

Wireless networks have come a long way in the past couple of decades. And yet, sustained Wi-Fi speeds are still a vexing problem in a lot of situations. A number of subtle factors can come into play, including the way your router is set up, the presence of nearby interference, whether you live in an apartment building or a stand-alone house, where your microwave sits in relation to the rest of your network, and how far your devices are from the router. Fortunately, there’s almost always a way to fix slow transfer speeds.


The fastest version of Wi-Fi currently available is branded as “Wi-Fi 6E,” aka 802.11ax-2021. If you’re wondering why we moved to branded naming as opposed to the standard number + a signifying letter combination, it’s because there are a lot more low-level updates and specification changes to 802.11 than there used to be. After 802.11ac in 2013, we’ve had .ad, .af, 802.11-2016, .ah, .ai, .aj, and .aq. Rather than asking people to continue playing “Guess the relevant Wi-Fi standard,” somebody decided it would be easier to just call the current major consumer version “Wi-Fi 6.” There’s an even newer standard, Wi-Fi 6E, which supports signals in the 5-6GHz band, but the Wi-Fi 6E hardware in-market is a rather poor deal at present.

Channels 1, 6, and 11

First of all, let’s talk about 2.4GHz, because even in 2021, the majority of Wi-Fi installations still use the 2.4GHz band in some way. 802.11ac, which debuted in 2013, is driving adoption of 5GHz, helped along by adoption of 2020’s 802.11ax / Wi-Fi 6 — but thanks to backwards compatibility, dual-radio routers and devices, and lower-cost peripherals with less expensive chipsets, 2.4GHz will continue to reign for a while.

2.4GHz WiFi channel diagram



What channel should you use in a crowded area?





But what about 5GHz?


Get ready for lots of antennas.

The great thing about 5GHz (802.11n, 802.11ac, and Wi-Fi 6) is that because there’s much more free space at the higher frequencies, it offers 23 non-overlapping 20MHz channels. 6GHz should continue this trend, with even more frequency space (although with slightly worse propagation characteristics).

Starting with 802.11n and continuing with 802.11ac, wireless technology in general became much more advanced than the prehistoric days of 802.11b and g. If you own at least a decent 802.11n or 802.11ac router (i.e. if you bought a router in the last several years), it likely has some hardware inside that chooses the right channel automatically and modifies the output power to maximize throughput and minimize interference.



WiFi 6E will eventually change some of this guidance, but right now the only WiFi 6E devices are poor deals. Once Wi-Fi 6E hardware is available, the 6GHz band is expected to create opportunities for clearer networking since it’s unused spectrum at the moment. Total performance of WiFi 6E is not higher than WiFi 6, but it should be easier to hit that throughput in real-world scenarios.

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