When businesses, schools and government offices shut their doors this spring to help tame the spread of coronavirus, it channeled a flood of internet traffic into our homes unlike anything our wireless networks had ever managed. And now, as the nation struggles to craft a more sustainable balance of home and away, it looks like much of the new traffic – and the contention issues that come along with it – may be home to stay.

Fortunately, help is on the way. Because the FCC has opened a wide new lane for Wi-Fi traffic, the first time it has allotted new spectrum since the foundational standards were crafted more than two decades ago.

What may be most exciting about 6GHz is that it won’t get bogged down by traffic from electronics with older, network-clogging Wi-Fi, a burden that invariably keeps newer wireless enhancements from realizing their full potential on 2.4GHz and 5GHz. Wi-Fi 6 devices with radios that can transmit and receive on the 6GHz band will have it all to themselves. They’ll be designated Wi-Fi 6E, to distinguish them from Wi-Fi 6 devices limited to existing spectrum.

You can’t buy Wi-Fi 6E products just yet – the spectrum won’t officially be allocated before tomorrow, after all. But you won’t have to wait long. Semiconductor suppliers have been shipping Wi-Fi 6 chipsets since last year. And they all say they’re ready to ship 6GHz chips with the same Wi-Fi 6 features they now support. At least one supplier has even pre-announced its Wi-Fi 6E chipsets, though most have opted to defer, waiting until the FCC actually makes the spectrum available. FeibusTech expects to start seeing Wi-Fi 6E routers this year, perhaps even] in time for what may come to be known as the back-to-homeschool shopping season.

The relief couldn’t come at a better time, as social distancing tactics are taxing already stressed home networks in new ways.

Until the coronavirus crisis, heavy activity typically hit during what I call The Internet Rush Hour: after dinner on weeknights, with family members streaming video or scrolling through social media posts. Older Wi-Fi often struggled to keep up.

Now, shelter-in-place directives have forced a dramatic shift to videoconferencing for much of the day. Like YouTube or Netflix, conferencing apps like Zoom place downstream demands on the network. But when you move or speak during a virtual meeting, you’re also taxing the Wi-Fi with instantaneous upstream traffic. During school hours, it’s not unusual to have each family member active in a virtual conference or classroom.

The New Normal
I expect we’ll find that these new network demands are here to stay. For one thing, we may be in for more stay-at-home directives over the next year or two with the ebb and flow of infections. Expect changes even when we’re not working to flatten the curve. Watch, for example, for school administrators to integrate video into classrooms. That way, when kids get sick they can still participate virtually. For younger children, that will require at least one parent to work from home those days as well.

Some professions are already rethinking how they approach face-to-face communication. In healthcare, for example, coronavirus is turning the emerging telemedicine industry on its head. Rather than examine people remotely who aren’t sick enough to go to the hospital, as the technology was intended, clinicians now are tapping it to maintain safe distances between them and contagious ICU patients.

Speaking of health, watch for the coronavirus crisis to crack America’s culture of showing up to work sick, a cultural tradition immortalized by Hall-of-Fame Chicago Bulls guard Michael Jordan’s MVP performance in the 1997 NBA Finals against the Utah Jazz. We’ll still work, contagious or not. Going forward, though, we’ll do it from home.

6GHz to the Rescue
The new traffic lanes bring needed relief in several ways. First, the higher frequencies mean faster data rates. Second, the expansive, 1.2 GHz of spectrum is four times as wide as what’s allocated for Wi-Fi in the 5GHz range, and more than a dozen times as much as 2.4GHz. So there’s much more room for network traffic.

Perhaps most important, there won’t be any slow, channel-hogging legacy Wi-Fi on 6GHz spectrum.

As a result, the network’s potential won’t be hampered by decades-old protocols built for when no more than one or two devices were on the network – with virtually no real-time traffic like audio streaming or videoconferencing.

Everything on the 6GHz band will, by default, offer the best of Wi-Fi 6, which was built for sharing  bandwidth between dozens – even hundreds – of devices such that everything on the network gets what they need, when they need it.

Wi-Fi 6 brings to the table many new features designed to provide an unprecedented level of capability and capacity, though two foundational services stand out. (For more, please see FeibusTech’s Wi-Fi 6 Impact Report, published August 2019.) The first is OFDMA, which empowers routers with the ability to schedule and route data traffic for hundreds of devices at once. That translates into strong speed and latency improvements for smartphones, computers, gaming consoles and other connected devices.

And the second, multi-user MIMO, or MU-MIMO, enables routers and client devices the ability to handle multiple users’ high-speed traffic. Not all Wi-Fi 6 devices support upstream as well as downstream MU-MIMO, so be sure to choose carefully. Upstream MU-MIMO is a must-have feature for ensuring high-quality two-way traffic for videoconferencing apps and other work-, play- and learn-at-home activities in the new normal.

Your New Wi-Fi for the New Normal
If you find your spouse’s videoconference and the kids’ virtual classes are sometimes throttling your presentation to the team, then MU-MIMO in particular could improve things dramatically. Because MU-MIMO is ideal for family-sized units all engaging in high-bandwidth activities like gaming. And, of course, videoconferencing.

But shop carefully. Wi-Fi 6/6E chipsets – and, by extension, routers, smartphones and computers – must support at least four MU-MIMO spatial streams to be compliant with the standard.

For your new home network, seek out wireless networking hardware that supports the maximum 8×8 MU-MIMO, upstream as well as downstream to keep videoconferencing and other two-way apps working flawlessly. And when evaluating new connected devices, look for eight-stream (or 8×8) sounding to ensure the most devices can connect at once.

Wireless industry pioneer Qualcomm is pushing the Wi-Fi 6/6E spec to the limit, offering the maximum allowable capability on one feature after another.

Qualcomm’s Networking Pro Series chipset, for example, is one of the only Wi-Fi 6 router platforms to support up to 37 simultaneous devices in a single 80MHz channel. Together with advanced scheduling and planning features, the Pro Series platform can manage up to 1,500 simultaneous connections.

As well, the Pro Series was one of the first Wi-Fi 6 router platforms to offer 8×8 MU-MIMO. Qualcomm’s FastConnect series for smartphones, laptops and other connected clients support 2×2 connectivity with eight-stream sounding to ensure the most devices can communicate simultaneously.

Those features will be critical to keep everyone in your family connected flawlessly over two-way video applications. So keep an eye out for them when you shop. Because like it or not, success in the new normal may hinge on it.

Produced by
FeibusTech
in association
with
Qualcomm