Wi-Fi 5 vs. Wi-Fi 6: What’s the Difference?
Wi-Fi 6 builds on Wi-Fi 5, Netgear notes in a blog post. While Wi-Fi 5 “brought gigabit speeds” to our Wi-Fi connections, “it falls short on delivering the best” Wi-Fi experience due to more devices connecting to networks.
Wi-Fi 6 offers several differences and advantages over Wi-Fi 5. As Colin Vallance, a technical architect for CDW with a focus on wireless technologies, notes in a CDW blog post, “Wi-Fi 6 promises a multitude of exciting new features that are set to be the most radical changes to the 802.11 spec that we know and love.”
“The name of the game here is efficiency — the more efficient the radios are getting on and off the air, the more data can be moved, resulting in a better performing network,” Vallance adds.
Here are some of the key differences between Wi-Fi 5 and Wi-Fi 6:
- Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing Access: OFDMA is “probably the most critical new feature we’re getting in Wi-Fi 6,” Vallance writes, and it “works by slicing up the existing channel into smaller resource units (RUs), allowing multiple clients to be able to communicate with the access point simultaneously.”
OFDMA “enables your router and devices to use your bandwidth more efficiently by reducing the time between data transmissions,” Netgear notes in a blog post. “As a result, more bandwidth is available for other devices.”
OFDMA is “a type of frequency-division multiplexing that is able to use subcarriers more efficiently when it comes to transporting data. Previously, when using Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing (OFDM), each user got one time slot, or a whole bandwidth channel,” Cisco notes in a blog post on Wi-Fi 6.
Basically, Cisco says, “users needed to wait in line before they were able to deliver their packets. As more clients joined, it took longer for packets to be delivered, resulting in lag time and people waiting to transport data. OFDMA provides a more regular and consistent packet delivery, and users don’t have to wait as long.”
- Target Wait Time, or TWT gives clients the “ability to deterministically go to sleep for long periods of time, reducing power consumption and, in many devices, likely saving battery life,” Vallance writes. “The other added benefit of an access point being able to schedule TWT is that it can try to orchestrate times that do not overlap for clients on the same cell, reducing contention and freeing up the medium that much faster.” Cisco notes that as a result of TWT, “client devices that support the Wi-Fi 6 standard may consume two-thirds less power. This means that batteries in products such as smartphones, laptops, tablets, and IoT devices can last longer, which makes it the ideal standard.”
- Improved speed: Netgear notes that Wi-Fi 6 offers speed improvements over Wi-Fi 5. “Wi-Fi 6 enables devices to send more data in one transmission, resulting in speed improvements of up to 20%,” the firm says. Improvements through higher order modulation (1024-QAM) “increases the efficiency and speed of data transmission on your network. This technology can give up to 25% improvements in speed,” Netgear adds.
- Improved range: “20MHz-only devices and OFDMA’s ability to use smaller subcarriers means such devices can reach longer distances,” Netgear adds. Writing in TechTarget, Lee Badman, a network architect and wireless technical lead at Syracuse University, notes that Wi-Fi 6 “does bring more radio chains, better sensitivity and smaller channels in the form of resource units. These capabilities all contribute to the ability to achieve both increased usability and improved data rates farther out into the footprint provided by the same output power, which, in some cases, can feel like an increase in range.”