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Five Facts About 6 GHz Wi-Fi

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Two pieces of important news hit the wire recently: the 6 GHz band was approved for Wi-Fi, and alcohol sales have skyrocketed .  Combine the two, and what do we get? A five-pack of Coors Light Cold Hard Facts about Wi-Fi in the 6 GHz frequency band. Editor's note: This is a relatively long post, but 6 GHz Wi-Fi is an undoubtably robust topic. If you have questions after reading this blog, comment below or contact Ben via email or Twitter using the information below, and Sniff Wi-Fi will address those answers in a future post. We may be knee-deep in a global pandemic, but that doesn't mean your humble blogger can't brew up a post on the topic of 6 GHz Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi professionals will soon have unlicensed frequency available in the 6 GHz band. Here, then, are five facts to know about Wi-Fi in the soon-to-be-available 6 GHz frequency band. Fact #1: The 6 GHz band adds 1,200 MHz of spectrum for Wi-Fi The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is the federal
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Go To Sleep, Go To Sleep, Go To Sleep Little iPhone

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In some circles, Apple Wi-Fi devices are knows to have problems with lost connections.  iPhones and iPads will unexpectedly miss incoming calls, have delays in receiving push notifications and even be forced to reauthenticate. There is a solution to Apple devices' connection problems, and as with most "device problems", the fix resides on the infrastructure.  The DTIM setting needs to be increased.  ( Apple recommends a setting of 3 or higher .)  Here's why: Some Apple Wi-Fi connection problems stem from Apple iOS devices' use of 802.11 power management.  To understand what Apple devices are doing with power management, one must first understand how 802.11 power management works. Let's start with unicast data.  The 802.11 standard allows devices' Wi-Fi radios to enter the Doze state in order to conserve battery life.  Wi-Fi radios in the Doze state are unable to receive data from the AP, so APs buffer all unicast data that has a destination MAC addr
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At Least They Didn't Blame the Wi-Fi

Prime Video's stream of the 49ers-Cardinals NFL game received plenty of bad reviews on social media. While most of the negativity focused on stream quality, Wi-Fi largely escaped blame. There is one application type that confounds networks above all others, and it is live video. Pick your poison: voice, location tracking, on-demand video, cloud-hosted apps... None of them cause problems as consistently or predictably as the livestream. The issue is a simple one: broadcast vs. two-way. Packetized data networks are a two-way communication medium. Receiver must acknowledge sender. Live video has, since its inception decades ago, been a broadcast technology. Your television doesn't send anything to the local broadcast tower. Same with cable boxes. Same with satellite dishes. Pushing against this immutable scientific fact is commerce. Sports leagues see the billions of dollars being spent by streaming services, and they want some. Streaming services see the millions of eyeballs tun
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