Is It Time to Migrate to Wi-Fi 6?（Wi-Fi 6への移行時期が来たのか）

The past months have seen a variety of new hardware debut on the market offering the latest evolution of Wi-Fi connectivity, known as Wi-Fi 6. Wi-Fi 6 represents a major advancement in wireless connectivity and comes after several years of development as its predecessor, Wi-Fi 5, was first proposed in 2014. As is the case with most IT technologies, hardware development was impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, but as of 2022, there are a variety of enterprise and consumer routers now available and an increasing amount of supporting terminals, with a high-performance router now obtainable in the range of JPY 27,000 to JPY 33,000. Better Wi-Fi connectivity is of course now in much higher demand largely due to the massive increase in online meetings and remote working as a result of COVID-19, and hence, many IT departments are now considering how to incorporate the new standard not only into their office IT architecture planning, but also in terms of IoT and remote working strategies as well.

Wi-Fi 6 Technical Standards

As seen in the exhibit below, Wi-Fi 6 offers a significant boost of about 37% in terms of peak connectivity speed, and therefore, users should expect a faster connection assuming a Wi-Fi 6-compatible device is used. This in itself is notable, but because of improved processing capabilities, Wi-Fi 6 can actually manage around 200 internal IP addresses as opposed to around 70 for previous generations of Wi-Fi technology. This can lead to realized speeds which are significantly higher than the 37% peak theoretical limit and can also reduce battery consumption.

Another important aspect of Wi-Fi 6 is that it also comes in the 6E flavor, which incorporates a new radio frequency into the standard. Wi- Fi 6E incorporates the 6GHz band into enabled routers and is the first time since 1989 when a new frequency has been added to the standard. Up until now, Wi-Fi used the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands, but the addition of 6GHz has several implications for the future of Wi-Fi. The new, higher-frequency band enables higher bandwidth and lower latency and will enable the simultaneous use of services such as video conferencing and streaming. The new band will also eliminate some issues with interference, which is a major cause of network congestion. Of course, a Wi-Fi 6E-enabled router is more expensive due to the additional functionality, with pricing running anywhere from JPY 40,000 to JPY 200,000. In January 2022, there were about 70 Wi-Fi 6E-enabled laptops and 18 enabled smartphones on the market, although this list does not include any products made by Apple (although the company has said that Wi-Fi 6E devices are expected in the future).