Five Key Takeaways from the WiFi 101 Webinar

Whether you're a wireless technology novice or at an intermediate level, these key takeaways from our last webinar "How much do you really know about wireless networking?" will have you gain more knowledge on wireless technology.

1. Radio Waves

First up, one of the components of wireless is radio waves. Radio waves are used by WiFi devices for communication. In the US, only a small portion of the available radio spectrum is allowed to be used without an FCC license. These are the 900Mhz, 2.4Ghz, 5Ghz, and 6Ghz parts of the spectrum. A key takeaway is as the frequency goes up, faster speeds become possible, but the range is reduced.

2. Data Rate vs Throughput

• Data Rate is the max data transmitted between the wireless radios on two devices

• Throughput is measured by using an application that sends data from their PC to a server and measuring the time it takes to send the data.

The data rate is what you will see cited on datasheets and product listings. Throughput, as measured by popular speed tests don’t include the overhead required to make WiFi possible. Because of this, speed test results will be 40-60% less than the data rate.

3. How do we increase speed when it comes to WiFi?

This is about how to get faster and faster speeds over time.

Increasing speed when it comes to WiFi has to do with encoding and how much data are we cramming on those radio waves. The higher encoding levels we can use, more data can fit into the same bit of spectrum

Increase Encoding

• 64 QAM - 11n

• 256 QAM - 11 ac

• 1024 QAM - 11 ax

Increase Spatial Streams

1x1, 2x2, 3x3 etc.

Increase Bandwidth

• 11g-20MHz
• 11n-40Mhz
• 11ac=80Mhz (Wave 1) or 160MH (Wave 2)

If there are problems with the signal quality, it will reduce the QAM being used so you're only able to get the maximum QAM when you've got a good strong clean signal.

4. When WiFi 6 isn't WiFi 6

Not all WiFi 6 products support the full WiFi 6 feature set. Most vendors don't differentiate between full WiFi 6 features and what we would call WiFi 6 Light. So, some products that are out on the market are missing some of the WiFi 6 features.

In addition, some vendors, only offer WiFi 6 on the 5 GHz radio, leaving the 2.4Ghz radio using WiFi 4.

When it comes to our products, all our WiFi 6 products offer WiFi 6 on both radios 2.4 and 5 and all our business class products offer the full WiFi 6 feature set.

5. WiFi 6E

WiFi 6E expands WiFi 6 into the recently opened 6Ghz spectrum. WiFi 6E includes all the benefits of WiFi 6 plus

• 5x more spectrum with the extended 6GHz band
• Offers up to seven additional super wide 160 MHz channels in 6GHz
• No interference from microwaves and the non-6E devices

WiFi 6E products are not currently allowed to be used outdoors and because of the high frequency offer less range than 2.4 and 5Ghz.

To view the whole webinar, click below.