IEEE 802.11ac

Now, you might be wondering, what's this Wi-Fi 6 business? I thought Wi-Fi standards came in 802.11n or 802.11k.

AC.

No, no, we do still have that.

The real name of Wi-Fi 6 is 802.11ax. That's the new name.

But the Wi-Fi Alliance is giving them a nice friendly name now, Wi-Fi 6, so we can, you know, make it easier for most people.

And that means AC was 5 and N was 4 and so on and so on.

It makes it easy.

Just so long as they don't, you know, do the next standard is like Wi-Fi 6S or jump right to Wi-Fi 10.

Even today, Wi-Fi 4 remains widely used, and many devices still connect using this standard.

Wi-Fi 5, also called 802.11ac, focused exclusively on the 5 GHz band and achieved even higher data rates through wider channels and more MIMO streams.

By focusing only on 5 GHz, Wi-Fi 5 avoided the interference challenges of the crowded 2.4 GHz band and could use wider channel widths without regulatory complications.

Wi-Fi 5 supported 80 MHz and even 160 MHz channels.

doubling or quadrupling the bandwidth available to each connection.

The standard also increased the number of MIMO streams to 8, meaning routers could send 8 independent data streams simultaneously.

These improvements combined to enable theoretical maximum speeds exceeding 3 Gbps, making Wi-Fi 5 suitable for demanding applications like 4K video streaming, Online gaming and professional video editing, Wi-Fi 5 represented a significant speed revolution, and it quickly became the standard found in high-performance routers and laptops.

The trade-off was reduced range compared to 2.4 GHz standards because 5 GHz waves do not penetrate obstacles as effectively.

The Steam Deck worked great when I was connected to my Wi-Fi 6 access point.

The Wi-Fi 5 access point was a little bit iffy.

Okay.

Um, so, so, uh, performance-wise.

Um, but like I said, 200 megabits per second over Wi-Fi, which had some deleterious effects on the other Wi-Fi users on, in my house.

I gotta get s- I gotta get a new access point.

I'm still on Wi-Fi 5.

I actually just did a speed test from my MacBook the other day 'cause I was copying some stuff to the NAS-