Explained: What is Wi-Fi 6 Release 2 and what it means for you – Times of India

The Wi-Fi Alliance has announced a new wireless standard called the Wi-Fi 6 Release 2 at CES 2022. It should be noted that there are already two standards in the same generation: Wi-Fi 6 and 6E wireless standards. The Wi-Fi 6E standard uses the 6GHz frequency band to offer better connectivity. So what makes the Release 2 special? Read on:
What is Wi-Fi 6 Release 2
The latest standard upgrade in Wi-Fi – after Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E – is claimed to offer better performance when faced with the issue of an increasing number of devices and a higher traffic density. It also comes with support for uplink multi-user MIMO (multiple input multiple output) which would help the devices connected to the wireless network upload content concurrently to an access point such as a network router. What this means is that the Wi-Fi speed will be faster and uploads will be reliable from multiple people. Also, it improves latency for games and video conferencing.
What impact will Wi-Fi 6 Release 2 have on your devices?
Wi-Fi 6 Release 2 includes new features that bring power management improvements for devices in the enterprise and IoT deployments. This means that smart home devices will see an improvement in power consumption as Wi-Fi 6 Release 2 comes with new low power and sleep mode enhancements – including broadcast target wake time (TWT), extended sleep time, and dynamic multi-user spatial multiplexing power save (SMPS)– enable power optimization of multiple battery-powered devices.
Wi-Fi 6 Release 2: Why it matters
The Wi-Fi Alliance estimates that there will be about two billion Wi-Fi 6 devices will enter the market in 2022. This will lead to device density, more bandwidth-hungry applications, and surges in uplink data demand in residential and enterprise environments. As mentioned, Wi-Fi 6 Release 2 will enable devices to upload content efficiently. The data consumption is set to increase in the future with Wi-Fi networks supporting more upstream activity and users uploading content to social media or for personal consumption. The increase in the number of IoT devices will further result in more data consumption – and here’s why the latest Wi-Fi standard will come in to ensure faster and efficient data management.