The Wi-Fi Alliance, the working group that has long offered such euphonious, IEEE-defined names for Wi-Fi protocols such as 802.11ab and 802.11n, has finally decided enough was enough with the numbers and letters and such. Their decision? The next Wi-Fi version will be Wi-Fi 6 — and sucks to your ass-mar if you don’t like it.
“For nearly two decades, Wi-Fi users have had to sort through technical naming conventions to determine if their devices support the latest Wi-Fi,” said Wi-Fi Alliance CEO Edgar Figueroa in a release. “Wi-Fi Alliance is excited to introduce Wi-Fi 6, and present a new naming scheme to help industry and Wi-Fi users easily understand the Wi-Fi generation supported by their device or connection.”
Wi-Fi 6 is actually 802.11ax, an improvement on 802.11ac. The ostensible data rate for Wi-Fi 6 is, according to Wikipedia, “37% higher than IEEE 802.11ac, the new amendment is expected to achieve a 4× increase to user throughput due to more efficient spectrum utilization.” It runs eight 5 GHz streams and four 2.4 GHz streams.
In addition to 6 we will now all call 802.11ac Wi-Fi 5 and 802.11n will be called Wi-Fi 4. Devices will be officially certified by generation and the first Wi-Fi 6 devices will arrive in 2019. We would encourage you to stop using the 802.11 nomenclature well before the deadline, ensuring a swift and effortless transition into Wi-Fi chaos.