A quick aside regarding covering "Wi-Fi" in this blog. Many who deal with Broadband Wireless Internet Access (BWIA) feel that Wi-Fi is purely a Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) technology rather than a "BWIA technology". I include Wi-Fi in my coverage of BWIA because for many people, Wi-Fi is their sole method of Internet access, especially at scale, such as hotels (which is my only Internet access as I type this), enterprises, schools, and increasingly, offices which don't bother to deploy Ethernet connections for employees that mostly use laptops.
Sadly, for those suffering from the digital divide, free Wi-Fi at fast food restaurants or libraries is the only Internet access they have other than throttled and metered (often prepaid, and expensive) Internet via mobile phones.
Doug Dawson's POTs and PANs Blog
Although Doug Dawson, President of CCG Consulting, has been writing his excellent POTs and PANs blog for years (now past 2000 articles and still going strong), he only came to my attention in the past year. I have a lot of catching up to do reading Doug's articles. Doug also sets a great example of writing something every day, which I've fallen out of the habit of (but working on it).
Doug recently wrote an excellent article - The WiFi6* Revolution in which he makes all the same points about the coming vast improvements in Wi-Fi technology that I would have made in a future article, so I mostly don't have to - read Doug's article.
Because I'm pedantic, I'll point out that "Wi-Fi 6" is an additional specification and branding layer upon the 802.11ax specification (Wikipedia article on 802.11ax) of the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) Standards Association. If you want the nuts-and-bolts about Wi-Fi 6 and 6E, read the IEEE specifications. If you want the high level about Wi-Fi 6 and 6E, read the material from Wi-Fi Alliance.
Basically, 802.11ax and Wi-Fi 6 incorporate the latest, powerful wireless technologies. Wi-Fi 6E, at least as deployed in the US, will incorporate a lot more available spectrum - 1200 MHz (5.925 GHz to 7.125 GHz) in addition to the ~80 MHz available in the 2.4 GHz band and the 580 MHz available in the 5 GHz band. It's to be determined if 802.11ax will be powerful enough to enable single 5 GHz and 6 GHz to cover a spread out suburban, or multistory house, or will require multiple access points in the house for effective coverage.
While Wi-Fi 6E will offer much better speeds, and more reliable connections for many more Wi-Fi connected devices, mostly I'm looking forward to having more spectrum available in 6 GHz to reduce the contention issues with Wi-Fi systems of my neighbors.
* It's understandable to use WiFi, not Wi-Fi, but because Wi-Fi is a formal, trademarked name of the Wi-Fi Alliance, it should be written as Wi-Fi, not WiFi. I'm a bit more pedantic about this because I've sometimes written for publication, and editors are sticklers about such things. Also, back in the day I wrote extensively about the formation of the Wi-Fi Alliance and the tortured birth of the name Wi-Fi. Doug writes for himself and his readers on his blog, so I don't blame him for using WiFi or WiFi6 instead of Wi-Fi 6.
Thanks for reading!
Steve Stroh
Bellingham, Washington, USA