Wi-Fi technology is advancing year after year to provide us with higher wireless speeds, better coverage, and also greater efficiency when we connect multiple devices simultaneously to the Wi-Fi network. With Wi-Fi 5, you bet on speed, but with the new Wi-FI 6, you have opted for efficiency, since we have OFDMA and MU-MIMO technology in both directions. Today in this article we are going to tell you everything that is to come this year 2020 in terms of Wi-Fi networks.
Manufacturers will continue betting on Wi-Fi 6
This year 2020 is the democratization of Wi-Fi 6, if in 2019 the main Wi-Fi 6 routers already appeared on the market, this year new equipment such as Wi-Fi repeaters, USB Wi-Fi adapters, Wi-Fi cards will appear. Fi PCIe and most importantly, new high-end smartphones will already come with this new standard to squeeze the most out of all the new features of this standard. We already lived it years ago with Wi-FI 5, first the manufacturers bet on this standard in their home routers, to later start to launch the rest of the equipment with the standard. It is very important to have all the equipment with Wi-Fi 6 in order to take advantage of all the improvements incorporated in the standard, although Wi-Fi routers and Wi-Fi access points are compatible with old standards, we will not be able to take full advantage of them due to this. Samsung with its S10 family was one of the first to have the Wi-Fi 6 standard on mobiles, but in recent months the rest of the manufacturers have also done the same.
Currently there are already domestic Wi-Fi 6 routers , Wi-Fi Mesh systems with Wi-Fi 6 , and we also have some professional access points with this standard, in addition to the first Wi-Fi 6 PCIe cards such as the ASUS PCE-AX58BT , using the Intel chipset for it.
Landing of the Wi-Fi standard 6E to use the 6GHz band
This year 2020 we will see the first teams to use the Wi-Fi 6E standard, it is exactly the same as the Wi-Fi 6 standard but we will be able to make use of the 6GHz band to have more channels available, therefore, we will have less interference with other networks Wi-Fi nearby. Thanks to the incorporation of this band of Wi-Fi frequencies, we can have up to 14 additional channels with 80MHz of channel width, or 7 additional channels with 160MHz of channel width to achieve the maximum possible speed. Regulators are currently working to make Wi-Fi 6E a reality around the world, and that with a mobile device we can achieve speeds of up to 1Gbps real without any problem, using Wi-Fi 6 and 160MHz wide. channel.
Another positive aspect of this decision is the possibility of having more wireless clients connected simultaneously without interfering with each other, since we can use several APs broadcasting on different channels, ideal for professional environments where we have a high density of clients. Places like soccer or basketball stadiums, and even university campuses where we have a huge number of connected clients, will benefit from this Wi-Fi 6E for making use of more frequency bands available.
We recommend you read our article on Wi-Fi 6E where we explain in detail its technical characteristics, advantages, and why it is very important to implement and deploy it globally. In this article we also made a complete article where we explained the differences between Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E , we recommend you read it to find out more about the main changes between both standards.
Wi-Fi Passpoint for Hotspots
The Wi-Fi Alliance has standardized Hotspot 2.0 and renamed it Wi-Fi Passpoint. This new standard allows a large number of improvements to the users of open access points that incorporate it, these APs can be in cities, cafes, restaurants, university campuses and soccer stadiums, among others. Some benefits of Wi-Fi Passpoint is that authentication is much easier than before, and, in addition, we will have Wi-Fi roaming between different access points without having to re-authenticate ourselves, something that did happen previously. Thanks to this, the transition between APs will be completely transparent. Another positive aspect is that operators could deploy APs with this technology, and that the client automatically authenticates itself and that it does not use 4G / 5G networks, with the corresponding saving in mobile data.
In addition to this Wi-Fi Passpoint standard, we will also have the Agile Multiband Wi-Fi standard, which will basically allow us quick authentication and much faster roaming between access points, so it is closely related to the Wi-Fi Passpoint. We will also have Wi-Fi Vantage that will allow us to offer secure and light access features to Wi-Fi networks, as well as efficient use of the available spectrum, and also allows the network to be used in densely populated dynamic environments.
Wi-Fi Passpoint is so important for open Wi-Fi networks and Hotspots, that it is a totally necessary requirement if you want to participate in the WiFi4EU program to provide municipalities and cities with free Wi-Fi connectivity.
WPA3 will be used on most computers
The latest wireless security standard, WPA3, has been with us for a while, but now the Wi-Fi Alliance wants to harness its use to provide wireless clients with greater security. The Wi-Fi Alliance has given manufacturers a reasonable amount of time to develop firmwares with this built-in standard, but as of July 2020, it will be a mandatory requirement to have WPA3 to be certified by the Wi-Fi Alliance.
We must also not forget the PMF (Protected Management Frames) that already existed in the WPA2 version, but which was completely deprecated because the wireless clients did not support it. Now the Wi-Fi Alliance wants to enhance this security feature that increases security, since they include protection against deauthentication attacks among others. In July 2020 WPA3 will include PMF, and its activation will be mandatory for all “Wi-Fi CERTIFIED” devices.
As you can see, in this year 2020 important changes are coming in the world of wireless Wi-Fi networks, and in this article we will be to tell you everything in detail.
