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I fully agree. Actually many people up to now did not realize that there are premium manufacturers just doing it the other way. Why launch a new model with the latest possible features if customers will also rush their shops to just have any new model with a few new features. There will always be a next model in the pipeline and again customers will come and rush their shops or how did the wormy Apple get so fat.
Just as Samsung did some years ago with their mobiles with troublesome batteries. After some time they couldn’t conceal that there were serious issues. So after they started to dump that model it was only a matter of very few weeks until they launched the successor.
Another important point to mention, there is no mixed mode wifi5/6. If one has only wifi 6 compliant devices he or she may only advertise wifi 6 or there are still some older wifi5 compliant devices remaining in the household. If the latter, then it’s the way to replace older non wifi 6 compliant devices, but then again what’s the sense after all. Staying in compatibility mode and stick to wifi5 looks like an acceptable way to go.
Alternatively one could split up his wifi networks which depends on the routers capabilities. Advertise 2,4GHz network as wifi4/5 and set wifi6 with 5GHz as long as there are also older functional devices in use. Seems an acceptable compromise to me. E.g. some Fritzbox models can do this (Standard Vodafone Arris station router cannot afaik).
If one tend to get older (functional) devices therefore “replaced” to fully go with wifi6 I would be highly confused about the overall sense.
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The problems with mixed mode that you are talking about are for WPA3 security, which is an optional and can be used regardless of the wifi standard. Given WPA3 compatibility problems mostly affect older devices, I don’t expect problems on the FP4.
Mixing different wifi standards using WPA2 security is well possible, the problem is just that devices on older standards use more network capacity.
The 2.4GHz band is always using at most 802.11n (wifi 4). If you have a different security protocol on both, you would be able to use two wifi networks separately. but you will lose the ability to use both at the same time to have the most bandwidth.
Thanks for your explanation which shows me that my statement wasn’t comprehensive enough to all readers.
I never mentioned any security feature like wpa2 or wpa3.
Obviously the latest AVM Fritzbox 6660 firmware is unknown to you. Just some days ago I configured such a box. The main issue was about wifi 5 and/or wifi 6 propagation as there were also some old non-wifi 6 compliant devices in the household, it wasn’t about wpa security. Yes, I believe you do know the difference.
On the other hand my Fritzbox 6890 LTE offers wpa3 since the firmware rolled out somewhen last year, but it’s not wifi 6 capable. These are simply two different settings in different menus.
Btw. in my Fritzbox firmware it’s wpa+wpa2 or wpa2 (ccmp) or wpa2+wpa3. No sole wpa3 mode selectable. So any registered device will use what its hardware and driver supports, be it wpa2 or wpa3 no matter to what wifi network it’s registered.
If an old devise simply does not register to wifi6, what’s the use then?
If one only has the upcoming FP4 in his household then it’s fine. But if there’s also an older printer, notebook or something then the game is over, they will simply not register. So setting up a pure wifi 6 network will only help the lonely FP4 but no other older device around.
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I was mistaken about my last sentence, I thought devices could connect to both bands at the same time if the settings matched, but it turns out that that is not true.
It may be you’re hitting a bug in the FritzBox firmware. Wifi 6 shouldn’t prevent any older device from connecting except if you explicitly disable older standards (ie it is possible to disable old standards like 802.11a/b/g (“wifi 2/3”) in many routers.) Older standards just eat up bandwidth because they’re somewhat less efficient.
I don’t think Fairphone is responsible for fixing bugs in FritzBox hardware if they cause wifi 5 devices to have trouble connecting.
Or do you mean to say wifi 5 doesn’t reach far enough away from the router?
Yes, sure…you are not completely wrong. It’s a bit tricky though and I know most of it due to personal experience.
Generally up to wifi5 many devices can be registered to the 2,4GHz + 5GHz wifi network. But only for being registered not using both networks at the same time as some may assume like “aggregation”. There is a setting in mobiles that let one chose to connect to a propagated 2.4GHz network or the 5GHz network alternatively fixed! But also there’s an automatic setting that switched autonomously whichever net has better reception/stronger signal.
But on the router side one can propagate both network types with individual names (SSIDs), let’s say 2.4GHz-slow-wifi and 5GHz-fast-wifi. So ones mobile if preferred can be registered
to only one network or both networks just to increase reception chances for one of the two networks in reach when moving within your home vicinity. That’s only beneficial if the wifi selection option in the mobile is set to automatic. The device then will switch/connect whenever there is a better option.
