The TLDR is that it’s a new wifi standard/generation. It means WiFi 6. It’s not entirely important, but some phones display that to show you that you’re using fairly recent technology.
It means you can “dock” your phone with a consenting bro’s phone also displaying this symbol by facing each other, grasp your device firmly, and touch the tips together.
Yep. Ubiquiti sells wifi 7 APs and the latest phones support it as of some time last year I think. The big new feature is 6GHz and the ability to automatically hop between frequencies (You can use 6, 5 and 2.4GHz all at once). Latency has been great, and I easily get 1Gbps+ in the same room as my wifi.
They’re finalizing it later this year but a bunch of manufacturers are already selling devices. The hardware specs are pretty much finalized at this point. Anything needed for final certification should be doable with a firmware update.
Most consumers are familiar with the 802.11 standards; however, this new sequential number rebranding is intended to simplify things. Previously, the naming design used the alphabet, starting with a to bto g and n, with each one representing the next generation. We’d expect z to be the last or fastest one, or until they have new names, but suddenly we’re on 802.11ac, which is faster than all previous versions, so it’s understandable that users would be a bit confused. Thus, starting from 802.11n, Wi-Fi will be referred to as Wi-Fi 4, 802.11ac as Wi-Fi 5, and 802.11ax as Wi-Fi 6.
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WiFi 6: higher data rates, increased capacity, enhanced performance in dense environments, and improved power efficiency. Operating on the same 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz band as Wi-Fi 5, Wi-Fi 6 is rated to support transfer speeds of up to 10 Gb/s, which ranges from four to ten times faster than the current standard.
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802.11ax utilizes OFDMA (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access), one of the big advancements with LTE technology.
TL;DR: less congestion in crowded networks and better speeds.
You’re kidding, right? Wireless G, N, AC, AX etc are commonly printed all over the boxes of routers and is the main way to talk about their speed and how new they are. Do you not buy your own router? It seems as common to me as 3G/4G/5G but for a different kind of wireless.
I wouldn’t expect my mom to know it, I would expect most people on Lemmy to know and most somewhat tech familiar people to know. Not deep into the specs, but knowing AC is faster than N.
Regular people sure, but this is Lemmy. The nerd concentration here is significantly higher than average. I dunno, just thought it was fairly common knowledge in tech literate people that wireless G is outdated, AX is current, things like that. I can’t imagine spending money on a router without knowing the basics, which I’d consider the G/N/AC etc standard to be the minimum you need to know for making a decent purchase.
Most consumers don’t buy their own routers. The only time I’ve helped people buy routers in the last decade is to get one you could install a vpn on. Looking at the wireless standards never crossed our minds.
Fair enough. I thought it was just as common knowledge as wireless cellphone standards. Kinda surprised to see most people on Lemmy don’t pay attention to these, lots of the kinds of people who wouldn’t use the ISP supplied router / AP are here. Or so I thought.
I don’t know the 802.11 specs at all, but I know enough to purchase a router that won’t be outdated quickly.
because I was worried it was privacy-related, I was worried that it meant 6 devices are connected to my Wi-Fi which I should be the only person connected to right now. But based on everyone’s responses, it looks like that number 6 is a pretty damn good thing and not a bad scary privacy concern thing at all.
okay based on everyone’s responses, it looks like the number six is a good thing, and not a bad scary thing that would be a cause for privacy concern. Thank you all.
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