Wi-Fi 6 is the wireless networking standard designed for environments where many devices share the same access point. Instead of devices taking turns to transmit one at a time (as in older Wi-Fi), Wi-Fi 6 allows multiple devices to transmit simultaneously using OFDMA – more like a busy motorway with multiple lanes than a single-track road.
Wi-Fi 6 is backwards-compatible with all previous Wi-Fi devices. The improvements matter most in dense deployments: warehouses, factory floors, and offices with hundreds of connected devices.
- OFDMA – allows multiple devices to share a single transmission slot, reducing latency and congestion
- TWT (Target Wake Time) – IoT devices can schedule their wake-up time, dramatically reducing power consumption between transmissions
- MU-MIMO – expanded to 8 simultaneous spatial streams vs 4 in Wi-Fi 5
- 2.4 GHz – up to 600 Mbps; 5 GHz: up to 1.2 Gbps
- Wi-Fi 6E – extends the same technology to the 6 GHz band for additional capacity