Recently, MediaTek released the Dimensity 9200 flagship 5G mobile chip. The Dimensity 9200 not only supports 5G networks, but also supports the upcoming Wi-Fi 7 wireless connection. ( Dimensity 9200 supports Wi-Fi 7 Ready). So what's the difference between the various Wi-Fi protocols?
Wi-Fi protocol big change
Currently, there are several mainstream WiFi protocols on the market: 802.11n, 802.11ac (wave1, wave2), 802.11ax. Such a naming method is obviously difficult for laymen to understand. However, in 2018, the WiFi Alliance officially designated the 802.11ax standard as the sixth-generation WiFi technology, and at the same time opened the era of simplified WiFi protocol naming. In other words, the name of the WiFi protocol, which was relatively jerky for laymen before, will become a simplified version that is easier to understand. Specifically:
802.11n becomes Wi-Fi 4
802.11ac becomes Wi-Fi 5
802.11ax becomes Wi-Fi 6
This naming method also easy for laymen to see that Wi-Fi 6 is newer and stronger than Wi-Fi 5 protocol.
Wi-Fi 4
Released in 2009, 802.11n (Wi-Fi 4) is a greatly improved version of the Wi-Fi protocol compared to its predecessor (802.11g in 2003). Wi-Fi 4 is the first Wi-Fi technology to work simultaneously in the 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequency bands, and its transmission speed reaches 600Mbit/s. When we configure the wireless router, we will see the setting options of 2.4G signal and 5G signal. The 5G in Wi-Fi generally refers to the 5GHz frequency band, not the 5G (fifth generation mobile communication technology) in many "5G mobile phones". ).
A brief summary of the difference between 2.4G signals and 5G signals is:
5G signals have many advantages in many aspects, such as relatively few sources of interference and fast transmission rates.
The ability of 5G signals to "penetrate walls" is really not good, and "penetrate walls" still depends on 2.4G signals.
2.4G terminal equipment is cheaper, so for equipment that does not require high transmission speed, using 2.4G transmission is a more economical and practical option.
Transmission speed: The transmission speed of Wi-Fi 4 reaches 600Mbit/s, which is equivalent to 600 Mbps, or more generally, it is equivalent to the download speed of 600 megabytes of broadband. But from the actual experience, it is actually difficult for Wi-Fi 4 to reach the speed of 600 megabytes of broadband. On the one hand, it is because of the loss of wireless transmission, and on the other hand, wireless routers using the Wi-Fi 4 protocol rarely give "full configuration", so they cannot reach the maximum speed.
Wi-Fi 5
802.11ac (Wi-Fi 5) was released in 2013. Introduced wider radio frequency bandwidth (up to 160MHz) and higher order modulation technology (256-QAM), transmission speed up to 1.73Gbps, further improving Wi-Fi network throughput. In addition, the 802.11ac wave2 standard was released in 2015, which pushed beamforming and MU-MIMO functions into the mainstream and improved system access capacity. However, it should be noted that 802.11ac only supports terminals in the 5GHz band, so this version of the Wi-Fi protocol does not make much sense for devices in the 2.4GHz band. This version of the Wi-Fi protocol further improves the Wi-Fi transmission rate and optimizes the download experience of multiple users (only downlink is optimized, uplink is not optimized).
Wi-Fi 6
Compared with Wi-Fi 5, Wi-Fi 6 (802.11 ax) achieves a 4-fold increase in network bandwidth and a 4-fold increase in the number of concurrent users. And it can operate on the 2.4GHz or 5GHz frequency band.
Network speed: The impact on average home users is not great. At present, the upper limit of home broadband in most cities is 1000 megabytes. For the speed of gigabit broadband, Wi-Fi 5 is also sufficient to control.
Regarding the number of concurrent users, it has some effect on home users, but not much. Mainly lies in the use of smart home controllers. With the advent of the smart home era, the number of terminals connected to the network in the home has risen sharply. In the past, there may only been a few mobile phones and computers connected to the Internet at home, but now there are more than ten or even twenty lighting controllers in the home. However, a smart home does not necessarily require Wi-Fi 6. Now many smart home manufacturers have launched devices such as master controllers. The controllers of many smart homes are first connected to the "master controller", and then the "master controller" is connected to the network uniformly. In this way, for the wireless router at home, it is a general controller that is directly connected to the network, rather than a dozen or twenty independent controllers. In this way, Wi-Fi 5 can also do the job.
But for enterprise users, it is of practical significance to increase the transmission rate and the number of concurrent users. Many enterprises have actual needs for 10 Gigabit networks or even higher-standard networks. And the amount of devices connected to enterprise Wi-Fi is much higher than that of home users. These needs are far from being met by Wi-Fi 5.
In addition to the Wi-Fi 6 protocol, there is actually a Wi-Fi6E protocol. Wi-Fi6E is actually adding the 6GHz frequency band on the basis of Wi-Fi 6. The new frequency band has less interference and faster speed.
Wi-Fi 7
The development of 802.11be (Wi-Fi 7) is still in progress, but there are already some early version devices starting to hit the market. The goal of the Wi-Fi 7 protocol is to increase the throughput rate of the WLAN network to 30Gbps and provide low-latency access guarantees. In order to meet this goal, the entire protocol has made corresponding changes in the PHY layer and MAC layer. For home users, this kind of transmission rate may only be available for VR games or some metaverse applications in the future.
Note
For most current home users, if they are still using Wi-Fi 4 devices, they can consider upgrading to Wi-Fi 6. If it is a device that already has Wi-Fi 5, you can ignore the upgrade for the time being.
f the current terminal equipment generally does not exceed 100M in actual use, then there is no problem in continuing to use Wi-Fi 4.
At present, Wi-Fi 7 equipment is generally more expensive, and many of them are actually "castrated versions", such as MIMO. So friends who want to buy can wait first.
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