Also there is the possibility depending on the router model to propagate both network standards with only one SSID (e.g. homenetwork). This is called band steering afaik.
One would only have to register to this sole propagated wifi network. Although my Fritzbox offers both options my FP2 does not feel to well going combined with only one SSID and tends to reboot at times. This way can be a cause for some devices to randomly reboot. So I rather keep it with two different SSIDs.
With band steering it’s under the routers control to which network the device will be connected also taking care of a soft handover (should work without carrier/packet loss).
That’s only half the way. Wifi 6 isn’t backwards compatible. One has to decide to go purely wifi 6 if already having all devices wifi 6 compliant. If not and there is just one old non-wifi 6 compliant device in use, one will have to fallback to wifi5, not connect the device or at last replace this device. There is no mixed mode possible. This is independent from any specific mobile or so, it’s a general fact about which many network carriers don’t waste too many word when offering new wifi 6 capable routers or end devices. One only can use wifi 6 if the entire hardware to connect is compliant to it as well. 
As alternative I can only think of the before mentioned compromise in my other post. I think it’s better than replacing functional hardware.
Do you have a source for this? For all previous standards, this wasn’t true and I can’t find any source saying that it is the case for wifi 6.
Wifi on 2.4GH and Wifi on 5GH is different terminology to Wifi 6
Whereas Wifi 6E does use 6GH ~ Wifi 6 uses both 2.4Gh and 5GH and is backward compatible, it you believe what you read.
As usual, Wi-Fi 6 devices are backward compatible with previous generations of Wi-Fi. You can get a phone with Wi-Fi 6 and connect it to your Wi-Fi 5 or Wi-Fi 4 router. You can get a router with Wi-Fi 6 and connect your older Wi-Fi devices to it, too.
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Yes sure, I agree. I am speaking of pure wifi6 network propagation. It’s a matter of configuration after all. Stepping down from wifi 6 mode is possible but maybe not ones intention.
I had one Lenovo notebook ~3 years old with dual band wifi in a household which did not even see there was a wifi 6 network available. Sometimes manually updating wifi drivers may help though as it’s no Windows issue itself.
Anyway how about printers, many aren’t even able to connect to 5GHz network, so how would that work with wifi6? Or heating regulators are often just 2.4GHz wifi compliant. One having such will probably loose them when sticking straight to wifi6 pure. That’s what I mean with backwards compatible. It’s given, but at which sacrifice if not all devices are fully wifi 6 compliant.
@AlbertJP
These facts are not mentioned in the headlines, my quick search brought me there:
It’s been spoken about general backwards compatibility - yes, but reading closer into the text reveals that if wanting to stay backwards compatible it won’t work having the latest standard/highest speed available → downgrade from wifi6 setting.
The settings in the Fritzbox 6660 are clear. One button for 2.4GHz another for 5GHz. Set one or both to wifi6 pure. If one can’t catch all available devices with this wifi setting there is only the option to stepping back from wifi 6. The next lower option is wifi 4+wifi 5 (5GHz) and wifi 4 (2.4GHz).
That’s how backwards compatibility looks in reality.
Please feel free to enlighten me if I got something wrong here.
As I understand the article, it just predicts that there may be issues with devices initially that might cause you to downgrade until you got a firmware/driver fix, but nothing fundamental. Just like any new technology that can contain bugs at first.
About wifi 5 devices it says:
Most of these clients will be compatible with a Wi-Fi 6 network without having support for the very latest standard.
So in theory everything’s fine. We just have to await how things are in practice once wifi 6 routers get rolled out.
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That’s the maximum supported standard. You can turn that down if there are (unexpected) compatibility problems. Backwards compatibility means that you don’t have to, unless there’s some firmware/driver bug. The reason there is a 4+5, is that 5 is not available on 2.4GHz so it indicates your 2.4GHz devices will fall back to wifi 4 if wifi 6 is not available.
Your router’s specifications indicate:
Compatible with Wireless 802.11ac, n, g and a
It is backwards compatible with devices going back to wifi 3 (802.11a on 5GHz / 802.11g on 2.4GHz).
The topic is WiFi 6 for FP4
It’s not about other devices compatibility.
- FP4 doesn’t have Wifi 6 nor Wifi 6E
- It’s part of the core module and won’t be changed (so unlikely)
- There is no problem even if it was changed as it may well be backwards compatible.
