Gets better when you include Ghz...
So I want WiFi 6 on 802.11ax, is that on 2.4 or 5? I think i want a WiFi 4 on 2.4, is WiFi 6 better than 2.4? What happened to WiFi 3.4?
Yeah... This'll clear everything up nicely won't it.
That's a good point, but I see it going away in future iterations of hardware.
For example, in my house I have a 2.4 band and a 5 band with different SSIDs ... the 5 has weak signal but much higher speed. This is typical for most ... the 2.4 band can reach the farthest corners of the house, but the speed is weak. So with this configuration I manually set up each device depending on its location to be appropriate. For example, my computer at the far end of the house has a 2.4 connection because it needs reliability and doesn't require high speeds.
But all of that is very low-tech. Newer devices - especially routers - can have 2.4 band and 5 band SSID bridging, meaning they can share the same SSID and be considered "same network", and the client devices can intelligently pick the best channel to use.
< Insert obvious eyebrow raised look here >
Clearly devices aren't
all ready for this, there are numerous reports of people for example driving home and their phones connect with the 2.4 band (it's signal is stronger, but speed is weaker) first, since it's the first band to reach the phone, then never readjust for the 5 band later.
This is pretty much how mesh networks work, they allow you to go short-range high-speed and use the lower speed channels for intermesh communications.that need to cross distances. I'm way oversimplifying here, but...
The point here is that devices for the most part are getting more intelligent at handling multiple signals and for the most part even if "Wi-Fi 8" had 2.4ghz, 5ghz, 8ghz, etc channels available to it, I'd expect the devices that "work with Wi-Fi 8" to be able to hop appropriately. Right now we have to specifically pick stuff.
Having said that, going back to look at my earlier post in this thread, if a fictitious "Wi-Fi 8" supported all those bands and the client also supported all those bands, even if the new spec was only a speed increase and not a power/distance increase, it still is a net-positive for the industry. The key is backwards compatibility. They'd just sell it by saying something like "Wi-Fi 8 now allows speeds up to 10TB* (*as long as you're within 10 feet of a router)" and it would also be able to do everything 802.11n, 802.11b, etc can do, so you can drop in "Wi-Fi 8" on any new infrastructure and all is well.