Can you expland about technology sidr of it?. Whats the significant upgrade for end consumers like me?
News 6GHz Spectrum in process to be delicensed for Wifi 6E & 7
- Thread starter bfz
- Start date
f0r3he4d
Contributor
kage
Forerunner
Multiple benefits.
6Ghz:
- Frequency range of 5925-6425Mhz (~500Mhz) available.
This is huge compared to the non-DFS 5150-5330Mhz (170Mhz) / 5735-5875Mhz (150Mhz) of 5ghz, or 2401-2483Mhz (~80Mhz) of 2.4Ghz.
Larger frequency range == Wider channels / More channels for different APs to avoid clashes.
Wider channels == More throughput.
Less Clashes == Better everything.
- 6Ghz does not have restrictions like 5Ghz with DFS.
DFS is extremely annoying and slows down connections by 1 minute to 10 minutes depending on the bands used due to beacon scanning.
Also, AP has to move clients over as soon as it encounters a DFS signal. Moving over introduces jitter and can drop packets (since the AP has to scan for available bands before switching clients over, to check whether those bands have a DFS clash as well or not).
WiFi 7:
- Can use 2.4Ghz, 5Ghz and 6Ghz together, instead of separately. More throughput.
- Can also do simultaneous sending and receiving of data. Essentially full duplex like Ethernet (although not true full duplex). WiFi 6E and below are half-duplex.
- If there is congestion, or there's a DFS hit in 5Ghz, the client can instantly move over to a different band. Much lower latency. No dropped connections.
- Also enables better use of 5Ghz DFS bands as the slowdown can be mitigated because of the point above (not sure by how much though). With DFS 5Ghz bands + 6Ghz bands, due to MLO aggregation, you can now have a humongous ~1Ghz wide contiguous frequency range available to you (although I'll still recommend not using DFS channels).
Last edited:
crytt
Explorer
I was just wondering about that. Constant bluetooth, NFC, WiFi in our environment...
kage
Forerunner
Depends on your deployment. It will either remain as good as it is if it's already optimal, or improve if it's not.
Don't.
This is all non-ionizing radiation. It harms you as much as visible light does. Infact, visible light is closer to ionizing radiation on the spectrum than these radio waves. So if these are harmful, then light is much more.
And I don't know about you, but so far I've heard light hurting only one specific type of creatures. Vampires.
Oh and you know what else emits EMF radiation? Electricity wires. Yes, the same ones in our walls and on the streets.
So tldr: Non-ionizing radiation like wifi, 4g, 5g, bluetooth, AM, FM etc is of no practical concern. Has never been.
Last edited:
This is perhaps the single best thing that wifi7 standard brings.
KshitijChoudhry
Contributor
Hi can u explain what exactly is DFS? I had an ax10, it did not have support for dfs channels so I never knew about this, but yesterday I purchased an ax50.. It has support for the dfs channels, I checked on wifiman app, it showed that those channels (52 through 144) were not being used by anyone in my neighborhood, I thought I'll just setup a 160 wide channel on channel 100, basically in the middle that would all be used on my devices only without any interference at all. But the issue I am encountering is on one of my laptops (Mediatek wifi card), it stops detecting the 5 Ghz band.. Now the problem is I cannot setup 160 wide channels on the higher end (eg 149) and lower ones are congested, So either I'll have to use an 80 wide channel on the higher ones, or a lower channel with 160 wide but congestion.. What do u suggest?
Also I was planning on getting an intel card for my laptop prior to the ax50 upgrade due to frequent drops on the mediatek card, but since morning today wifi is pretty stable.. So do u suggest I still get an intel card just to get the support for dfs channels on my laptop? (It would also unlock 6ghz support for future proofing) or not? Because after reading your text about dfs, I feel it might not be the best decision to move the channel to a dfs one..
Existing 5GHz can easily manage 1.8Gbps. I get this on my Phone, Tab and laptop which supports the 160MHz channel.
It takes 60s to scan for Radar only while booting up. It's not like everyone has radar signals near their home so not a major issue
kage
Forerunner
In short, when 5Ghz was being unlicensed, the authorities involved did not talk it over with other major stakeholders like weather forecasters and military.
