Wi-Fi 6 is an industry certification for products that support the new wireless standard 802.11ax.
Wi-Fi 6 is often referred to as "High Efficiency Wireless" due to its increased capabilities, improved resource utilization and higher throughput speeds.
Wi-Fi 6 has features and improvements such as TWT, OFDMA and its significant improvement in MU-MIMO.
Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) was designed from the start to be backward compatible and provide improvements in all the previously existing Wi-Fi Standards Including Wi-Fi 5(802.11ac wave 1 and wave 2), and Wi-Fi 4 (802.11n) in the 2.4GHz band and 5GHz band.
Wi-Fi 6 also brings the ability to support both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz band broadcasting Simultaneously.
Most Vendors of smart phones, laptops, Tablets and Smart devices are currently making their devices with support for Wi-Fi 6 /802.11ax. However, this support is only relevant when you also have a wireless network that supports the standard. Only if you use a wireless access point (usually a router) with Wi-Fi 6 certification / support for 802.11ax, will you have a Wi-Fi 6 network.
If your wireless network does not support Wi-Fi 6, Wi-Fi 6 support in a client will have no bearing on the performance and functionality the client gets on the network.
Wi-Fi 6 Compatibility Issues with Older devices and Wi-Fi 5(802.11ac):
As with most new technologies, even with the support for backward compatibility for older devices considered, there are bound to be some issues that will occur and affect some devices or vendor equipment.
Luckily for us at Ray, we keep track of these bugs and glitches and keep track of developments to solve them.
In this article, we are going to cover the two (2) common compatibility issues with older devices and Ray Wi-Fi 6 Certified AP's
These Include;
- PCs That Use Intel 802.11ac Wireless Adapters
- Products That Do Not Support WPA3 "Mixed Mode"
The 2 compatibility issues above although totally unrelated, they both tend to manifest the same errors and symptoms including;
- Unable to connect to SSID
- Unable to detect and list Wi-Fi 6 ready or SSID's Broadcasted by Ray Wi-Fi 6 Access Points in the windows 10 wireless networks tab.
A.) PC's That use Intel® 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapters:
Several Wi-Fi adapters from Intel have known issues with Wi-Fi 6 networks. These problems are mostly resolved with a driver update, but it's important to know that those updates are not part of any Windows updates, so they will need to be updated manually.
The affected adapters on Windows 10 include:
- Intel® Wireless-AC 9560
Intel® Wireless-AC 9462
Intel® Wireless-AC 9461
Intel® Wireless-AC 9260
Intel® Dual Band Wireless-AC 8265
Intel® Dual Band Wireless-AC 8260
The above adapters can be fixed using a driver update of version 20.70.0.5 and newer from the Intel website.
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* For Intel® 802.11ac Wireless adapters;
Intel® Dual Band Wireless-AC 3168
Intel® Wireless 7265 Family (Rev.D)
Intel® Dual Band Wireless-AC 3165
The resolution for the above 3 adapters on windows 10 can be fixed by updating to driver version
19.51.14.1 and newer from the Intel website.
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* For Intel® 802.11ac Wireless adapters;
Intel® Wireless 7265 Family (Rev.C)
Intel® Wireless 7260 Family
Intel® Dual Band Wireless-AC 3160
The resolution for the above 3 adapters on windows 10 can be fixed by updating to driver version
18.33.13.4 and newer from the Intel website.
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Note:
The Resolution to the list of the above affected Intel® 802.11ac Wireless adapters can be found by updating to the latest driver versions from the link below:
B.) Products That Do Not Support WPA3"Mixed Mode":
WPA3 is the latest standard for Wi-Fi encryption. This is separate from Wi-Fi 6 / 802.11ax, but in practice the same products will often be first or early to implement both.
With the recent discovery of a big vulnerability in the widely used WPA2 through the KRACK exploit,
WPA3 was introduced as a solution to this weakness, However with WPA3 release coinciding with Wi-Fi 6, WPA3 support is mostly supported in Wi-Fi 6 AP's.
Despite the inclusion of Mixed mode in WPA3 to ensure older devices can connect, some older devices still are an able to understand and support WPA3 settings,
In this case, Make sure you have updated your Intel drivers to the latest version from the Intel website, and if you cannot connect to the Ray Wi-Fi 6 AP, make sure you change your password from WPA3 encryption to WPA2.
If you are still unable to connect or see your Ray AP Wireless SSID, Kindly contact us on [email protected] and we will quickly get back to you and help you resolve the problem.
We hope this article was helpful?
Kind Regard
Ray Support.