WI-FI 6, Why it's the BIGGEST update to Wi-Fi EVER! - 802.11ax

About this video

The creator explains Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) as the biggest Wi-Fi update in a long time, arguing the gain is efficiency in crowded places rather than raw speed. He first shows why older Wi-Fi struggles: an access point can talk to only one device at a time, devices contend for airtime like cars at a four-way stop, and even a small request such as a lightbulb update is given the entire channel — previous generations mainly made that inefficient process faster. Wi-Fi 6’s headline feature is OFDMA, an extension of OFDM: the channel is divided into smaller resource units sized to each device’s needs, so the access point can serve several devices in one transmission and also schedule uplink traffic, which he compares to moving from a hub to a switch. He cites a per-stream throughput rise from about 866 Mbps on 802.11ac to about 1,200 Mbps on ax as secondary. Other features covered are Target Wake Time, letting IoT devices and phones schedule wake-ups and power down radios to save battery; the return of the 2.4 GHz band, absent from ac, which helps cheap IoT radios and range; and BSS Coloring, which lets a network ignore traffic from neighbouring networks to reduce co-channel interference. He recommends buying ax access points when they arrive even before most clients support it, since ax devices clean up airtime for legacy ones.

Key takeaways

• Wi-Fi 6’s main advance is efficiency in high-density environments, not just speed — older Wi-Fi serves one device at a time with the whole channel
• OFDMA splits a channel into resource units matched to each device’s bandwidth need and lets the access point send to multiple devices at once and schedule uplink traffic
• Target Wake Time lets IoT devices and phones negotiate sleep schedules with the access point, saving battery across large device fleets
• 802.11ax brings back 2.4 GHz support dropped by 802.11ac, aiding low-cost IoT radios and longer range
• BSS Coloring reduces co-channel interference by letting a network ignore traffic belonging to neighbouring networks

Episode details: published March 16, 2019 · 24:10 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are NetworkChuck’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

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