiFi 2. Everything else you said is correct though.
The very simple version is that the newer versions support faster speeds.
I would add the potential for better range as well from a variety of improvements.
Newer WiFi standards can take advantage of multiple frequencies in a single link, which allows for fallback on the slower, but longer range, 2.4GHz networks. Beamforming has been available since at least WiFi 5 (802.11ac) and helps connection quality as well. The new 6GHz spectrum is uncongested and gives better performance in areas with high saturation of 2.4GHz and 5GHz networks, such as apartments and highrises.
It’s more nuanced than faster speeds. All newer versions of WiFi came with speed improvements but compared with previous versions WiFi 6 speed improvements were comparatively modest. The advantage with WiFi 6 over its predecessors was a focus on improving latency and reliability. The number of supported clients was drastically increased with the implementation of technologies first developed in cell networks. Wireless antennas used to be limited to serving each client one at a time. Now they’ve been given the ability to multitask.
You can liken it to a restaurant where the cook is the network, the waiter is the wireless antenna, and each customer is a wireless device. With WiFi standards before version 6, the waiter was not very good at their job and once they collected an order, they would give it to the cook and wait for the cook to finish cooking the entire meal before delivering it to the customer and moving on to the next customer. This method was improved in the past by making the waiter quicker which is where we get the speed boosts. You can also improve on this by adding more antennas or “waiters” to the environment but the waiters themselves are still not operating as effectively as they can on an individual level. This is why WiFi 6 is such a major improvement that flies under the radar. The improvement may not be that noticable in a home environment where the antennas only have to serve a limited number of clients but in an environment where hundreds or even thousands of clients are communicating simultaneously, this is a critical improvement. On top of this, the improvements have decreased the rate of packets being dropped and improved latency so even in home environments, a network running on WiFi 6 will be more robust and reliable. WiFi 7 will go back to the old paradigm of significantly increasing speed once again.
Lots of really cool little things that add up to making it faster
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Technically 6E is the best in-use version for compatible devices. Same as WiFi 6 but adds the 6GHz spectrum that was recently unlocked by many regulatory agencies around the world. The 6GHz range is significantly less congested and would have better real-world performance in dense residential areas.
Edit: A few months ago I stumbled upon this site where the author goes quite in-depth about WiFi and does so in a way that is easy to understand. They debunk/corroborate claims and technologies advertised by manufacturers so it really helps demystify the process of selecting the right WiFi gear.
6E is great, but basically nothing supports it. I got a 6E capable AP from Ubiquiti, and looking at my devices table, basically nothing has ever used the 6GHz radio. My house has a wide variety of devices, many new. The only thing that’s used it is my MacBook
It’s funny that WiFi is alphabet soup as the other comment mentioned, they rebranded to a single, simple number…then chucked an E on the end.
I get how/why, but it’s just funny.
Do you know the horrors of USB naming?
https://wccftech.com/usb-naming-gets-even-worse-with-the-introduction-of-usb4-2-0-80-gbps-standard/
WiFi in its current form will never be better than ethernet for backhaul applications as it is half-duplex. The benefits of the new spectrum are wider bands which makes the real-world speeds closer to the published speeds. Congested frequencies mean the bands must be more narrow, which lowers real-world bandwidth.
Yes, as a general rule the device and access point will just connect at whatever the newest version they both understand is.
