Wifi 6E

[Ty1989]

Does Meraki have a timeline for releasing Wifi 6e products? It would be interesting to see how 6 Ghz WiFi performs.

[JohnD]

There's zero client devices... so it might be a little early. Plus 6E's ability to use 160MHz channels more effectively means that we should really wait for radios that have better stories for 160MHz support. Currently on these chipsets, it looks like 160MHz requires splitting the 5GHz radio into 2 sub-radios, so 8x8:8 turns into 160MHz 4x4:4, and 4x4:4 turns into 2x2:2.

(It looks like the next Qualcomm Wifi 6E chips are designed for tri-band operation, and also adds 1024QAM proprietary extensions to 802.11ax)

[WifiBestPhy]

> Currently on these chipsets, it looks like 160MHz requires splitting the 5GHz radio into 2 sub-radios, so 8x8:8 turns into 160MHz 4x4:4, and 4x4:4 turns into 2x2:2.

You say that like its a bad thing. I have never had a 4x4:4 client on my network and I am not likely to ever have one on my network. Trading that feature for doubled throughput to 2x2:2 clients is a tradeoff I will make gladly. Considering that you can't use Mu-Mimo and OFDMA at the same time, I would love to trade spatial streams for bandwidth. That will allow me better OFDMA performance at the expense of features that aren't actually being used.

>and also adds 1024QAM proprietary extensions to 802.11ax

1024QAM is part of the 802.11ax spec.

[JohnD]

I think going down to 2x2:2 is a pretty significant tradeoff. Sure if all of your clients are 160MHz capable, that's fine, but looking at my 75 devices currently connected, only 3 are beaconing 160MHz capability. And going down to 2x2:2 also means losing beamforming without going down to 1ss. All in all, it's a huge tradeoff on the current QCN5154 class radios to attempt to use 80p80/160MHz.

(Before you get too excited, the last time I tried this a few months ago with an AX AP that supported 160MHz, I was able to pull 1.3gbit and then my Intel AX200 would just stop passing traffic, so client side bugginess is definitely still a concern)

https://www.qualcomm.com/news/onq/2020/05/28/qualcomm-fastconnect-raising-bar-mobile-connectivity-ad...

There's the Qualcomm chips that would likely be used, announced 3 weeks ago. And sorry for the 1024QAM, these chips are supporting 4096QAM.

[Network-dad]

Meraki put this out on the blog a few months ago .... its a good read https://meraki.cisco.com/blog/2020/04/meraki-access-points-wi-fi-certified-6/