By Adam Smith
Editor’s Note: You can read Part 1 of this piece here.
Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while you could miss it.
Wi-Fi has never been more important than it was in 2020, with distance learning and remote working stressing our home network connections, bogged down by waist-up video conferencing. Compared to previous years of simply streaming large amounts of video download data, video conferencing exposed the importance of uplink data traffic, both on the home broadband service as well as the multiple, simultaneous Wi-Fi devices operating at home.
The timing could not be better for the latest generation of Wi-Fi, branded as “Wi-Fi 6,” to come to market. Wi-Fi 6 devices use a more efficient means of communicating, allowing multiple devices to simultaneously communicate with the home access point. Wi-Fi 6 will make existing broadband connections feel faster since the devices in the home will not have to wait in line to take their turn, as was the case with previous generations of Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi 6 is currently shipping in volume in phones, PCs, and access points.