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Always since Wi-Fi technology was introduced, it'south been known principally as 802.eleventen, where the "x" stands for 1 or more letters. First, we had 802.11b, followed by 802.11a — aye, you read that right — which begat 802.11g, which begat 802.11n, which begat 802.11ad, unless of class you consider 802.11ac to be the more appropriate successor, which it practically is based on market uptake and… gosh, this has gotten a tad confusing. Nosotros haven't fifty-fifty touched on 802.11af, which clearly ought to be considered the foul-mouthed black sheep of the family unit. Fortunately, someone noticed.

The Wi-Fi Alliance has appear that the upcoming version of Wi-Fi (802.11ax) volition be henceforth known as… Wi-Fi vi. 802.11ac volition exist called Wi-Fi five, while 802.11n networking capabilities will be defined as Wi-Fi 4. It's not the sexiest branding known to man, but it'southward a much more straightforward method of determining which standard your hardware supports than we've had of late and far more intuitive than the alphabet soup nosotros've collectively used for the past 18 years or so.

Wi-Fi-6

"For well-nigh two decades, Wi-Fi users have had to sort through technical naming conventions to determine if their devices back up the latest Wi-Fi," said Edgar Figueroa, president and CEO of Wi-Fi Alliance. "Wi-Fi Brotherhood is excited to introduce Wi-Fi 6, and nowadays a new naming scheme to assist industry and Wi-Fi users easily empathize the Wi-Fi generation supported by their device or connection."

This new naming will exist carried frontwards into UI support, assuming software devs have advantage of the capability. Instead of seeing the curved lines of a Wi-Fi connexion logo, software developers can actually incorporate a "4", "5", or "half dozen" into the logo straight, like so:

Wi-Fi_6_high-res

This should make it easier to make up one's mind at a glance how quick your connection to a hotspot is and make information technology easier for the less technically oriented to understand available speeds. The Standard Formerly Known every bit 802.11ax is designed to operate in the existing ii.4GHz and 5GHz frequency bands, but introduces features like OFDMA (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access) and 1024-QAM modulation to amend overall spectrum utilization. While bodily data bandwidth is only nominally higher with 802.11ax, real-globe performance is expected to ameliorate by up to 4x cheers to more efficient spectrum utilization.

The new standard is expected to be released in 2022. Prototype devices have already hit speeds of upwardly to 11Gbit/s in merchandise show demos. Real-world user performance will only be a fraction of that, just the expected benefits to spectrum efficiency should pay dividends in the heavy usage environments that tend to play havoc with Wi-Fi connectivity today.

At present Read: How to Ameliorate Your Wi-Fi Range and Reception at Domicile, What is 802.11ac Wi-Fi, and How Much Faster Than 802.11n Is It?, and How to Boost Your Wi-Fi Speed by Choosing the Right Channel