Am I missing something here?
Maybe a new topic?
Chat about Wifi 6 and Wifi 6E for FP5
TBH I did not read the whole thread, but to use the advantages of WiFi 6 both devices (e.g. access point and smartphone) must support the new radio standard, and I think the philosophy to keep electronic devices as long as possible should be followed here as well (if there have been no communication issues so far).
Besides, Fairphone have had so many issues by now that I think everyone can be relieved to see the launch of a new device featuring proven and solid technology. I am convinced that this move will have a great impact on stability and reliability which are essential values a smartphone must deliver in order to achieve longevity.
In other words: We do not need another cause for unnecessary reboots, just in case…
Which is the case when devices simply do not see/list any of ones available wifi 6 networks.
Partially true. The settings button for 2.4GHz doesn’t even have a wifi 5 option to set. It is wifi 4 and the next is wifi 6.
But I could also have kept the 2.4GHz band on wifi 6 and just step the 5GHz band down to wifi 4+5, to me this however wouldn’t had made much sense.
It doesn’t look as the router would do some kind of “auto fallback” magic as we know it from mobiles themselve like if there is no 4G mobile network the device automatically falls back to 3G or else 2G.
If there is no 4G network available it’s simply one device doing auto fallback (let’s neglect maybe having its tethering wifi hotspot feature activated with some friend using it). No other device would be affected in this case.
It clearly looks like routers work differently with wifi networks. Which sounds totally logical to me. Just imagine the router would offer wifi 6 and there would be many devices compliant and connecting to it. Now some device enters the sphere being only wifi 4 compliant and the router would automatically fallback to also catch this device on the wifi 4 level…I believe it wouldn’t be interesting to even use this network at all for the other wifi 6 compliant devices (users).
There are good reasons why the wifi standard has to specifically be set in the routers configuration and there’s no auto fallback feature afaik.
I could experience with both settings at wifi 6 the notebook did not see any network from this router. After stepping down both bands the NB listed both propagated networks, the 2.4 + 5GHz and instantly connected to the preferred.
If there were some auto fallback feature going on in the router I would expect it to work just the other way around.
This is not what happens with wifi 2/3/4/5. I don’t see a reason why this should happen with wifi 6, I think you’re facing a router bug if it doesn’t expose the network correctly. One router isn’t indicative for all of them.
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WPA3-PSK has PFS, which is a neat security feature (I still would use Wireguard on top of it though). When your device supports WPA2, it can support WPA3 as well, it just needs a firmware update. What companies are doing is not updating the WiFi firmware (on both clients and APs), ie. planned obsolescence ie. hardware support is BS. Infuriating.
Now, say your one device old tablet supports WPA2-PSK, and your new smartphone supports WPA3-PSK. Your new smartphone has PFS, your old tablet does not. They very likely don’t talk to each other but with AP → router → internet instead. So the data integrity has nothing to do about comms between these 2 devices; hence why you can have a WLAN AP with WPA2-PSK and WPA3-PSK. You could even set up two APs with a different PSK, but it’d require two radios (to give some perspective: my ‘pro’ Ubiquiti WLAN AP has 4 and many WLAN APs have at least 2 nowadays: one for 2.4 GHz, one for 5 GHz). I’m not sure about downgrade attacks and the like, the point is that the device can offer both WPA2-PSK and WPA3-PSK, to offer a grace period of backwards compatibility, and then at some point poof we kill off WPA2-PSK, same like with e.g. TLS versions or old browsers.
What I think makes WiFi 6 interesting is the client using less power (IIRC due to beamforging?) and possibly the mesh (‘P2P’) feature. The former is nice on any mobile device with a battery (all of them, right?), the latter is nice to have less wired devices in your household. Think of it like you could place a NAS literally anywhere in your household, with it directly connecting to a client. Or two clients gaming with each other.
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The answer is no because Wifi 6 is better for phones apart from higher bandwidth.
Hi Maria_Allen Welcome to the forum.
That’s a short comment on a long topic so I don’t quite get what you are referring to where you say Wifi 6 is better for phones. Do you mean it is less demanding on the battery?
EDIT: The maximum (highest) bandwidth on Wifi 6 is the same as that on Wifi 5 which is 160Mhz, although it does add another 7 channels according to.
On top of that, this band brings with it an additional seven 160 MHz-wide channels (currently, there are about 4 with normal Wi-Fi) bringing a great deal of additional headroom to a network.
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