With the news that WiFi will get a new version next year, and that it will be called WiFi 6, I thought I’d knock up a little guide to the previous versions of WiFi that we’ve had
| Standard | Name | Max Speed | Frequency | Year | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 802.11b | Wi-Fi 1 | 11 Mbps | 2.4GHz | 1999 | |
| 802.11a | Wi-Fi 2 | 54 Mbps | 5GHz | 1999 | |
| 802.11g | Wi-Fi 3 | 54 Mbps | 2.4GHz | 2003 | |
| 802.11n | Wi-Fi 4 | 600 Mbps (150 Mbps per stream) | 2.4GHz or 5GHz | 2009 | Use of MIMO and multiple antennas up to 4 streams |
| 802.11ac | Wi-Fi 5 | 600 Mbps (2.4GHz) + 2,167Mbps (5GHz) | 2.4GHz and 5GHz | 2013 | Intorduced MU-MIMO. Up to 8 MIMO streams, wider channels, and 256QAM modulation. Typical speeds of around 500 Mbps — 1 Gbps |
| 802.11ax | Wi-Fi 6 | ~11 Gbps | 2.4GHz and 5GHz | 2019 | Uses 1024QAM and OFDMA. Uses lots of tweaks to increase efficiency of spectrum usage, resulting in much higher real world data rates |
“Hi James I realise it has been a long while, but I just checked this on windows 11 (build 23H2)…”