Wi-Fi 6 Release 2 revealed

[thiggins]

Hm, I thought it brought other notable improvements.

320 MHz bandwidth it the headline and will be the most touted and obvious to consumers. Think of all those even bigger BNOBs the marketeers will get to yap about.

The other feature that could bring practical benefit is Multi-band/multi-channel aggregation and operation. This has been attempted already, but with non-standard implementations. Intel supposedly announced "double connect technology" according to Wi-Fi Now. But that site is about the only place I can find reference to it. Nothing on Intel's site.

Maybe Wifi 7 SoCs will be able to consolidate all these channels so a single radio can cover them all,

Is your concern here cost?

 

[sfx2000]

Buying a chip manufacturer right before a major chip shortage. Talk about bad timing. They're unlikely to recover much of their initial investment if they do offload it that quickly...

They (On Semi) closed the deal back in 2019, well before the pandemic and supply chain issues...

I'm curious as to why they are looking to sell, as they have quite a few design wins for their WiFi6 silicon, not consumer obviously, but in the operator/carrier space.

Culture fit maybe?

 

[sfx2000]

A Wifi 6e standard would have gained more traction IMHO if either combined with the gradual deprecation of the 2.4 GHz band (so the total BOM of routers would remain fairly the same), or if more manufacturers had started releasing Wifi 6e-only APs. Plug a single radio AP to your existing network, and instantly gain Wifi 6e support at a reasonable investment in cost.

I don't think 2.4GHz is going away any time soon. 802.11ax brought in most of the benefits of 11ac down to the 2.4GHz band in a standards-based way, and there is benefit to be seen here. Now if we could just do away with DSS/CCK modes (11b) life would be much better, going OFDM/OFMDA only...

Deprecation of 11b was discussed during the development of 11ax

On a side note, since we're pulling on the crystal balls to peer into the future...

If we could convince the FCC to open up channels 12 and 13, this would be even better, as right now it's wasted space for WiFi (Bluetooth does use the upper freqs there) - WiFi cannot use those two channels in the US right now because of GlobalStar* and Part 25 limits - this is old news, but still bears repeating.

Spoiler: rant on GStar

GlobalStar has S-Band spectrum just above the ISM band - a few years back they tried to use their spectrum for terrestrial services in what would be ISM-WiFi Channel 14, which would have actually impacted ISM channel 11 in a big way - lucky the FCC declined that at the time - It could still happen, as it is really the only asset of value they have, 3GPP assigning Band 53/nr53 to those freqs for 4G/5G deployment - GStar isn't actually using any of it, but they still hold the licenses there. I have heard of activities where they would like to deploy 5G there as "anchor" channels for carrier aggregation, this would be for unlicensed use in ISM/UNII as well as CBRS - it is something to keep an eye on for those who monitor such things.

WFA could do a lot here to clean up the ISM band thru their political lobbying rather than focusing on marketing (yay!) activities...

The concern here for WFA to stay relevant...

 

[avtella]

320 MHz bandwidth it the headline and will be the most touted and obvious to consumers. Think of all those even bigger BNOBs the marketeers will get to yap about.

The other feature that could bring practical benefit is Multi-band/multi-channel aggregation and operation. This has been attempted already, but with non-standard implementations. Intel supposedly announced "double connect technology" according to Wi-Fi Now. But that site is about the only place I can find reference to it. Nothing on Intel's site.

Is your concern here cost?

Double connect was advertised for the Killer AX1690/Intel AX411. Saw it advertised while looking at a recent ASRock Motherboard announcement that had a 1690. I think Razer too May have mentioned dual connect for their refreshed laptops.

Here’s another link (about half way down).

Intel sharpens competitive edge in PC gaming with ‘Killer’ low-latency Wi-Fi chipsets - CMC distribution English

By Claus Hetting, Wi-Fi NOW CEO & Chairman The market for high-end bet on connectivity is promptly becoming one of the Wi-Fi diligence ’ s most lucrative and most heatedly contested. Wi-Fi chipset leader Intel is now incorporating ‘ Killer ’ Wi-Fi prioritisation and multi-network connectivity...

cmcdistribution.com.vn

 

[sfx2000]

Too bad Wi-Fi lost out on the CBRS band. The lower frequency would have meant better range.

