The current standard for wireless networking in the home is 802.11ac. It was developed between 2008 and 2013, and routers adhering to the standard can (just about) cope with your home wireless networking needs. But a successor is on the horizon, paving the way for when we have 50 connected device at home rather than just 10. That successor is called 802.11ax.
Today, Broadcom is announcing the launch of Max WiFi, the industry's first 802.11ax wireless chips meant for the next generation of home wireless, smartphones, and enterprises.
The goal of the 802.11ax standard is to provide four times the throughput of 802.11ac operating on the 5GHz band. The extra capacity will be needed as we enter the next decade. By 2022, there will be over 50 billion wirelessly connected devices, and an average family of four will have about 50 wireless devices all competing for a connection.
Broadcom claims its 802.11ax Max WiFi chips offer up to four times faster download speeds, six times faster upload speeds, four times better coverage, and seven times better battery life than what's available on the market today. Such impressive gains are due in no small part to the use of Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA). OFDMA allows for several devices to communicate concurrently, which significantly increases the efficiency and capacity of a wireless network.
Add to that Multi-User MIMO (MU-MIMO) for increased channel capacity, Target Wake Time (TWT) allowing very specific wake and sleep times for greatly improved power efficiency, and Spatial Reuse, which adds intelligence to how access points share channel capacity to work more efficiently for all connected devices.
Broadcom will offer three chips initially for residential Wi-Fi (BCM43684), enterprise access points (BCM43694), and smartphones (BCM4375). For residential Wi-Fi, we can expect Max WiFi to offer four streams of 802.11ax , 1024 QAM Modulation, OFDMA support, MU-MIMO, ZeroWait DFS, and AirIQ interference identification. As for smartphones, Max WiFi supports two streams of 802.11ax, Bluetooth 5.0+, 1024 QAM Modulation, OFDMA support, and MU-MIMO.
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As ExtremeTech explains, to put the potential speed of 802.11ax in context you have to look at a single stream. The maximum speed of a single stream is 3.5Gbps (437MB/s), so quadruple that for residential Wi-Fi and double it for the smartphone chips.
While the 802.11ax standard is very fast, it's not quite ready for prime time. Broadcom is currently sampling Max WiFi chips with its partners, so we can't yet talk about actual products coming to market (we could get them for the 2017 holiday season or early next year). But at least that gives you time to start saving, as the only way to enjoy 802.11ax is through purchasing new hardware.
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