Some Vendors Are Already Releasing Chipsets That Support 6 GHz Wifi (anandtech.com) 39
Long-time Slashdot reader gabebear writes: The FCC hasn't officially cleared 6 GHz for WiFi, but chipsets that support 6 GHz are starting to be released. 6 GHz opens up a several times more bandwidth than what is currently available with WiFi, although it doesn't penetrate walls as well as 2.4 GHz.
Celeno has their press release and Broadcom has their press release. Still no news from Intel or Qualcomm on chipsets that support 6 GHz.
Celeno has their press release and Broadcom has their press release. Still no news from Intel or Qualcomm on chipsets that support 6 GHz.
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liar, she said your stubby antenna looked inadequate to the job
Re: 6GHz penetration (Score:1)
~GBS
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Wow! What an achievement! (Score:3, Insightful)
A whopping 20% faster than 6GHz WiFi. Would anyone get excited about a processor clock jumping a mere 20%? Seriously? And it can barely make it through walls. Be still my beating heart. Biggest benefactors? Vendors selling WiFi units since you'll need more of them and laptop vendors who'll jump at the chance to get people to replace their now-substandard 5GHz-capable laptops.
IMHO, Gigabit+ cabled network access is starting to look pretty good again.
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I get better throughput and reliability from 2Ghz even right next to it. OTOH, if I'm doing something unusual like downloading a linux distro I just plug in ethernet.
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>Obviously, I'm undercaffeinated. Make that 20% faster than 5GHz. I question their several times bandwidth claim.
Bandwidth in this context is the width of the band. Not the bit rate through a single wifi channel on the band. More bandwidth = more channels = less interference.
Re: Wow! What an achievement! (Score:1)
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You are missing the best part of new chips.
They get to call it a draft standard, promise to upgrade to the final standard and then of course those promises were quite empty.
Fool me three or four times and shame on me, but fool me six times...
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Fool me three or four times and shame on me, but fool me six times...
:).
Reminds me of Vitas Gerulaitis's famous quote: "And let that be a lesson to you all. Nobody beats Vitas Gerulaitis 17 times in a row." (after finally defeating Jimmy Connors, who had won their previous 16 matches).
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My question is whether they are going to incorporate frequency hopping, or you have to manually join a 2.4/5/6 access point. I believe this already happens within each frequency band so it's strange you would have to manually pick which band.
Why 6GHz is so important (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason why the 6GHz spectrum isn't because of the faster frequency. What's so important is that the FCC is opening up a 1200MHz spectrum dedicated for Wi-Fi [wifinowglobal.com].
It's an easy misconception to think that the frequency of the carrier wave determines the speed of the wireless. It's not (the low-band 5G is a great counterexample of this), but it's easy to confuse because the relationship is proportional. But I digress; that's another post for another time. Instead, think of the carrier wave as like the copper conductor in a network cable: it's the medium that carries the data. Wireless speeds are more directly determined by two components: the transmission scheme (ODFM [keysight.com]) and the modulation of the data onto the carrier wave (QAM64 [electronics-notes.com]). Each of these topics takes hours to discuss and decompose, but the most important point is this: the means by which data can be encoded over a traditional wi-fi scheme has pretty-much reached its peak. Other types of modulation methods have tried to be engineered (QAM128 and QAM256 for example), and ridiculous 20GHz+ frequencies have been considered, but basic physics keeps getting in the way of its success.
So, what do you do when you can't squeeze any more data across the wire? Simple. Add more wires. Ever since 802.11b, wireless has been using a transmission scheme that spreads the data across a 20MHz frequency range, a.k.a. a channel. But the 2.4GHz WiFi frequency range was severely limited to only three non-overlapping channels of 20MHz, which severely limited how many APs you could have operating within close proximity of one another, limiting device density. The 5GHz spectrum opened up 15 independent 20MHz channels (or more, depending on circumstances), and, more importantly, allowed for channel bonding, allowing for two or four channels to be bonded together to double or quadruple the bandwidth. Oh, except when you bond four channels together, you effectively only get three independent channels that can work concurrently, bringing you back to the device density dilemma again.
But now with 1200MHz of spectrum range cleared, that's seven 160MHz channels to work with. Now we get speed and density. While a 6GHz carrier wave doesn't get you much potential improvement in bandwidth potential over a single channel, it provides incredible benefits to improve both speed and density for wireless environments once you factor in multiple channel bonding methods.
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Wireless speeds are more directly determined by two components: the transmission scheme and the modulation of the data onto the carrier wave.
No, the two components are the width of the channel and the level of noise on the channel. The transmission schemes and modulation we use are just different ways to manage the width of this channel and how to overcome the noise.
Higher and higher radio frequencies mean less noise to deal with because walls and such shield our equipment from this noise better. This also means that this same shielding effect limits range. Lower frequencies penetrate and bend around obstacles better but this means we are now
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It's like you've read up on it a little, but haven't really understood how it really works.
