Whether to upgrade WiFi 6 routers depends on the consumer's own situation

Nowadays, remote home office and classes have become the new normal. For example, in a family of three, two adults often need to participate in video conferences when working from home, and the children need to take online classes at home. There is often a competition for network speed, which makes the remote video conference and online class experience poor. And with the entry of gigabit broadband into the home, upgrading WiFi 6 routers has become the choice of many users.

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Judging from market data, 2020 has become the first year for the popularization of WiFi 6. In the post-epidemic era, online behaviors such as remote video conferencing, remote work, and online classes have become the new normal, so the demand for WiFi 6 routers in households will continue to grow.

With the continuation of the policy of increasing speed and reducing fees, home broadband has further increased in speed, starting at 300M and capped at 1000M. As high-speed broadband is further popularized in households, the slogan of building a "three-gigabit" network was proposed on Telecom Day. Among them, WiFi 6 routers undertake the task of gigabit home wireless broadband. Major operators and manufacturers have jointly produced WiFi 6 customized optical modems and routers, further promoting the popularization of WiFi 6 routers.

But many friends still don’t understand why WiFi 6 is better than the current WiFi 5? And why should I upgrade to a WiFi 6 router?

First, let's take a look at the characteristics of WiFi 6. Compared with the most popular WiFi 5, WiFi 6 is faster, supports more concurrent devices, has lower latency, and lower power consumption. WiFi 6 uses the OFDMA technology that is the same as 5G, combined with 1024-QAM high-order modulation, which can support a maximum bandwidth of 160MHz, which is nearly three times faster than WiFi 5. Intelligent frequency division technology can support more devices concurrently and increase the access device capacity by 4 times. Multiple concurrent access devices can reduce queuing, actively avoid interference coloring, and reduce latency by two-thirds. When the terminal device is on standby, it supports on-demand wake-up function, which reduces terminal power consumption by 30%.

We can compare the scenario of router-to-device transmission to a fleet. Under the Wi-Fi i5 standard, a fleet can only deliver to one customer at the same time. Even if there are empty cars, they will be dispatched as usual. If a car breaks down (is interfered with), the entire fleet cannot be dispatched. Under the WiFi 6 standard, a fleet that departs at the same time can form a small team of at least 26 adjacent cars. Each team can deliver to different customers. If a car breaks down (is interfered with), it only affects the team it is in.

When we are at home, we often find our neighbors' WiFi signals, which can interfere with our own WiFi transmissions. The interference coloring technology used by WiFi 6 can mark neighboring network signal frames that pass through walls, allowing the user's router to ignore them. The WiFi signals between neighbors can transmit data simultaneously on the same channel without interfering with each other, reducing the interference rate by 30%.

The power consumption of WiFi 6 and WiFi 5 is very different. WiFi 6 will negotiate with the terminal on the WiFi wake-up time to wake up on demand, and no power is consumed during other sleep time. WiFi 5 can only communicate with one device at a time, and all terminals connected to the same route are either in transmission state or in waiting state, and they are disorderly, and the waiting state still consumes power.

It can be seen that WiFi 6 surpasses WiFi 5 in all aspects. Currently, laptops, smartphones, tablets and other products launched in the second half of 2019 are all equipped with WiFi 6 wireless network cards. If users upgrade their home routers to WiFi 6 routers, they can enjoy a faster WiFi Internet experience. Therefore, it is still necessary to replace the WiFi 6 router. However, if there is no WiFi 6 terminal at home, it is not necessary to upgrade the WiFi 6 router.