Starting next year, your home router should be upgraded to Wi-Fi 6!

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The latest generation of Wi-Fi technology, Wi-Fi 6, is entering our daily lives along with 5G. On World Telecommunication Day on May 17 this year, China Mobile announced that it would fully enter the Wi-Fi 6 era in September and develop 5 million Wi-Fi 6 users this year. China Unicom and China Telecom are also actively promoting the popularization of Wi-Fi 6.

This week, Qualcomm released a new immersive home networking platform with mesh networking capabilities that supports the next-generation Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E technologies, allowing more home users to use high-performance, low-cost Wi-Fi 6 networks starting next year.

What is the difference between Wi-Fi 6 with Mesh support? Is Wi-Fi 6 really worth upgrading?

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Image via TP-Link

Why do we need Wi-Fi 6 with Mesh function?

Like the evolution of mobile communication technology, the iteration of Wi-Fi technology is also for a faster, more stable and more secure experience. The latest generation of Wi-Fi 6 technology needs to solve three core problems. First, whether the Wi-Fi terminal is far or close to the router, it needs to maintain a high-speed network connection; second, ensure that multiple terminals are connected simultaneously and stably; third, increase the speed of Wi-Fi access and transmit data efficiently and securely.

Image from Zhihu

The first core issue is also the key to the Wi-Fi experience. In today's wireless local area network (WLAN), when users connect to the wireless network through mobile terminals, the distance from the router greatly affects the user experience. The reason is similar to two people talking in the air. The farther they are apart, the louder the speaker needs to be in order for the other person to hear clearly.

In a wireless network, the farther a mobile device is from a wireless router, the weaker the received signal is, and the more energy is consumed. In addition, in a traditional wireless LAN, multiple users must communicate with each other through a fixed access point (wireless router), which reduces the transmission efficiency of the network.

As the number of network devices in the same wireless LAN increases, the experience of traditional Wi-Fi networks will also decline.

According to Cisco's 2019-2022 Visual Networking Index forecast, by 2022, the number of connected devices per capita in China will increase to 4.4 compared to 2017, a 57% increase, and 4K TVs will account for 63% of all domestic flat-panel TVs. In addition, global live video traffic will increase 15 times in 2020 compared to 2017.

Therefore, while Wi-Fi 6 improves the speed, it also needs to introduce Mesh technology. Mesh technology was mentioned in the early IoT field, but it has not been widely adopted due to various limitations. Wi-Fi Mesh (wireless mesh network) is also called "multi-hop" network. Compared with traditional wireless networks, it has the typical characteristics of dynamic expansion, self-organization, self-management, automatic repair and self-balancing.

That is to say, Wi-Fi Mesh can increase the transmission distance and mobility of wireless networks through multiple nodes, and multiple users in the same network no longer need to go through fixed access points to communicate with each other. Each node in the network can communicate directly with one or more peer nodes.

How can I get a high-performance Wi-Fi connection anywhere?

In the past, expanding wireless networks not only required professional equipment, but was also difficult. Moreover, it could only expand the signal, and could not provide a seamless switching experience within the same network. This means that terminals closer to the Mesh node can obtain high-performance connections, but terminals farther away can only obtain smaller bandwidths, and devices with high bandwidth requirements at a distance will affect the experience of the entire network.

These are all problems that Wi-Fi 6's Mesh technology needs to solve, especially in home scenarios where devices are becoming increasingly dense. Qualcomm said it launched the first generation of Wi-Fi 5 Mesh products in 2016 and the first generation of Wi-Fi 6 Mesh products in 2019. The latest immersive home networking platform launched this week allows densely deployed high-performance nodes to achieve gigabit performance at any location.

Qualcomm product manager Ye Sikun said, "This is mainly due to the cooperation of Qualcomm's underlying chip design and algorithms. Our design and technology can allow the nodes of the Mesh network to detect each other. When the number of nodes increases, the number of ways to connect the nodes will also increase. Our products can find the best way and monitor the node and channel conditions to make smarter choices."

It is reported that the Qualcomm Immersive Home Networking Platform supports many industry-leading mesh network protocols, including Qualcomm Wi-Fi SON, OpenSync open source software, eero's TrueMesh technology and Wi-Fi CERTIFIED EasyMesh standard certified by Wi-Fi Alliance. Multi-protocol support will enable better networking.

