Technology is forever improving and the adoption of WiFi6 (also known as 802.11ax) is steadily making its way to mass adoption and before you know it seeing a WiFi5 (802.11ac) router on a retail shelf will be something only seen in thrift shops and second-hand stores. As someone who loves developing new solutions for WiFi hardware, I can confidently say that I prefer working with WiFi6 hardware over WiFi5 hardware. The main reason for this preference is that from an engineering point of view, WiFi6 is much more unified and less fragmented.
One of the key differences between WiFi6 and WiFi5 is the number of system-on-a-chip (SoC) models available. In the case of WiFi5, there are about 200 different SoC models in the market, which makes achieving high compatibility rates a challenge. On the other hand, WiFi6 has much fewer SoC models available, which translates to higher compatibility rates. In fact, with todays current models of WiFi6 routers and the preference from hardware vendors to lean towards a few core SoC models, I’m expecting that I could possibly achieve ~85% market compatibility with just 3–4 WiFi6 tech stacks from hardware vendors.
Working with fewer SoC models also makes the development process much smoother and more efficient. With fewer models to consider, it is easier to design and develop new solutions for WiFi6 hardware. Have you ever wondered why Apple’s OS & iOS operating systems tend to be less problematic, well they only ever had to develop drivers and compatibility for a very small amount of hardware compared to what Microsoft and Android have had to do. This allows us to focus on improving the features and functionality of my solutions, rather than spending time troubleshooting compatibility issues with multiple hardware models.
Another advantage of working with WiFi6 hardware is that it is designed to handle the demands of modern networks. WiFi6 technology is built to deliver faster speeds and support more devices simultaneously, which is essential in today’s world of smart homes, IoT devices, and remote work. It’s always fun to work with hardware that is at the forefront of technology and that has the potential to shape the future of networking.
Of course, WiFi6 also has heaps of other features including Better network security protocols like WPA3, better handling of more connections with Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiple Access (OFDMA), better power consumption and battery life for devices thanks to Target Wake Time (TWT), better transfer speeds with Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM), reduced latency and a heap of other things.
Developing a solution that is exclusively for WiFi6, WiFi6E & WiFi7 (when that comes out) has a lot of advantages. Sure in the very short term, I’m cutting big chunks of the market out but the time it would take to try to get compatibility for such a large range of older devices would probably be similar to the time it takes for those older units to become obsolete.
So for Web3WiFi that means WiFi5 routers are off the roadmap indefinitely.