What this resulted in was that certain channels on the now unlicensed spectrum were already used by these other stakeholders and now devices using this unlicensed spectrum were interfering in their work.
So a compromise was made using DFS, where an AP or Client first makes sure that these contested channels are free before connecting to them.
Also, if they receive a DFS beacon from any of these stakeholders even after the connection is made, they have to immediately move over to an uncontested channel.
All of this results in increased latency, dropped packets and increased connection times.
Not ideal.
As for the channel widths, I always recommend 20Mhz for 2.4 (channels 1, 6, and 11 for no interference) and 80Mhz for 5.
The reason for that is, the wider you go, the more interference you have to handle (and you can skip DFS channels when on 80, not possible with 160).
You also need to be much closer to the AP to make good use of that width.
The only reason one should go 160Mhz wide is if they really need that bandwidth.
And for most use cases, they don't.
As for a new card, I'd say as long as your current one is working fine, don't get a new one.
It's unnecessary.
Especially if you're getting it just for DFS (unless of course you're really sure that there is no DFS interference in your area).
And since 6ghz is probably getting legalized soon, why not just wait for it to happen before future-proofing for it.
f0r3he4d
Contributor
iirc only netgear had 80+80 mhz support, and even then youd need a client device to support it. Most laptops and phones have 2x2 antennas with 80mhz of bandwidth. whats your client and ap situation like?
Not 80+80MHz with WiFi 6 AX3000 and above APs have 160MHz support and almost every modern WiFi 6 phones support this channel
f0r3he4d
Contributor
kage
Forerunner
Partially true. But there is a bit more nuance to it.
Like I mentioned earlier, it can take 1 minute to a full 10 minutes.
It depends on the frequency used.
Also, the problem is not just at bootup.
Every time a radar DFS beacon is detected, the AP has to shift channels.
This causes increased latency and dropped packets for all clients involved.
And if the AP decides to move to another DFS channel, it has to do the scanning process all over again.
And it cannot use a radar hit channel for 30 mins post detection as well.
The radar events too can be tricky.
If someone is near an airport, they will definitely get a radar hit.
But there are also instances like weather stations, military installations, portable radar devices etc which can all cause a DFS hit and we might not have an obvious way to know whether these events are a common occurrence in our area or not.
There's also the problem of power limitation.
DFS channels are usually more limited in power transmission than normal channels (sometimes even by 1/4th).
This decreases the range of that AP a lot.
All in all, DFS doesn't seem worth the hassle to me.
It can be a source of more problems than it solves.
And it can be extremely tricky to debug as well.
But that said, everyone's setup is different. And if it works for you, then that's excellent!
Yeah in those places DFS channels can face issues but as I mentioned not everyone is gonna be near these places so it's really not an issue. It actually works better than non DFS 36-48 and 149-165 channels due to no interference.
About the Tx power only some country code use lower power on DFS. But for us it's not an issue as upto 23dBm is allowed here
KshitijChoudhry
Contributor
And how frequently does this happen? Is there any way to know if my area is affected at all? I just used wifiman to scan the channels and the dfs channels according to that were basically empty..
Guess I'll just use an 80 wide higher channel for the time being..
I guess I'll skip then, earlier there were issues, the connection used to drop a lot but after the router upgrade its been working fine..
I agree with this, I couldn't figure out why my laptop wouldn't detect the 5ghz wifi, I initially thought it had something to do with 160 mhz width...
kage
Forerunner
I am pretty sure we are allowed 30dBm for non DFS and 23dBm for DFS.
Considering power doubles every 3dBm, DFS is limited to 1/4th the power of normal channels even in India.
Agreed.
If someone can make sure there is no DFS interference in their area and has a lot of congestion from neighbors, DFS channels can be extremely helpful.
But not otherwise.
There is no way of knowing. You would need to scan those channels for at least 2 weeks to be 99.99% sure because some DFS events like weather scans only happen once every fortnight.
Or you could enable DFS on your router and check the logs after 2-3 weeks for a DFS hit if it allows you to.
Not every router uses the full 30dBm Tx especially those provided by the ISPs and in my router I didn't see any difference in signal strength between non DFS and DFS channels