Wi-Fi 6 / Wi-Fi 7

In 2018 the Wi-Fi Alliance began naming standards by generation: Wi-Fi 4 (802.11n), Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac), Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) and Wi-Fi 7 (802.11be). Certified from 2019, Wi-Fi 6 is aimed less at single-user peak speed and more at raising total throughput in dense environments such as hotels, stadiums, campuses and malls. The variant that can also use the 6 GHz band is called Wi-Fi 6E.

Key Wi-Fi 6 technologies are as follows. OFDMA divides a channel into resource units (RUs) to serve several clients at once. MU-MIMO works in both uplink and downlink. Modulation goes up to 1024-QAM. BSS Coloring distinguishes neighbouring access points' traffic to cut unnecessary deferral. Target Wake Time (TWT) extends battery life for IoT devices. Wi-Fi 6 certification also mandates WPA3 support.

Wi-Fi 7 adds 320 MHz channels in the 6 GHz band, 4096-QAM (4K-QAM) modulation and Multi-Link Operation (MLO), which lets a device connect over several bands simultaneously. Preamble puncturing disables an interfered slice of a channel while still using the rest, which preserves throughput in crowded spectrum. The Wi-Fi Alliance launched Wi-Fi 7 certification in early 2024.

Theoretical speeds are rarely reached in practice. Client devices must support the same generation, the access point's wired uplink (2.5G or 10G) must not become the bottleneck, and the channel plan must be sound. In dense venues, more access points on 20/40 MHz channels usually outperform fewer APs on wide channels. Since 6 GHz rules vary by country, current BTK regulations should be checked for deployments in Türkiye.