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WiFi 6 in the Enterprise

Fleet of Foot

Article from ADMIN 57/2020

By Mathias Hein

The 802.11ax WiFi 6 standard uses LTE technology to solve the congestion problems experienced with older standards.

In the history of wireless networks, many innovations have already been exaggerated by providers as a major breakthrough yet, in the end, did not really meet the expectations of users. In the case of WiFi 6, however, the expectations are justified. The 802.11ax specification is the first WiFi standard developed with the premise that it will overtake wired as the primary means of connecting terminal devices to the network – in the office or on the shop floor. (See the "WiFi 6 Goals" box.)

WiFi 6 Goals

The 802.11ax working group goals include:

Improved operation in the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands (remember, 802.11ac is only 5GHz)
Increases in the average throughput per station by at least four times in an environment with many WiFi devices; 802.11ac only offered an increase in aggregate total throughput.
Improvements for indoor and outdoor operation.
Optimization of energy efficiency.
Increased efficiency of traffic management for a variety of different deployment scenarios.

The earlier WiFi generations were designed for occasional use and less for downloading large data volumes. The 802.11ac specification (WiFi 5) certainly made WiFi networks faster, but in reality, this variant only partially improved an outdated concept and increased transmission speed.

Every WiFi user has certainly connected to a WiFi access point (AP) at some time at a conference center, in a football stadium, or in another public space. Everything works fine until the moment the speaker starts their presentation or the spark fails to fly between the onstage musicians and the audience, prompting many people to open up private communication channels (email, Snapchat, Twitter, WhatsApp, Facebook, etc.). All of a sudden, the WiFi that had worked so well before is extremely slow and becomes

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