Briefly, WiFi 6 is a set of standards, also called 802.11ax, that define the latest protocols and signaling standards for WiFi. It supports multiple antenna use in a multiuser environment, it supports beamforming, and it allows faster communications. It's common for a device and an access point using WiFi 6 to handle gigabit speeds, and WiFi 6 can run on any WiFi band, including 2.4GHz and 5GHz. WiFi 6 is available now.
6GHz WiFi runs in the newly allocated 6GHz band. It does not necessarily need to use WiFi 6. Older standards will operate at those frequencies as well, but they may not take full advantage of the greater bandwidth. WiFi 6E is WiFi 6 operating in the 6GHz band.
Because the 6GHz band offers space for so much wireless bandwidth - seven 160MHz channels - there's plenty of room for very high speeds. Depending on the circumstances, you could expect to see speeds in excess of 10 gigabits per second. In addition, because of the relatively uncluttered frequencies, you can also expect to see very low latency.
"Generally speaking, it's a massive increase in capacity," said Andrew Zignani, wireless connectivity principal analyst at ABI Research and author of "The Future of WiFi." "It's an additional 1.2 gigahertz in additional spectrum. This increases the number of channels, it has less inherent congestion, [and it] won't be interfered with by legacy devices. As a result, you can enable lower latency, more dense deployments, and greater reliability. WiFi 6 adds better resource allocation."
Much of the reason for the low latency is that there's no legacy WiFi in the 6GHz bands. Gold said he thinks the greatly expanded bandwidth will have a lot to offer to enterprise users. He said that may include having networks with a lot of video or sensor support, for example.