Isn't CBRS (3550 MHz to 3700 MHz) North America only?

If it isn't global, it would have been very difficult to get chip vendors to support it - US/Canada is a decent size market, but on a global scale...

 

[sfx2000]

Double connect was advertised for the Killer AX1690/Intel AX211

their marketing slide is a bit unfortunate - look in the background...

 

[RMerlin]

Is your concern here cost?

Yes. Wifi 6e requires a router with three bands. For adoption to become significant, WIfi 6e routers will need to drop under 150$. Right now it's mostly 300-500$ tri-band gaming products that support it. Being able to implement it with just a pair of wifi SoC would significantly help in driving down costs, and increase market penetration.

One potential alternative might be an hybrid solution. Having an entry level bcm675x SoC handling 2.4/5GHz, and just one extra SoC to handle 6 GHz would allow for a reasonably priced router. I don't remember however if the bcm675x has spare PCIe lanes to handle the external radio, but that doesn't mean BCM/QCA couldn't come up with such a design. Or even a single SoC with all three radios built-in, requiring only external amps and filters (which wouldn't be that expensive).

I don't see anything announced recently, so that means we probably shouldn't expect anything in that area before 2023. For 2022, BCM's latest product to hit the market seem to be the BCM4912.

 

[RMerlin]

They (On Semi) closed the deal back in 2019, well before the pandemic and supply chain issues...

That's what I mean. They closed the deal, and right after that supply issues occurred, which impacted sales for pretty much every silicon manufacturer out there. It means it will take longer for them to recover their expense as QTN sales must have significantly slowed down right after the buyout.

If we could convince the FCC to open up channels 12 and 13, this would be even better

Would that provide enough extra spectrum to add space for another non-overlapping 20 MHz area however? Sounds to me that it might have been useful back when we were still using 10 MHz channels.

 

[TheLostSwede]

My bad, I confused it with Wifi 6e channel extensions. I don't know anything about UNII-4.

UNII-4 is the last few frequencies in the 5.8-5.9GHz range that will allow for a third 160MHz wide channel for WiFi 6, so channel 169 to 196, of which not all will be allowed in every country/region. In North America the 160MHz block will be channel 149 to 177.

 

[TheLostSwede]

On Semi bought them for $1B USD back in 2019... rumor is that they're looking to sell.

Anyways, all the 11ax Residential Gateways provided by the local cableco - CoxHSI - Technicolor with Quantenna radios for both bands.

Urgh, Technicolor makes awful routers with terrible range in my experience, which is admittedly limited.
Quantenna did make some interesting products, but they always seemed poorly implemented in consumer routers.

 

[TheLostSwede]

The other feature that could bring practical benefit is Multi-band/multi-channel aggregation and operation. This has been attempted already, but with non-standard implementations. Intel supposedly announced "double connect technology" according to Wi-Fi Now. But that site is about the only place I can find reference to it. Nothing on Intel's site.

Qualcomm announced something similar as well, FastConnect.

Mobile Wi-Fi 6 performance with 4-stream DBS [video]

Immersive mobile experiences are built on the foundation of tech innovation. One such breakthrough — unique to Qualcomm FastConnect mobile connectivity systems — is 4-stream DBS...

www.qualcomm.com

Windows 11 supports what Microsoft calls WiFi Dual Station.

Windows 11 WiFi Dual Station: How to Use

Gamers can now utilize Wi-Fi Dual Station to improve gaming perfomance in ther PCs provied they meet the set requirements.

windowsreport.com

 

[TheLostSwede]

Yes. Wifi 6e requires a router with three bands. For adoption to become significant, WIfi 6e routers will need to drop under 150$. Right now it's mostly 300-500$ tri-band gaming products that support it. Being able to implement it with just a pair of wifi SoC would significantly help in driving down costs, and increase market penetration.

One potential alternative might be an hybrid solution. Having an entry level bcm675x SoC handling 2.4/5GHz, and just one extra SoC to handle 6 GHz would allow for a reasonably priced router. I don't remember however if the bcm675x has spare PCIe lanes to handle the external radio, but that doesn't mean BCM/QCA couldn't come up with such a design. Or even a single SoC with all three radios built-in, requiring only external amps and filters (which wouldn't be that expensive).