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It's like you've read up on it a little, but haven't really understood how it really works.
Funny, I read the op as someone who had heard rules of thumb but lacked any large picture understanding.
Re:Why 6GHz is so important (Score:4, Informative)
The incentive here is that the FCC had to take back part of the 5 GHz band. Shortly after they opened it up, it was discovered that the frequencies right in the middle of it were useful for a new form of doppler weather radar [wikipedia.org] useful at airports. Rather than close the 5 GHz band again and make billions of dollars of equipment obsolete overnight, the FCC opted to make the middle frequencies DFS - dynamic frequency select. WiFi equipment is allowed to use these frequencies (channels 50-144, leaving as completely open 36-48 and 149-165), but it must monitor for weather radar and switch to a different channel if it detects weather radar in use. Unfortunately this breaks up the band so that you can't squeeze in a guaranteed 160 MHz band, and a lot of equipment doesn't even bother with DFS and simply prohibits operating channels 50-144 (if you've encountered a mysterious case where some devices can see your 5 GHz network but other can't, this is probably why)..
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Literal bands available are doubling. In the US we have 2.4ghz(2401mhz-2473mhz) and 5ghz(5170-5330mhz, 5490-5730mhz, 5735-5835mhz), for a total of 572mhz. 1200mhz of new radio bandwidth in 6ghz is more than a 2x multiplier.
The extreme 2x-4x speeds of channel bonding should be attainable with 6ghz. 160mhz MU-MIMO is extremely hard to actually get with 5ghz [smallnetbuilder.com]. The e
Re: Why 6GHz is so important (Score:2)
But now with 1200MHz of spectrum range cleared, that's seven 160MHz channels to work with. Now we get speed and density. While a 6GHz carrier wave doesn't get you much potential improvement in bandwidth potential over a single channel, it provides incredible benefits to improve both speed and density for wireless environments once you factor in multiple channel bonding methods.
Thanks for the erudite explanation; and even more for pointing out exactly what the increase in bandwidth meant in that particular application.
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The lower wall penetration at 5GHz means that the attenuation of the signal neighboring wifi APs will be greater. So the noise floor will be lower.
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Should be more resilient to inference since it's not a multiple of the 2.4GHz used by everything else, including microwaves.
Could be interesting if the FCC declines it. Like channel 13 on 2.4GHz it will be possible to enable it if the hardware supports it and the chances of being caught are near zero.
Re:Wow! What an achievement! (Score:5, Insightful)
IMHO, Gigabit+ cabled network access is starting to look pretty good again.
A big ten-four on that, good buddy. If it's a choice between a hardwired network and wireless, I always choose hardwired. Fewer reliability headaches, better bandwidth, lower maintenance costs. Don't get me wrong, wireless has its place; but, for any permanent installation hardwired is the only way to go.
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Meh (Score:3)
>"although it doesn't penetrate walls as well as 2.4 GHz."
And less than 5Ghz that we already have, also. Sorry, but not that impressed. I would much rather have more 2.4/2.5 frequencies available. I have never had a problem with enough speed, it is always range/penetration power.
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Would be happy with having a backup 1GHz band that reached my whole apartment.
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I have never had a problem with enough speed, it is always range/penetration power.
Yes, and more range/penetration isn't the answer. Counter intuitively, less range/penetration is the answer in most cases. The problem is that you're competing for physically limited spectrum against your neighbors. When another car rolls up beside you with windows down, obliterating the music you're listening to, the answer isn't to turn yours up. It's to close your windows. Less penetration means needing to use more, and smaller spheres of broadcast. That allows more efficient use of spectrum.
Is i
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>"Counter intuitively, less range/penetration is the answer in most cases."
Not in most of my cases. There are no other competing wifi networks but mine (or ours in the case of business). For large areas, the costs of adding double the access points can be very significant.
It is nice to have options- both and and low frequencies. But they keep adding more high and it would be nice to have some additional low ones, too.
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There are no other competing wifi networks but mine (or ours in the case of business).
Excellent. 2.4Ghz already exists.
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>"Excellent. 2.4Ghz already exists."
There are only actually 3 unique [non-overlapping] 2.4Ghz channels. On a 2d (and much worse on a 3d) floor plan, it is hard to juggle that with just 3 channels to prevent overlap from yourself while having the minimum number of access points. 6 channels would been tremendously better. This is why I would like to have seen more channels at 2.4Ghz. (And/or additional channels that are BELOW 2.4Ghz). 5+Ghz only results in having to double (or more) the number of acce
US centric (Score:2)
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Welcome to the internet, American websites are US-centric. For actual reasons.
Did you know that the BBC website is Britain-centric?
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That is why brands work hard to get accepted for sale/use in the USA.
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You earned your woke cookie for the day!