Its not that we particularly enjoy reading a dry declaration on the FCC website. Just like you we prefer to be peacefully sleeping in our bed when the clock is ticking past 2 AM. Yes sir. Sleep is a wonderful thing.
But then just as the spirit becomes a bit sluggish, and just as the night starts to clear the stage for dawn, we remember our commitment to our readers, you, who have never failed to keep your promise of coming up with deep un-examined questions on the fundamentals wireless technology.
Questions that compel us to pore over pages of legal documents, hardware specifications and protocol definitions late into the night. We do this only to reciprocate the feeling of trust you have shown in us. Night and day we keep a close watch on wifi technologies to make sure we can answer all your queries and help you make the best possible decision.
Here we round up this week’s of discussion with members on quora that has us cross examine google’s new wifi router. Clear off few doubts on wifi calling and make a couple of recommendations on wireless headsets. Hope you find them useful. As always if you’ve got any questions of your own don’t hesitate to reach us using the contact details given below. Enjoy your Sunday.
What are the disadvantages of replacing your at-home WiFi with 4G hotspots entirely?
Well since you’re specifically asking for a disadvantage it is lack of redundancy. With the wifi internet access point you’ll probably be using a fixed line. While in case of 4g hotspots you will have to depend entirely on wireless connections.
Its good to have different providers for backup in case something does go wrong. It probably won’t but what if it does? If for some reason your mobile connection is not working you’ll at-least have a fixed line broadband to fall back on to.
Secondly. When you use a wifi you’ll purchase a wireless router. If you choose a router well you can do way more than just access the internet. You can use it as a home media server. A backup storage for your photos/important documents. As a chat server for offline chatting. Wireless lan parties. You can play counterstike with your friends! Or stream videos to your phone offline.
Possibilities are endless. But to do that you’ll need to know how to flash it and how to administer a networked machine. In case you don’t you can always learn!
In short a router gives you way more options beyond simple connectivity. A 4g connection while it may have good speed is only limited to internet access.
How does wifi calling work, technically speaking?
Wifi calling is technically known as voice over wlan (vowlan or vo-wifi).
It is important to understand that wifi is no different from wired lan. Only it has no wires. In terms of OSI model a wifi network is still a physical layer.
Therefore vowlan is simply voice over IP. You can use any of the VOIP protocols to communicate over vowlan.
Even though the range of wifi is small it is very useful in internal communication and setting up networks in emergency situations. Within a building. In a hospital, school ,college , airports. Any device that is connected to the same network can be addressed.
Wifi is a cheap way to build your own local network. With vowlan you can use voice to communicate with connected devices. There is no special technology involved because wifi is still treated as a PHYSICAL network by the devices running applications. To them it’s no different than a LAN.
Does Google WiFi support 5GHz?
In one word yes.
Google wifi is a dual band router that supports both 2.4ghz and 5ghz frequencies. Google wifi is based [1] on qualcomm’s IPQ4019 System On Chip [2]
IPQ4019 chip is a part of qualcomm’s Dakota family of self organizing network chips (SON) that enable the routers to manage their own wifi configuration. Among its many features [3] is the ability to select the best wifi channel and band for the connected device automatically [3] and it is this feature that is used in the google wifi product that automatically “places you on on the least congested channel.”
Other features include MU-MIMO [4] and Beamforming.
With that out of the way how much max speed can the device deliver?
Well qualcomm claims that it’s chip has a Peak speed of 1.733 Gbps so google wifi is essentially a gigabit wireless router.
In theory this might be possible because the chip uses a max bandwidth of 80 MHZ and it has 2 transmission and 2 receiving channels (See MIMO [4] )
To verify we can check mcs index table [5] and calculate the max possible speed and compare it with the advertised speed.
Lets see [6] …. 866.7 *2 which comes out to be 1733.4 mbps or 1.733 gbps. So the theoretical speed indeed checks out.
In reality however you may not hit that speed because you client devices (laptop and mobile phones) may not have MIMO support. Even then a speed of 866 mbps is fast.
So yes google wifi supports 5ghz and is gigabit fast. Thanks to qualcomm!
[1] https://wikidevi.com/wiki/Google...
[2] https://www.qualcomm.com/product...
[3] https://www.qualcomm.com/solutio...
[4] MIMO is a big topic in itself I’ve tried to give a beginner level overview here https://qr.ae/TWN5Pd
[6] 866.7 the max possible theoretical speed with a modulation [7] of 256 QAM, a 5/6 coding rateon a single antenna with 80 MHZ bandwidth. Multiplied by 2 because we have 2 antennas.
