What is Wi-Fi 6E? Why Should You Upgrade Now?

Have you ever felt frustrated when your home Wi-Fi lags while watching 4K movies or playing online games? Wi-Fi 6E is the solution you’ve been looking for. With ultra-fast data transfer speeds, high stability, and the ability to connect multiple devices simultaneously, Wi-Fi 6E promises to deliver a completely new wireless experience. This article will help you understand what Wi-Fi 6E is, how it works, and what makes it a breakthrough compared to Wi-Fi 6.

What is Wi-Fi 6E?

Wi-Fi 6E is an extended version of Wi-Fi 6. As such, Wi-Fi 6E inherits all the features of the Wi-Fi 6 standard, with transmission speeds of up to 600 Mbps on an 80 MHz channel or 1200 Mbps on a 160 MHz channel.

Wi-Fi 6E operates exclusively on the 6 GHz band, instead of the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands used by standard Wi-Fi 6.

How Does Wi-Fi 6E Work?

Wi-Fi 6E requires operation on a 160 MHz channel, or at least 80 MHz, to achieve the highest connection speeds. However, in reality, there isn’t much 160 MHz space available for Wi-Fi 6E to operate effectively.

To address this issue, Wi-Fi 6E has increased capacity by providing an additional 14 channels at 80 MHz and 7 channels at 160 MHz, ensuring that Wi-Fi 6E devices can operate comfortably without worrying about compatibility with older devices.

At the same time, Wi-Fi 6E also efficiently utilizes existing features of Wi-Fi 6, such as:

• 8x8 uplink/downlink MU-MIMO, OFDMA, and BSS Coloring to handle four times more devices.
• Target Wake Time (TWT) to improve network efficiency and battery life, including the battery life of IoT devices.
• 1024-QAM modulation to increase throughput for bandwidth-intensive activities by transmitting more data within the same spectrum.

Benefits of Wi-Fi 6E

Comparison Table of Current Wi-Fi Standards:

1. Resolving the Wi-Fi Spectrum Shortage

Wi-Fi 6E helps by adding dedicated, adjacent channels, not only supporting the connection of more devices and IoT but also increasing access speeds to the maximum.

2. Delivering Faster, More Reliable Enterprise Wi-Fi

With an additional 1200 MHz in the 6 GHz band, Wi-Fi 6E will provide faster enterprise Wi-Fi with less congestion, even when many devices are in use simultaneously.

3. Increased Capacity

With higher capacity, Wi-Fi 6E can effectively meet the network demands of applications requiring high quality and bandwidth, such as enterprise video streaming or video conferencing.

Some Limitations and Challenges of Wi-Fi 6E

Wi-Fi 6E, like other Wi-Fi technologies, requires compatibility between transmitting devices like Wi-Fi routers and receiving devices like smartphones, laptops, and TVs to achieve the best data transmission performance.

This means network transmission devices need to be upgraded for compatibility, which could come at a higher cost.

Moreover, Wi-Fi 6E will have lower coverage than previous Wi-Fi standards, affecting its ability to broadcast in a mesh network format.

Although Wi-Fi 6E has some limitations and challenges, the benefits it offers prove that its introduction is inevitable and truly necessary given the continuously evolving technology trends today. 

We can expect that in the near future, the limitations and challenges of Wi-Fi 6E will be thoroughly addressed or become the foundation for the development of more advanced Wi-Fi standards to meet the increasing network connectivity demands of consumers.