Hack the Route Start free Open app Wireless and network types
Wi-Fi standards
The 802.11 family: how fast a wireless link goes, on which band, and why the air is shared.
Wi-Fi is IEEE 802.11: b and g on 2.4 GHz, a on 5 GHz, n (Wi-Fi 4) on both, ac (Wi-Fi 5) on 5 GHz, ax (Wi-Fi 6/6E) adding 6 GHz. 2.4 GHz reaches further through walls but has only three channels that do not overlap; 5 and 6 GHz have many more and less noise, over a shorter range. Unlike a switch port, the air is shared: one station talks at a time on a channel, so the speed printed on the box is split between everyone nearby. To the rest of the network a Wi-Fi client is just another Ethernet card: the access point turns 802.11 frames into Ethernet frames.