Wi-Fi has become an integral part of our daily lives, enabling us to connect to the internet wirelessly. Over the years, Wi-Fi technology has evolved significantly, with each new standard bringing improvements in speed, range, and efficiency. This article provides an overview of the various Wi-Fi standards and their corresponding speeds.

It is important that you upgrade your WIFI network devices regularly as our mobile devices increase alongside the increase of cloud based services we utilise. Many clients are surprised by how much congestion is on their Wi-Fi networks slowing down their entire businesses or homes. Often NBN services are falsely blamed for intermittent television streaming or Netflix freezes when typically it is old slow WIFI networks that are the network bottle necks. 

Contact PIP today to discuss your home of office WIFI requirements. 

What is 802.11 (WIFI) ?

In 1997, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) created the first WLAN standard, known as 802.11 which at the time supported a maximum network bandwidth speed of 2Mbps. Built on the unlicensed 2.4GHZ radio spectrum, this technology,  too slow for consumer applications  provided an excellent medium for wireless industrial commands. In 1999 Apple took up the technology to for its AirPort wireless base station and iBook. Since then an entire family if standards has evolved providing us with faster data transmission rates, longer WIFI range, reliability and secure connections. 

WIFI Standards

802.11: The original 2.4GHz Wi-Fi Standard, developed in 1997 and the name sake for the evolution of future WIFI Protocols.

802.11b or Wi-Fi 1: This was the first commercially available implementation of the WIFI protocol. It was introduced to the market in 1999 thanks to Apple. 

802.11a or Wi-Fi 2: Not long after 802.11b this standard was introduced. This Wi-Fi specification featured Multicarrier Modulation Scheme (OFDM) to support higher data rates. It supported 5GHz operation and provided 20MHz of bandwidth.

802.11g or Wi-Fi 3: Introduced in 2003, this allowed faster transmission rates of up to 54Mbits/s in the 2.4 GHz frequency. This appealed to users as the 2.4Ghz devices where less expensive than the 5GHz devices. 

802.11n or Wi-Fi 4: Released in 2009 and supporting both the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz frequency bands. This standard provided multiple channels in each frequency band and up to 600 Mbit/s data transfer rate. This was the first of the WIFI standards that provided sufficient bandwidth to consider utilising for permanent use in offices and industry. 

802.11ac or Wi-Fi 5: Operating on the 5 GHz frequency band, Wi-Fi 5 was the first standard to enable multiple input multiple output (MIMO) technology, allowing for faster data transmission and better overall coverage. Wi-Fi 5 can theoretically transmit data at speeds of up to 3.5 Gbps. This standard also allowed multiple antennas could be used on both sending and receiving devices to reduce errors, increase range and boost speed.

802.11ax Wi-Fi 6: Branded as Wi-Fi 6, the 802.11ax standard went live in 2019. Wi-Fi 6 maxes out at 10 Gbps, uses less power, is more reliable in congested environments, and supports better security. Wi-Fi 6 operates in both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz spectrums and, through more efficient spectrum utilization, promises four times the throughput of Wi-Fi 5. Providing efficient and reliable WIFI coverage for areas of dense WFI traffic, such as shops, sporting events, corporate offices, public transportation and now more than ever, our homes where our routers must communicate with a growing number of digital devices simultaneously

802.11be Wi-Fi 7: This is the latest standard which mat well be released as you read this (2024). This standard promises 4 x the data rate at approximately 40Gbits/s and twice the bandwidth at 320Mhz. This together with more efficient and reliable use of available and contiguous spectrum through multi-band/multi-channel aggregation combined with numerous enhancements to MIMO protocols, promises to provide less latency, faster speeds and less congestion to the growing number of devices we attach to these systems. 

IEEE 802.11 Wi-Fi Protocol and Standards Summary Table

Standard	Released	Frequency	Channel Width	MIMO	Speed	Indoor Range	Outside Distance
802.11	1997	2.4 GHz	20 MHz		2 Mbps	20m	100m
802.11b Wi-Fi 1	1999	2.4 GHz	20 MHz		11 Mbps	35m	120m
802.11a Wi-Fi 2	1999	5 GHz	20 MHz		54 Mbps	35m	120m
802.11g Wi-Fi 3	2003	2.4 GHz	20 MHz		54 Mbps	38m	140m
802.11n Wi-Fi 4	2009	2.4, 5 GHz	20, 40MHz	Single User (SU-MIMO)	600 Mbps	70m	250m
802.11ac Wi-Fi 5	2013	2.4, 5 GHz	20, 40, 80, 160MHz	Multi User (MU-MIMO)	1 Gbps	35m	120m
802.11ax Wi-Fi 6	2019	2.4, 5 GHz	20, 40, 80, 160MHz	Multi User (MU-MIMO)	2.4 Gbps	30m	120m