Leifeng.com (Official Account: Leifeng.com) learned that compared with Qualcomm's Wi-Fi 5 mesh network system solution, the new generation of Qualcomm Immersive Home Networking Platform 216 and 214 wireless connection speeds have increased by 1.4 times and 2.6 times respectively, and have obvious advantages over the speed of similar competing Wi-Fi 6 products. It can also provide 2.5 times the throughput per watt of the Wi-Fi 5 Mesh system, and the industrial design of the equipment can remain compact, conducive to heat dissipation, and the overall cost is low.

The newly released platform uses Qualcomm's multi-user traffic management technology to balance and support all Wi-Fi connected devices in modern smart homes. It also integrates high-performance Bluetooth technology to enable simple and intelligent control.

"Our new platform has a higher level of integration in both chips and peripheral circuits, which can help customers design smaller products," said Ye Sikun. "The new platform uses a 14nm process, which is not the most advanced semiconductor process, but it is already the most advanced process for network equipment."

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2021 is a good time to upgrade to Wi-Fi 6

Ye Sikun revealed that Qualcomm's immersive home networking platform has been sampled and is expected to be available in the first quarter of 2021.

This means that starting from the beginning of next year, palm-sized Wi-Fi 6 routers optimized for home scenarios will be launched one after another. However, in addition to the immersive home networking platform, Qualcomm also has the Networking Pro series of Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E platforms that have been launched.

Ye Sikun introduced that the immersive home networking platform is designed for the entry-level consumer market with a focus on cost-effectiveness, taking into account both compactness and performance. The Network Pro platform takes into account the needs of enterprise-level applications and focuses on high performance.

Specifically, for home scenarios with higher performance requirements, the Immersive Home Networking Platform 310 series can be selected. This series uses three frequency bands, including IoT devices (2.4GHz band) and current traditional media devices (5GHz band), to alleviate point-to-point backhaul traffic congestion from the 5GHz band to the 6GHz band, while ensuring that the network can meet the needs of emerging applications using the 6GHz band.

In some 6GHz configurations, the new platform can support emerging latency-sensitive applications. For example, in crowded network environments, it can reduce the latency of mobile games and XR by up to 8 times, and provide wireless VR-level latency of less than 3 milliseconds.

Both the Qualcomm 318 and 316 immersive home networking platforms are targeted at high-performance clients, delivering multi-gigabit wireless data throughput and supporting 160MHz channels in both the 5GHz and 6GHz bands, with the notable difference being the data stream support.

Qualcomm 318 Immersive Home Connectivity Platform:

• Eight data streams and tri-band features support 2x2 (2.4GHz) + 2x2 (5GHz) + 4x4 (6GHz) configurations, with a total available physical layer rate of up to 7.8 Gbps.

• Support for 4x4 Wi-Fi 6E configurations in the 6GHz band, providing enhanced performance, wider coverage and/or more clients.

Qualcomm 316 Immersive Home Connectivity Platform:

• The 6-channel data stream and tri-band features support 2x2 (2.4GHz) + 2x2 (5GHz) + 2x2 (6GHz) configuration, with a total available physical layer rate of up to 5.4 Gbps.

The immersive home networking platform 210 series supports dual-band Wi-Fi 6, provides multi-gigabit wireless data throughput for high-performance clients, supports 160MHz channels in the 5GHz band, and can bring immediate and significant performance improvements to mesh network providers, with cost advantages. The existing two products of the 216 platform and 214 platform also have different data streams.

Qualcomm 216 Immersive Home Connectivity Platform:

• 6-stream Wi-Fi 6 technology supports 2x2 (2.4GHz) + 4x4 (5GHz) configurations, with a total available physical layer rate of up to 5.4 Gbps.

• Supports 4x4 Wi-Fi 6 configurations in the 5GHz band, providing enhanced performance, wider coverage and/or more clients.

Qualcomm 214 Immersive Home Connectivity Platform:

• 4-stream Wi-Fi 6 technology supports 2x2 (2.4GHz) + 2x2 (5GHz) configurations with a total available physical layer rate of up to 3.0 Gbps.

For home users, if the Qualcomm 318 immersive home networking platform cannot meet their needs, they can choose the Networking Pro platform. From the perspective of data flow, the performance of the 318 is similar to that of the Networking Pro 800 series, while the Networking Pro series also has the higher-performance 1200 series Wi-Fi 6 platform.

Mesh-enabled Wi-Fi 6 routers that are more affordable to ordinary consumers will be available early next year, and new high-end smartphones and more and more smart devices are also beginning to support Wi-Fi 6. Will you upgrade your Wi-Fi 6 router next year?