As this century leaves the teenage years behind and enters adulthood, we thought we’d take a peek ahead and see what we might expect from the tech world this year.
WiFi 6 – the latest WiFi standard (officially 802.11ax), has actually been around for more than a year and has only recently been ratified in September 2019. Manufacturers have been releasing compatible products during the latter half of last year and we expect to see more deployment of WiFI 6 in 2020.
So what’s the big deal? Wifi 6 enabled devices will be able to handle many more simultaneously connected devices than current standards allow. These days it is not uncommon for a normal household to have upwards of ten devices connected at the same time; two of these streaming Netflix will bring everything down to a crawl but WiFi 6 holds the promise of alleviating these bottlenecks. WiFi 6 also supports the newer encryption standards, WPA3, which enhances security and also offers more configurability for individual apps and devices.
The new standard also promises better battery consumption for connected devices. Devices that connect to the edge of the WLAN will be better served without disrupting other device on the WLAN. In busier environments this will surely make a huge difference.
Finally, probably the only thing anyone really cares about – speed! WiFi 6 certainly promises to deliver with throughput speeds up to 9.6Gbps. Compared to current throughput peaks of 3.5Gbps the user experience should be significantly enhanced, particularly in enterprise environments.
Expect to see more devices and products released this year with the new standard. Currently iPhone 11 Pro/Max and the newer Samsung Galaxy/Note 10 handsets all support WiFi 6.
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