As home networking has evolved over the last decade, nothing has brought Wi-Fi up to speed more than 802.11ac. With Wi-Fi 5 as they now call it, we saw new technologies like MU-MIMO, Beamforming, Mesh along with Wave 2 allow more users and more overall throughput on consumer platforms. With that said, 802.11ac is at its end of life, and while many vendors will continue to push new solutions to market, the focus has now come to getting the cost down, so everyone can upgrade.

802.11ac was really the driving technology behind opening up our homes for DIY security, smart home functionality and just allowing more devices to connect and communicate at once. With 802.11ax or Wi-Fi 6 this is the first generation to be designed around the current atmosphere of connectivity, so while we will have increased throughput as per usual, we will also see bi-directional MU-MIMO and 1024QAM at work along with OFDMA which will increase the efficiency of the Router or Aps when deployed in a dense environment.