What Is Wi-Fi 6?

Wi-Fi 6 (IEEE 802.11ax) is the sixth official standard version of wireless networking, delivering faster speeds, greater network capacity, and improved performance over previous Wi-Fi versions, especially in dense environments. Wi-Fi 6 achieves theoretical maximum data rates of 9.6 Gbit/s and uses technologies and protocols such as Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA), Multi-User, Multiple Input, Multiple Output (MU-MIMO), and Target Wake Time (TWT). These technologies combine to support more connected devices on the network at once without compromising on latency and power consumption.

Although Wi-Fi 6 does offer improvements in Wi-Fi speeds, the main reason it’s an important infrastructural improvement stems from how Wi-Fi is used. Wi-Fi traffic is now so common that high-density areas, including stadiums, concerts, public transport, and even user homes, now have to manage a very large number of connections.

The increase in usage of IoT devices and the rise of remote work mean that one Wi-Fi network may now have dozens to hundreds of concurrent connections. Wi-Fi 6 can split its 9.6 Gbit/s theoretical rate across various devices and allows a wireless router to send data to multiple wireless devices in one broadcast frame.

Together, these changes help to aggregate throughput and support Wi-Fi connections in data-heavy situations. Especially for high-definition video streaming, live online gaming, and other apps streaming more data, the low power consumption and high performance of Wi-Fi 6 help sustain these use cases.

This also applies to enterprise environments, where the number of simultaneous wireless connections could degrade the network over time with Wi-Fi 5. The changes to Wi-Fi 6 enable a stronger, more effective, and more power-conscious network for all connections.

The Wi-Fi 6 or IEEE 802.11ax standard is defined by the Wi-Fi Alliance. There are several underlying technologies that work together to allow Wi-Fi 6 to work. Many of these mechanisms aim to allow Wi-Fi access points to coordinate transmissions more effectively across devices and networks.

OFDMA (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access)

OFDMA actively divides a wireless channel into many smaller subcarrier resource units (RUs). Earlier forms of Wi-Fi would occupy an entire channel during data transmission, even if it wasn’t using all of the bandwidth of that channel. By dividing up channels, OFDMA lets one access point serve multiple devices within the same window, letting numerous connections run in parallel and significantly reducing competition and latency.

Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access makes a transmission channel more accessible for all devices, which helps to lower latency and provide more stable performance.

MU-MIMO (Multi-User, Multiple Input, Multiple Output)

Although Wi-Fi 5 already uses MU-MIMO, Wi-Fi 6 extends its capabilities by facilitating multi-user transmissions for both uplink and downlink data movements. Instead of sequentially communicating with devices, MU-MIMO means that an access point can interact with several concurrently. Much like OFDMA, this concurrent serving improves throughput and lets networks manage more active clients at once without introducing lots of latency.

Alongside OFDMA, MU-MIMO means Wi-Fi 6 can provide significantly more effective scaling for network traffic.

Target Wake Time (TWT)

Target Wake Time (TWT) is a mechanism that aims to reduce power consumption by keeping devices in a low-power state when these devices are not actively transmitting or receiving data. TWT negotiates a wake-up time for devices, determining a time when they’ll activate and communicate with an access point. Whenever a device is outside its target wake time, then TWT will help to reduce its total battery consumption.

1024-QAM modulation

Wi-Fi 6 upgrades the total modulation density that wireless access points and client devices can transmit over one symbol from 256-QAM to 1024-QAM. 256-QAM could pack 8 bits of data to transmit in each symbol, while 1024-QAM can transmit 10. This is a direct architectural improvement, helping to enhance throughput efficiency.

BSS coloring

Basic Service Set (BSS) is an ordering system for overlapping wireless networks to help better identify transmissions that will interfere with a wireless signal and those that can be ignored. BSS assigns specific identifiers to different networks, helping to improve spatial ordering. The ability for BSS to improve the use of space is extremely important in densely packed environments, reducing unnecessary deferral or interactions.

There are many benefits to businesses looking to adopt Wi-Fi 6.

Higher data rates

The theoretical maximum of Wi-Fi 6 is 9.6 Gbit/s, which is an increase from 3.5 Gbit/s in Wi-Fi 5. With the components outlined above, Wi-Fi 6 makes better use of space, improves modulation, and offers better capabilities for parallel transmissions to achieve these higher data rates.

