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Cake day: October 25th, 2023
  • Nullcaller@alien.topBtoHome Networking@selfhosted.forum•Upgrade to Wifi 6 now, or wait for 6E price drop?English
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    1 year ago

    If my understanding is correct, Wi-Fi 6 is pretty much Wi-Fi 5 but only very slightly better in terms of speed. It still works in the same spectrum, i.e. 2.4/5 GHz.

    Wi-Fi 6E, on the other hand, works in 6 GHz spectrum, which is, like, 2-10 times the width of 5 GHz spectrum, depending on the situation, meaning less congestion. But to take advantage of Wi-Fi 6E, your client devices have to explicitly support it, because they have to have hardware that realizes 6 GHz spectrum support.

    So if you have such devices, and you believe that you can take advantage of increased speeds in a meaningful way, the go for Wi-Fi 6E. The experience may be slightly rough in unexpected ways, however, because the tech hasn’t been perfected yet, and probably won’t be for another 1-3 years. And it’ll probably reach the current cost of good 5GHz equipment in another 1-3 years.

    Another thing to look out for, devices that don’t explicitly support Wi-Fi 6E just won’t see the 6GHz network at all. So you’ll want to double check that the router you’re buying comes with at least three radios: one for 2.4 GHz, one for 5 GHz, and one for 6 GHz.

    If you don’t think that Wi-Fi 6E is worth it at this point (that’s because it isn’t: very little deivces support it), then let’s consider Wi-Fi 6.

    Download an app called ‘WiFi Analyzer’, preferably from F-Droid Store. If you have an Android 12 or 13 device, you’ll have to grant it a special permission to let it scan Wi-Fi networks around it with a reasonable time interval. Google how to do it, because I don’t remember.

    Using Wi-Fi Analyzer, walk around your house slowly and observe the graphs for the 5 GHz spectrum. Asses how congested it is. You’ll want to pay attention to channels 36-48, 52-64, 132-144, 149-161. Out of these four channels, only 36-48 and 149-161 are always available. 52-64 and 132-144 are so-called ‘dfs’ channels, which become unavailable if your router detects a radar attempting to work on these channels. They’re practically always available, as far as I know, but you might want to check.

    Now, if you don’t have many neighbors, and out of the four channels two or three are just empty, or at, like, -90 dB, then you probably don’t even need Wi-Fi 6. Wi-Fi 6 is only better than Wi-Fi 5 when there’s enough congestion. If you can just choose a free channel and be done with it, there will be next to no difference between a Wi-Fi 5 and a Wi-Fi 6 router. Otherwise, look into Wi-Fi 6.

    Personally, I wouldn’t buy routers from non-networking companies, and would instead buy from the likes of MirkroTik and Ubiquity, maybe even TP-Link, though I’ve had shite experiences with TP-Link, but you do you. It seems that MikroTik’s hAP ax³ is being scalped into a price that’s comparable with the Asus router you’re mentioning, so idk. Don’t buy MikroTik if you don’t know what you’re doing though.