The Benefits of Wi-Fi 6
If you’re hoping to make your home as connected as possible, you need smart home Wi-Fi with impressive bandwidth that can handle the demands of multiple devices and gadgets. From smartphones and laptops to smart lighting and virtual assistants such as Alexa, you could really benefit from the latest wireless home network standard known as 802.11ax – or Wi-Fi 6. Let’s take a closer look at the benefits of Wi-Fi 6.
Wi-Fi 6 Routers Can Handle More Devices
When it comes to smart home Wi-Fi installation, you must think carefully about how many devices you want to connect – not only now, but in the future too, as this will ensure you get the right router. When Wi-Fi 5 came out, the average home had about five Wi-Fi devices connected. These days, however, households are connecting far more devices and therefore a more powerful router is required.
Wi-Fi 6 was specifically designed to handle more devices and therefore resolves many smart home problems such as slow connection speeds. In fact, it’s thought that Wi-Fi 6 can easily take on between 120-160 devices which will meet the needs of even the most connected smart home. So how does it work?
Well firstly, it doubles the communication protocol, so it can simultaneously broadcast to eight devices. And multiple devices can respond at the same time, speeding everything along. Wi-Fi 6 routers are also able to divide a wireless channel into a large number of subchannels, with each of those subchannels carrying data from a different device.
Smart Devices Work Much Faster
Latency is the amount of delay before a smart device responds when you change its state. A one-second delay is an example of 1,000 milliseconds of latency. Wi-Fi 6 router specifications, however, advertise latency of between 100 and 200 milliseconds which is impressively fast. This means that your smart home will react much faster with a Wi-Fi 6 router than it did with a Wi-Fi 5 router.
Wi-Fi 6 Puts Devices’ Wi-Fi to Sleep When Not in Use
Smart home services can dramatically increase the comfort and functionality of your home. But the technology behind the Wi-Fi needed is complex. The good news is, Wi-Fi 6 has it all figured out. With previous wireless standards, devices were either connected, or they weren’t. But, with Wi-Fi 6, protocols are in place to put certain devices’ Wi-Fi to ‘sleep’ when they’re not being used in a bid to free up bandwidth for those that are in use.
Contact our smart home specialist at New Wave AV for more information about Wi-Fi 6 or other smart home Wi-Fi solutions.
