The pandemic has really done a number on most of our office environments. For some, we went from being in a corporate enterprise with desks and coffee makers to being at home with a slightly different desk and perhaps a slightly better coffee maker. However, one thing that didn’t improve was our home network.

For the most part, the home network has been operating on a scale radically different from those of the average corporate environment. Taking away the discrepancies in Internet speed for a moment you would have a hard time arguing that most home wireless gear is as good or better than the equivalent enterprise solution. Most of us end up buying our equipment from the local big box store and are likely shopping as much on price as we are on features. As long as it supports our phones, gaming consoles, and the streaming box we picked up we’re happy. We don’t need QoS or rogue detection.

However, we now live in a world where the enterprise is our home. We live at work as much as we work where we live. Extended hours means we typically work past 5:00 pm or start earlier than 8:00 or 9:00. It means that we’re usually sending emails into the night or picking up that project to crack a hard problem when we can’t sleep. Why is that important? Well, one of the arguments for having separate enterprise and home networks for years was the usage cycle.

To your typical manager type in an organization, work is work and home is home and n’er the twain shall meet, unless they need you to work late. Need someone to jump on a Zoom call during dinner to solve an issue? Want someone to upload a video before bed? Those are reasonable requests. Mind if my home wireless network also supports the kids watching Netflix or playing Call of Duty? That’s a step too far!

The problem with enterprise networking gear is that it is focused on supporting the enterprise role. And having that gear available to serve a consumer role, even when our consumer office is also our enterprise office, make management types break out in hives.

Technology Marches In Place

Okay, so we know that no one wants to shell out money for good gear. I don’t want to pay for it out of my pocket. The company doesn’t want to pay for something that might accidentally be used to do something fun. So where does that leave the people that make enterprise wireless access points?

I’ll admit I’m a horrible reference to my friends when they ask me what kind of stuff to buy. I tend to get way too deep into things like coverage pattens and device types when I start asking what they want their network to look like. The answer they’re usually looking for is easy, cheap, and simple. I get way too involved in figuring out their needs as if they were an enterprise customer. So I know that most people don’t need band steering or MIMO support in the house. But I still ask the questions as if it were a warehouse or campus building.

Which is why I’m really starting to question how the planned rollout of technologies like Wi-Fi 6E is going to happen in the current environment. I’ll buy that Wi-Fi 6, also known as 802.11ax, is going to happen as soon as it’s supported by a mainstream consumer device or three. But elevating to the 6 GHz range is an entirely different solution looking for a problem. Right now, the costs of 6 GHz radios combined with the operating environment are going to slow adoption of Wi-Fi 6E drastically.

Home Is Where the Wi-Fi Connects

How hostile is the wireless environment in your house? Aside from the odd microwave, probably not too bad. Some of the smart utility services may be operating on a separate network for things like smart electric meters or whole-home DVR setups. Odds are much better that you’re probably in a nice clean radio island. You don’t have to worry about neighboring businesses monopolizing the air space. You don’t have to contend with an old scanner that has to operate on 802.11g speeds in an entirely separate network to prevent everything from slowing down drastically.

If your home is running just fine on a combination of 2.4 GHz for older devices or IoT setups and 5 GHz for modern devices like phones and laptops, what is the advantage of upgrading to 6 GHz? Let’s toss out the hardware argument right now. If you’re running on 802.11ac (Wi-Fi 5) Wave 2 hardware, you’re not upgrading any time soon. Your APs are new enough to not need a refresh. If you’re on something older, like Wi-Fi 5 Wave 1 or even 802.11n (Wi-Fi 4), you are going to look at upgrading soon to get some new features or better speeds now that everyone in your house is online and gobbling up bandwidth. Let’s say that you’ve even persuaded the boss to shell out some cash to help with your upgrade. Which AP will you pick?

Will you pick the current technology that has all the features you need in Wi-Fi 6? Or will you pay more for an AP with a feature set that you can’t even use yet? It’s a silly question that will probably answer itself. You pay for what you can use and you don’t try and break the boss’s bank. That means the likelihood of Wi-Fi 6E adoption is going to go down quickly if the new remote office has no need of the technology.

Does it mean that Wi-Fi 6E is dead in the water? Not really. What it does mean is that Wi-Fi 6E needs to find a compelling use case to drive adoption. This is a lesson that needs to be learned from other protocols like IPv6. If you can’t convince people to move to the new thing, they’re going to stay on the old thing as long as they can because it’s cheaper and more familiar. So you need to create a new device that is 6 GHz only. Or make 6 GHz super fast for things like media transfers. Or maybe even require it for certain content types. That’s how you’re going to drive adoption everywhere. And if you don’t you’re likely going to be relegated to the same junk pile as WiMAX and ATM LANE.

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Tom’s Take

Wi-Fi 6E is the great solution for a problem that is around the corner. It has lots of available bandwidth and spectrum and is relatively free from interference. It’s also free from the need to adopt it right away. As we’re trying to drive people toward Wi-Fi 6 11ax infrastructure, we’re not going to be able to make them jump to both at once without a killer app or corner case requirement. Wi-Fi 6E is always going to be more expensive because of hardware and R&D costs. And given the chance, people will always vote with their wallet provided their basic needs are met.