Wi-Fi 6E arrives at CES 2021

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Wi-Fi 6E is very slowly coming to a product near you. The Wi-Fi Alliance started certifying devices on January 7, and CES 2021 saw plenty of product announcements related to the Wi-Fi 6E rollout.

Wi-Fi 6E, if you haven't heard, is a new standard for Wi-Fi that was approved by the FCC last year. While Wi-Fi 6 (no "e," aka 802.11ax) is a bunch of technical improvements mostly aimed at more efficient usage of existing spectrum, Wi-Fi 6E is all about expanding Wi-Fi to a newly freed-up chunk of spectrum. Previously, Wi-Fi only worked on the 2.4Ghz and 5GHz spectrum, but Wi-Fi 6E uses the 6GHz spectrum. In the United States, 6E has a huge chunk of continuous spectrum—1200MHz. Previously, 5GHz only offered 140MHz of useful, non-DFS spectrum, and 2.4 GHz only had 70MHz of very crowded spectrum, which is vulnerable to running microwaves and other interference.

Neither Wi-Fi 6 or Wi-Fi 6E is about more speed—both are more about dealing with Wi-Fi capacity issues, which frequently rear their heads in apartment buildings and large public gatherings. If your Wi-Fi is currently terrible due to crowded airwaves in a densely populated area, Wi-Fi 6E could greatly improve your wireless performance. Getting on Wi-Fi 6E will mean buying new clients and new access points, though, hence this roundup article.

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