14 DAY TRIAL // The Wi-Fi Alliance announced today the availability of the Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6 certification program for vendors to provide customers with the latest and greatest Wi-Fi experience.
Unveiled last year in October, Wi-Fi 6 (also known as 802.11ax) launches officially today with up to 37 percent faster speeds than the previous Wi-Fi generation (802.11ac), increased bandwidth for greater performance with low latency, higher data rates for greater network capacity, as well as MU-MIMO (Multi-User Multiple Input Multiple Output) support for greater download performance on more devices at once.
"Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6 is ushering in a new era of Wi-Fi, building on Wi-Fi’s core characteristics to provide better performance in every environment for users, greater network capacity for service providers to improve coverage for their customers, and new opportunities for advanced applications," said Edgar Figueroa, president and CEO, Wi-Fi Alliance. "Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6 will deliver improvements in connectivity, including in high density locations and IoT environments."
The latest generation of Wi-Fi security
Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6 also supports the latest generation of Wi-Fi security, WPA3, supports orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) to increase network efficiency and deliver lower latency for both downloads and uploads in high demand environments, supports target wake time (TWT) to greatly improve battery life in Wi-Fi devices, and supports 1024 quadrature amplitude modulation mode (1024-QAM) to increases throughput in Wi-Fi devices.
The first Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6 products include the Broadcom BCM4375, BCM43698, and BCM43684 chipsets, Cypress CYW 89650 Auto-Grade Wi-Fi 6 Certified, Intel Wi-Fi 6 (Gig+) AX200 for PCs, Intel Home Wi-Fi Chipset WAV600 Series for routers and gateways, Marvell 88W9064 (4x4) Wi-Fi 6 Dual-Band STA, Marvell 88W9064 (4x4) + 88W9068 (8x8) Wi-Fi 6 Concurrent Dual-Band AP, Qualcomm Networking Pro 1200 Platform, Qualcomm FastConnect 6800 Wi-Fi 6 Mobile Connectivity Subsystem, and Ruckus R750 Wi-Fi 6 Access Point.
The recently announced Samsung Galaxy Note10 is the first Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6 smartphone, and Apple's iPhone 11 also supports the Wi-Fi 6 technology. More and more new smartphones, routers, and other wireless devices that will be released in the coming weeks and months will be Wi-Fi 6 certified. Wi-Fi 6 is also backwards compatible, which means that you won't have to replace your current devices with new ones just to benefit of the faster Wi-Fi technology.