[7] Modulation Reference: IPQ40x8 and IPQ40x9 from QUALCOMM | CODICO.com
What are the cheapest yet good quality wireless headphones I can get in India? And how much?
Thank you for A2A. When choosing be sure to select on these parameters
- The playback time
- The charging time
- Bluetooth version supported (4 is the most widely supported while 5 is the latest version)
- The max distance at which the device works without a hitch.
boAt seems to be the popular mid range wireless headphones provider in India at the moment. I’m not sure what your budget is Rockerz looks nice and it seems to be on discount
https://www.flipkart.com/boat-ro...
The other option is leaf. Their base wireless bluetooth headphone at RS 999
https://www.leafstudios.in/produ...
You may also want to check out a few iBall headphones.
Other brands like Motorolla and JBL manufacture wireless headphones as well but they are a bit costlier. Take your pick.
Is WiFi 6 available for OnePlus 7 pro?
Thank you for A2A. One plus 7 pro is built on top of Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 chipset [1]. So lets start with the good news. Here’s the WLAN specs of the chipset:-
Wi-Fi Standards: 802.11ad, 802.11ay, 802.11ax-ready, 802.11ac Wave 2, 802.11a/b/g, 802.11n
Wi-Fi Spectral Bands: 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz, 60 GHz
Peak speed: 10 Gbps
Qualcomm Wi-Fi 6-ready technology features: Dual-band simultaneous (DBS), 8x8 sounding, WPA3 security support, Target Wakeup Time
Qualcomm 60 GHz Wi-Fi technology features: Wire-equivalent latency, Always-on Wi-Fi sensing
As we can see the chip is “ax- ready”. But that is no reason to jump in joy because the actual support has to be configured by the vendor. One plus 7 uses wifi 6 compatible chip but it does not itself support it. Here are the WLAN specs of the phone[2]:-
- Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac. Multiple protocol support so that even if your router uses an older wifi protocol your phone will be able to access it. WIFI 802.11 ac is the current, most popular deployment in devices. It is also known as WIFI 5. Unfortunately as we can see there is no support for 802.11ax that means wifi 6 is not supported. But even on wifi 5 it has a 2x2 MIMO and a theoretical max speed 1.733 gbps. Not bad!
- Dual-band. Dual band usually means that your wifi base station can work on multiple frequencies. So when your phone is in a hotspot mode it can transmit signals on both 5ghz and 2.4ghz band. While it is is client mode it can access signals on 2.4 ghz or 5ghz band. Please note that this is a hardware property. The actual support for switching between the bands has to be provided by the OS of the system.
- WiFi Direct . Think of it as Bluetooth equivalent of wifi. Both the devices need to be wifi direct compatible in order for this to work. The functionality is usually built into the phone and you don’t need to download any external application,
- Hotspot capabilities.
General thoughts on why wifi 5 is good enough for now and why you might not need wifi 6
FIrst of all it should be noted that 802.11 ac is capable of gigabit speeds. Even a single channel transmission on 160 MGHZ can reach 866.7 mbps. With MU-MIMO you can multiply this many times. The maximum being 6933.3 with 8 streams [3]. So wifi 5 is already pretty fast. Considering that to stream HD movies you merely need a speed of 25 mbps even a single stream wifi 5 radio will be more then enough for a normal consumer.
Whenever a new version of wireless protocol comes up it requires changes in both base station as well as client hardware. These changes take a long time to propagate in the design and manufacturing of devices.
Wifi 6 or 802.11ax was announced last year. It is expected to gain deployment support in devices by the end of 2019. However I believe that it would be a few more years before it becomes more common.
Even if you buy a WIFI 6 device it will not be of much use today because you have neither many clients (in case you use your mobile as a wifi 6 hotspot) nor many compatible base stations [4] (in case you want to connect your phone to a router) that can work with these protocols. Further as you use wifi for your internet access consider how much speed your ISP provides. Its more likely that you’ll exhaust your ISP bandwith than your WI-FI bandwidth.
To truly enjoy the wifi 6 experience you need to wait for the ecosystem to develop. In the mean time wifi 6 is good enough.
[1] https://www.qualcomm.com/product...
[2] Form the official website https://www.oneplus.in/7pro#/specs
[3] MCS index look for the bottom right column http://mcsindex.com/
[4] The few that are available are mighty expensive.
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