You probably won’t hear the Wi-Fi 5 name used very much since it’s been around for five years and just got that name in October 2018. This new generation, previously called 802.11ax, is now Wi-Fi 6. So the current generation of Wi-Fi, 802.11ac, turned into Wi-Fi 5. To fix that, the Wi-Fi Alliance decided to rename Wi-Fi generations with simple version numbers. Until recently, Wi-Fi generations were referred to by an arcane naming scheme that required you to understand whether 802.11n was faster than 802.11ac, and whether 802.11ac was faster than 802.11af, and whether any of those names were just made up nonsense. That means more potential speed for each device. It can be split up across a whole network of devices. That 9.6 Gbps doesn’t have to go to a single computer. The typical download speed in the US is just 72 Mbps, or less than 1 percent of the theoretical maximum speed.īut the fact that Wi-Fi 6 has a much higher theoretical speed limit than its predecessor is still important. And even if you could reach those speeds, it’s not clear that you’d need them. The real answer: both of those speeds are theoretical maximums that you’re unlikely to ever reach in real-world Wi-Fi use. The short but incomplete answer: 9.6 Gbps.
It’ll still do the same basic thing - connect you to the internet - just with a bunch of additional technologies to make that happen more efficiently, speeding up connections in the process. Here’s what you should expect once it arrives. Wi-Fi 6 is just starting to arrive this year, and there’s a good chance it’ll be inside your next phone or laptop. This is less of a one-time speed increase and more of a future-facing upgrade designed to make sure our speeds don’t grind to a halt a few years down the road. Its impact will be more nuanced, and we’re likely to see its benefits more and more over time. That’s great news: faster internet is constantly in demand, especially as we consume more bandwidth-demanding apps, games, and videos with our laptops and phones.īut the next generation of Wi-Fi, known as Wi-Fi 6, isn’t just a simple speed boost.
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