Question Upgrading wifi 5 to wifi 6 ?

[kevindd992002]

I'll be buying a Samsung Galaxy S22+ very soon so I will have one client that can benefit from wifi 6/6E especially the batter savings. Technically, I only need a WAP to upgrade my current wifi 5 Asus RT-AC66U to either wifi 6 or wifi 6E. I live in a small condo that’s only around 55 sqm. so a single WAP is enough. Here are my questions:

1. At this point, is 6E the way to to go or just stay at 6? 6E is just too expensive right now and I don’t even know if it’s worth it since I’m still at a sub-Gig Internet subscription.
2. Will I get more bang for my buck if I go with a dedicated WAP or just go with the Asus RT routers and run them in AP mode (like what I’m doing now). I don’t need routing capabilities because I have pfsense for that.
3. Any actual suggestions for a WAP or an Asus RT 6/6E router that "makes sense"?

 

[bill001g]

The key difference is wifi6e can run on the 6ghz radio band. The main advantage is there are many 160mhz radio bands with no interference/rules about DFS like weather radar avoidance.

On the 5g band there are no bands 160mhz wide, all have to contend with the dfs rules. In addition there is so little bandwidth that everyone likely uses the same channels. On the 6ghz you at least have some ability to not run on the same channels as your nieghbors.....but I am sure it will get crowded too.

Performance wise wifi6 and wifi6e use exactly the same data protocols and encoding. The only differnce is the radio frequiency. There should not be a lot of differnence in coverage but in theory 6ghz might get blocked more.

We are going to have to wait and see how well this really works and a lot of non technical people start using it. Right now you have the fake review sites and the guys who like to brag about their big "numbers". I know if normal wifi6 can get 160mhz bands it is fairly common to get over 600mbps. So maybe we could really see gigabit wifi on 6e but its still too early to be sure.

The large problem is the end devices. There are routers that do 6e but end device are pretty rare. On regular wifi6 you have to be very very careful to read the fine print. A lot of devices to avoid the messy DFS stuff only support 80mhz radio bands and therefore it doesn't run much different than 802.11ac running on 80mhz wide bands.

 

[kevindd992002]

Right. I just think 6E routers and AP's are still too expensive. I'm gearing towards a wifi 6 AP at this point and am trying to find out which specific brand/model is the best bang for the buck one. Any suggestions?

 

[bill001g]

What do you hope to accomplish with wifi6.
I guess it depends if your current equipment is failing. How fast do you currently have.

Wifi6 really is only going to be faster if you buy the stuff that supports 160mhz. Many/most end devices especially cell phones only support 80mhz. You have to remember buying a fancy router/ap is only 1/2 the connection you can not use features if your end device do not also support it.

Pretty much you will not find much difference between any of the major brands. None of the router makers actually make their own wifi chipset. They all buy from the same 2 or 3 chip companies. The main differnece is going to be features in the router software not the wifi performance.
Wifi performance is completely unpredictable it seems. Your house makes far more difference than the small differences you find between router.

 

[kevindd992002]

For one, my AC66U is not the B1 version so it's a very old one that isn't supported anymore, security-wise.

And yes, I understand that it's always two part. I'm more concerned about future-proofing. The S22+ will just be my first Wifi 6E phone. I don't even need high speeds on a mobile phone but I'm sure I'll have other wifi6-enabled devices along the way.

I have my a dedicated router, pfsense, so it makes more sense to go with an access point rather than an AIO router like the Asus ones. It's not the performance I'm worried about when comparing different brands but the minor (major for some) issues with their software. For example, Netgear wifi6 AP's from what I reasearched have crappy software. I'm also considering EnGenius and Zyxel AP's.

 

[bill001g]

Pretty much you should use a inexpensive router as a AP rather than buying a real AP. Almost all routers can now be set to AP mode but you can use any router as a AP.

The main reason most people buy real AP is they want to power it via PoE. There are some also some management features in AP if you are going to buy large numbers of them.