I don't see anything announced recently, so that means we probably shouldn't expect anything in that area before 2023. For 2022, BCM's latest product to hit the market seem to be the BCM4912.

QCA's IPQ6000 series can do that, but you get 2x2 only for 2.4 and 5GHz, which is most likely why we're seeing AXE6600 routers...

高通IPQ6000、IPQ6010、IPQ6018、IPQ6028 SoC硬件介绍 datasheet

功能特性：1.Highly integrated 2x2 + 2x2 11ax SoC with Quad-core A53 and dedicated network offload, full featured 11ax support 2.Audio and ML/AI dedicated Hexagon DSP core for compute at the edge app…

zhuanlan.zhihu.com

 

[avtella]

@TheLostSwede Qualcomm calls it Dual Band Simultaneous, I do recall some Dell XPS laptops like the XPS 9500 were announced that were available with the option of a “Killer AX500-DBS” (likely a QCA6390?) limited to HT80. Seems like a rare chip though in the wild compared to the Intel AX2XX series.

 

[thiggins]

their marketing slide is a bit unfortunate - look in the background...



View attachment 38484

@sfx2000 Could you please link to the image source? Thanks.

 

[johndoe85]

Wi-Fi 7 mainly brings 320MHz channel support. Where do you think those channels are going to come from?

Unless the CTIA manages a bandwidth-grab coup, 6 GHz Wi-Fi is here to stay. Too bad Wi-Fi lost out on the CBRS band. The lower frequency would have meant better range.

It would also have ment more interference with neighbours when people are living in apartments. And in high dence population areas there can be quite alot of wifi routers. Imagine a double or quadrouple increase in wifi routers.

 

[TheLostSwede]

@TheLostSwede Qualcomm calls it Dual Band Simultaneous, I do recall some Dell XPS laptops like the XPS 9500 were announced that were available with the option of a “Killer AX500-DBS” (likely a QCA6696) limited to HT80. Seems like a rare chip though in the wild compared to the Intel AX2XX series.

No, that's something entirely different, that just mean that the integrated 2.4GHz and 5GHz radios can be used at the same time, several companies can do this, so it's nothing unique to QCA. Hence the link to QCA's website, where they states it's called FastConnect.

 

[TheLostSwede]

It would also have ment more interference with neighbours when people are living in apartments. And in high dence population areas there can be quite alot of wifi routers. Imagine a double or quadrouple increase in wifi routers.

Fortunately, 5GHz has pretty poor range, 6GHz even worse.
I live in a densely built up area and can see a dozen or so 2.4GHz networks, most of which I should get a good enough signal from.
However, all the 5GHz networks I can see, have a signal of sub -80dBm, which means I wouldn't be able to connect to them and they're unlikely to cause any real world interference.
Admittedly no-one is using more than an 80MHz channel, so 320MHz might cause some issues, if you're really close to your neighbour using the same frequencies. Maybe it's time to put chicken wire into the walls, ceilings and floors in flats, so neighbours can't interfere with each others WiFi?

 

[johndoe85]

Fortunately, 5GHz has pretty poor range, 6GHz even worse.
I live in a densely built up area and can see a dozen or so 2.4GHz networks, most of which I should get a good enough signal from.
However, all the 5GHz networks I can see, have a signal of sub -80dBm, which means I wouldn't be able to connect to them and they're unlikely to cause any real world interference.
Admittedly no-one is using more than an 80MHz channel, so 320MHz might cause some issues, if you're really close to your neighbour using the same frequencies. Maybe it's time to put chicken wire into the walls, ceilings and floors in flats, so neighbours can't interfere with each others WiFi?

It was just theoretical. I dont have many neighbours.
But i like your idea

 

[TheLostSwede]

It was just theoretical. I dont have many neighbours.
But i like your idea

Funnily enough, certain types of new, ultra power efficient windows are causing poor cellular/mobile reception, so people have had to install femtocells to be able to use their phones indoors.
The wonderful life of technology.

 

[sfx2000]

@sfx2000 Could you please link to the image source? Thanks.

CES: Intel launches a raft of new 'Wi-Fi 6/6E (Gig+)' products & features including 'Double Connect' technology

Intel's new Wi-Fi 6/6E product portfolio is a big boost to the online experiences of gamers, consumers, and businesses alike.

wifinowglobal.com