More capacity and increased efficiency

Wi-Fi 6 uses OFDMA and upgraded MU-MIMO to allow access points to serve multiple devices at once. These improvements greatly improve total capacity and efficiency while helping to prevent network degradation.

Reduced network congestion

By enhancing spatial reuse, device management, and transmission scheduling, Wi-Fi 6 reduces overall congestion within its networks. This is especially important in high-density environments like enterprises or metropolitan cities where numerous connections need to coexist.

Power efficiency

The target wake time mechanism helps to only activate devices when they need to send or receive a transmission. By reducing the total active time, Wi-Fi 6 helps to enhance device battery life.

Future-proofing for the next generation

The ability to manage more devices at once through MU-MIMO and OFDMA helps to make Wi-Fi 6 more scalable than earlier Wi-Fi standards. With that in mind, Wi-Fi 6 positions itself to help with the surging use of mobile and IoT devices and the continual movement toward remote connections.

Wi-Fi 6 is a direct upgrade of Wi-Fi 5, enhancing its core capabilities, improving speed, and enabling better concurrent device transmission management. While Wi-Fi 5 mainly focused on increasing peak throughput, Wi-Fi 6 has a range of more holistic improvements to enhance scalability and performance.

Speed improvements

Wi-Fi 6 improves upon the maximum theoretical throughput by bringing it to 9.6 Gbit/s, over Wi-Fi 5’s 3.5Gbit/s. Achieving this theoretical maximum depends on devices, configurations, and environmental factors.

Capacity differences for crowded networks

Wi-Fi 6 allows multiple devices to transmit and receive data simultaneously, making use of OFDMA and the enhanced version of MU-MIMO. While in Wi-Fi 5, devices would contend for access; Wi-Fi 6 allows for simultaneous connections and improves device connection density. This change is the one that makes Wi-Fi 6 so important for populous areas or high-demand networks.

Range considerations

While none of the new features of Wi-Fi 6 directly improve its range, they do help to better manage existing connections. With that in mind, Wi-Fi 6 can deliver more stable and consistent connections to the edges of a network and sustain signaling more effectively.

Backwards compatible updating

Wi-Fi 6 is backward compatible with previous Wi-Fi standards. This means that Wi-Fi 5 devices are supported but won't achieve the speeds of Wi-Fi 6, nor be able to take advantage of all of its capabilties.

Below are the main considerations that businesses should make when looking to deploy Wi-Fi 6.

Device compatibility

Devices cannot take advantage of the new features of Wi-Fi 6 like TWT and OFDMA unless they support the 802.11ax standard. Enterprise networks with many older Wi-Fi devices are unlikely to see as much of an improvement as those that have gone through device refreshes.

Infrastructure requirements

Due to its ability to manage multiple devices simultaneously and aggregate throughput, Wi-Fi 6 will place more strain on upstream infrastructure. Any network architecture that manages routing and switching will need a high level of performance to prevent bottlenecks.

Network planning

Wi-Fi 6 excels at improving wireless connectivity within high-density environments. When planning a Wi-Fi 6 deployment, prioritize populated areas where many devices compete, rather than seeking to simply increase the maximum coverage of your network.

Security configuration

Organizations that use Wi-Fi 6 may be upgrading to support IoT devices fleets, making effective security a priority. Wi-Fi protected access 3 (WPA3) helps enforce authentication and encryption policies, while admins can monitor access control. Proper security planning, network segmentation, careful device vetting, and other best practices helps support the expanding wireless capacity of Wi-Fi 6 without introducing new risk.

Wi-Fi 6E is an extension of Wi-Fi 6 that moves into a new 6 GHz frequency band, expanding the total available spectrum for wireless communications. By having an additional band, Wi-Fi 6E further reduces congestion and enables faster speeds, allowing many connected devices to operate at once. Wi-FI 6E requires devices to be updated and needs a compatible Wi-Fi router, as no legacy devices will use this frequency.

Although internet speed is still constrained by upstream connectivity management, Wi-Fi 6E helps remove performance issues from the wireless layer.

AWS offers solutions to help manage and optimize Wi-Fi 6 deployments through cloud-based networking services:

AWS Cloud WAN helps you build, manage, and monitor global wide area networks, connecting your data centers and branch offices, as well as your Amazon Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs).

AWS Verified Access provides secure access to corporate applications and resources without a VPN. It enhances your security posture by allowing you to define fine-grained access policies based on a user's identity and device security state and enforcing policies on every access request.

Get started with Wi-Fi 6 network management on AWS by creating a free account today.