Wi-Fi branding to get a lot simpler with upcoming “Wi-Fi 6”

The Wi-Fi Alliance, the trade group that develops and promotes wireless networking standards, is attempting to make Wi-Fi naming a bit simpler with the introduction of 802.11ax next year.

The plan is to brand the new specification as "Wi-Fi 6," rebrand 802.11ac as "Wi-Fi 5," and 802.11n as "Wi-Fi 4," making it easy to tell at a glance which standard is newer and, hence, faster.

The current naming uses IEEE's terminology. The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers oversees development of a wide range of electrical and electronic standards. The standards are organized into groups; IEEE 802 covers all local area network standards. 802.11 specifically covers Wireless LAN.

The 802.11 group produces dated standards every few years, most recently 802.11-2016, and then publishes amendments to these standards. The amendments are named alphabetically, and it's these amendment names that have come to be used to refer to particular Wi-Fi technology. For example, the original 802.11-1997 standard was amended by 802.11a (54Mbit/s over 5GHz radio), 802.11b (11Mbit/s over 2.4GHz radio), and 802.11g (54Mbit/s over 2.4GHz) and, correspondingly, we see devices claiming to support 802.11a/b/g. Most of the other letters are also used to define additional features.

802.11ax is an amendment to the 802.11-2016 standard. It's designed to bring higher speeds and lower battery consumption to the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands, with more efficient spectrum usage. Current draft 802.11ax hardware can support 1.1Gbit/s over 2.4GHz and 4.8Gbit/s over 5GHz, and demo systems have reached 11Gbit/s. The final standard is expected to be produced next year.

The version-based branding is only being used for 802.11n, 802.11ac, and 802.11ax; there won't be any versions 1, 2, or 3 (though there are three precursors to 802.11n: 802.11a, 802.11b, and 802.11g, so the version numbers do make sense). The Wi-Fi Alliance has also produced logos that it hopes will be used in operating systems (though not product packaging) to indicate which level of connectivity is being used.

Listing image by Vinu Thomas / flickr