The 802.11ax WiFi standard, also known as WiFi 6, was launched in 2019 and offered significant improvements over previous standards in terms of speed, capacity, and efficiency. With a maximum throughput of 9.6 Gbps, 802.11ax offers a substantial increase in capacity compared to its predecessor, 802.11ac. The 802.11ax standard also increases the capacity of wireless networks. It uses a technology known as Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) to divide a wireless channel into a large number of subchannels, pulling the technology more inline with cellular 4G and 5G technologies. Each of these subchannels can be used by a different device, allowing a single 802.11ax access point to serve multiple devices simultaneously.
802.11ax provides about a 37% increase in per-user data rate, but a considerable 300% increase in access point capacity, leading to about 4x the total throughput. The impact of OFDMA is not to be underestimated, with users reporting substantial increases in effective range, with outdoor range beyond 400 metres being regularly observed.
The standard also introduces Target Wake Time (TWT), a feature that allows devices to schedule when they will wake up to send or receive data, which reduces power consumption and improves the battery life of devices connected to the network. 802.11ax operates in both the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands, and it is backward compatible with previous WiFi standards.