I am not sure what software a AP that would do much in your case. You in effect want a simple bridge that converts the wifi to ethernet. The firmware that runs inside the wifi chips most times comes from the chipset manufacture. I doubt many router manufactures do anything with this, it makes keeping the FCC license easier if they do not mess with the actual wifi firmware. This is how they locked it down a number of years ago to prevent us normal users from changing settings in the wifi they didn't want. To even get information on these chipset you have to sign NDA and work for a router manufacture.

The problem with wifi6 is the cheap routers most time only support 80mhz. You end up buying a more expensive router just to get the 160mhz. These routers also come with lots of fancy firewall/nas/vpn etc feature that you are just going to disable when you set it to ap mode
I still suspect that a wifi6 router is going to be cheaper than a AP.

 

[kevindd992002]

Pretty much you should use a inexpensive router as a AP rather than buying a real AP. Almost all routers can now be set to AP mode but you can use any router as a AP.

The main reason most people buy real AP is they want to power it via PoE. There are some also some management features in AP if you are going to buy large numbers of them.

I am not sure what software a AP that would do much in your case. You in effect want a simple bridge that converts the wifi to ethernet. The firmware that runs inside the wifi chips most times comes from the chipset manufacture. I doubt many router manufactures do anything with this, it makes keeping the FCC license easier if they do not mess with the actual wifi firmware. This is how they locked it down a number of years ago to prevent us normal users from changing settings in the wifi they didn't want. To even get information on these chipset you have to sign NDA and work for a router manufacture.

The problem with wifi6 is the cheap routers most time only support 80mhz. You end up buying a more expensive router just to get the 160mhz. These routers also come with lots of fancy firewall/nas/vpn etc feature that you are just going to disable when you set it to ap mode
I still suspect that a wifi6 router is going to be cheaper than a AP.

These are the AP's I'm eyeing for:

Zyxel NWA210X - $179.99
EnGenius EWS377AP - $199

Netgears:
WAX218 - $138 but without power adapter included
WAX615PA - $199 with power adapter included
WAX620PA - $199 with power adapter included

The prices are in the same range as an AIO router and an AP almost always perform better because it is designed just for that. Netgear's software is known to be problematic which is why I'm leaning towards the Zyxel and EnGenuius choices. These all have the 160MHz band, btw.

 

[kevindd992002]

Oops, I checked again. It looks like only the Zyxel has 160MHz so I guess this is the winner. At $179.99, I think the price is not too bad.

 

[gggplaya]

In a Condo, wifi 6 is pointless compared to wifi5. You might notice a 20mbps difference in the real world, it's very negligible.

But in a Condo wifi 6E will make a huge difference using the 6ghz band and 160mhz channel width. You'll easily get at least double the speed you get on wifi 5.

 

[gggplaya]

Oops, I checked again. It looks like only the Zyxel has 160MHz so I guess this is the winner. At $179.99, I think the price is not too bad.

Neither are wifi 6E so no 6ghz band. It may offer 160mhz channel width, but in my experience you'll have too much interference to utilize 160mhz at 5ghz band. There's only two 160mhz channels, so if anyone else is broadcasting with a 5ghz router on wifi 5 or wifi 6, it'll cause interference with your router. That's been my experience with 160mhz channels on wifi 6. It's unusable.

You need wifi 6E to get a true usuable upgrade. For that kind of money, Ubiquiti sells the U6-Enterprise edition which has a proper 2.5gbe port and 6ghz wifi 6E, but it's $250 and you'll still need to buy a POE injector separately. It's also only in early access, for which you'll have to sign up and wait for an email for it to come back in stock.

Ubiquiti UniFi U6-Enterprise vs U6-Pro vs U6-LR vs U6-Lite – Ubiquiti announces the cheapest Wi-Fi 6E access point

Ubiquiti were a bit slow to adopt Wi-Fi 6, but they made up for it by launching the superb Unifi Wi-Fi 6 Lite, which at the time was by far the best

mightygadget.co.uk

For enterprise level access points, you'll need to run their management software on a separate computer, raspberry pi, or with the ubiquiti cloud key, or dream router.