[SOLVED] A router Wifi 6 (ax), will I benefit if I have a Wifi 5 (ac) PC?

[broodmother]

Hi guys,
I have no experience/knowledge much about wifi and their specifications. I only know that Wifi 6 is stronger than Wifi 5. Through googling, I know that Wifi 6 is a lot better in supporting multiple devices which is suitable to be used at my business premise.
Questions:

1. Can my wifi 5 (ac) PC fully utilize benefits from Wifi 6? (this is for my room, and my room is quite far away from the router. I am hoping that Wifi 6 can strength my signal strength.
2. Can Wifi 6 signal travel farther?
3. I saw that routers name contains like AC1500, AX3000 etc. Does it mean the speed it is able to run? Xiaomi has one AX3600, I assume this is better?
4. Comparing products between: Xiaomi Mi AloT AX3600 WiFi 6 Router and ASUS RT-AX3000 Dual Band WiFi 6 Router, should I get the Xiaomi one as it is cheaper and faster speed?
5. What about mesh routers? Would I benefit better with mesh routers instead if I have a big home?

If it is workable, I will get one for my home and also office.
Thank you for your help.

 

[bill001g]

What makes you think wifi6 is "stronger". It has a bigger number on the box ? The marketing guys are doing their best to trick you.

The signal level and the distance it goes is purely a function of radio transmit power and that is limited by the government and has been the same since the very first generation of wifi.

So the distance the signal goes is the same. Where it gets messy is when you start to include the speed at certain distances. There is no clear method to measure and why you get massively different claims by vendors because they pick the best data.

In many way the distance wifi6 goes is less. It uses more bandwidth and a much more complex data encoding method. So it is also much more susceptible to interference. So the distance it can go at max rate is actually much less than the distance 802.11ac can go at max rate. Note of course the max rates are different which is why this is a invalid method of comparing coverage.

In the end it mostly doesn't matter in your case. It will just drop back and use 802.11ac because your end devices can not support it. Also your end device and not the router are likely the cause of poor coverage. The device likely has small antenna and low power transmitters to say battery power. A new router is not going to change that.

Don't get too hung up on the big numbers. That too is mostly a scam to get people to buy things they can't actually use. Many routers support things like 4x4 mimo but end devices tend to have only 2 antenna so the maximum it will run is 2x2. In general most end device only support the number 1200-1750 so buying a router with bigger numbers does not help. These are data encoding numbers not the actual data rates. Most devices with good signal will get about 300mbps with your average router. If you have wifi6 devices and routers you might get around 500mbps.

Mesh is also mostly a marketing scam. You don't see enterprise wifi vendor like cisco or hp selling "mesh" system to large customers. They still use AP connected via ethernet......even though you could call that mesh it is nothing new and has been done that way for many years. Generally mesh is just the name for wireless repeater. It suffers from many of the same issues a the first generation repeaters. You have mulitple radio signals now competing for the same limtied radio bandwidth. So in addition to having more radio signals your nieghbors may interfere with you have your own device many times interfering with each other. Pretty much you still only use mesh/repeaters when you have no other option for coverage. Using poweline or moca to and then AP in remote rooms is still much better than any mesh system.

Actually the cause of poor coverage now days is everyone putting in mesh systems. You now have every house basically trying to use every possible radio channel. This causes more and more interference and people just put in more mesh units to try to compensate. It is like turning the stereo up louder because your neighbors stereo is on too loud.

Unless you have to replace your router I would wait. Wifi6e devices likely will be on the market soon making most wifi6 stuff obsolete. wifi6e major benefit is it can run on the new 6g radio bandwidth which is should reduce the competition with the neighbors....for a while at least.\

If you have to buy a router I would buy something mid priced maybe 802.11ac unless you find 802.11ax on sale. You likely will replace it in a year or two with wifi6e so don't spend a lot. In general you will not see much difference between a $100 router and a $300 router.

 

[broodmother]

Such a wonderful and clear answer. I really appreciate the professionalism and effort you put into this reply. Cheers.

 

[gggplaya]

I personally would not buy a Xiaomi router. Router software matters alot, for the stability of the network as well as security. Just google "xiaomi router unstable firmware."

Asus uses OpenWRT software which has been in refinement for many years and for the most part, the firmware is excellent.