Hello dear forum.
After many years of having an old b/g router on my countryside house, and suffering poor reception in the ground floor, and now that most of our devices support WiFi6 (ax) as a bare minimum, except one iPad 9, I’ve decided to replace it with a brand new, midrange WiFi6 ASUS router. I’ve purchased both the RT-AX57, and the RT-AX58u V.2, at approximately the same price, and I’ll keep one of them (probably the AX58u V.2) then return the other one.
However, before investing in a WiFi6 ecosystem, I wanted to ask a few questions about the IEEE 802.11ax wireless protocol. Let’s get to it!
The plan is to use only the ax protocol for better efficiency, also under one same SSID and let the router manage the bands; however, as I said, there’s an iPad 9 (ac) which is usually the one that suffers the most. I know the IEEE 802.11ax protocol is backwards compatible, but due to the thick walls, the most used band will be the 2,4GHz one and… the benefits of WiFi 6 shine especially on that band. If I’m going to use WiFi 5 (ac) for that problematic iPad 9, then the switch to the WiFi 6 for a stronger and faster 2,4GHz WiFi has little sense. Yes, I know that going from a IEEE 802.11b/g protocol to just an IEEE 802.11n will bring me an improvement, but I decided to go for WiFi 6 (and not 6E because I don’t need the 6GHz band, you know, thick walls and stuff) to future-proof my investment.
1) My first question is: Being all my devices there with WiFi 6 or 6E capabilities (such as the M2 iPad Pro) as a bare minimum EXCEPT the not-so-old iPad 9 which is still WiFi 5 (ac), will it disturb or reduce the range/speed/efficiency of the WiFi 6 network? In other words, is it worth it to make another effort and replace this iPad 9 with an iPad 10 which does support the IEEE 802.11ax protocol?
2) Not sure how WPA3 encryption related to WiFi6 but my plan is again, to make all the network WPA3-only encrypted. If one single device, such as the not-so-old iPad 9, or a cheap WiFi cam, only supports up to WPA2 encryption, then all the network encryption is downgraded? I t ey peat that my plan is to have both 2,4GHz and 5GHz bands under the s as me SSID and let the ASUS router manage the best bands, so no, splitting bandss as with different encryption is not among my plans.
Thank you all in advance! Feel free to share your advice about any of the presented topics.
After many years of having an old b/g router on my countryside house, and suffering poor reception in the ground floor, and now that most of our devices support WiFi6 (ax) as a bare minimum, except one iPad 9, I’ve decided to replace it with a brand new, midrange WiFi6 ASUS router. I’ve purchased both the RT-AX57, and the RT-AX58u V.2, at approximately the same price, and I’ll keep one of them (probably the AX58u V.2) then return the other one.
However, before investing in a WiFi6 ecosystem, I wanted to ask a few questions about the IEEE 802.11ax wireless protocol. Let’s get to it!
The plan is to use only the ax protocol for better efficiency, also under one same SSID and let the router manage the bands; however, as I said, there’s an iPad 9 (ac) which is usually the one that suffers the most. I know the IEEE 802.11ax protocol is backwards compatible, but due to the thick walls, the most used band will be the 2,4GHz one and… the benefits of WiFi 6 shine especially on that band. If I’m going to use WiFi 5 (ac) for that problematic iPad 9, then the switch to the WiFi 6 for a stronger and faster 2,4GHz WiFi has little sense. Yes, I know that going from a IEEE 802.11b/g protocol to just an IEEE 802.11n will bring me an improvement, but I decided to go for WiFi 6 (and not 6E because I don’t need the 6GHz band, you know, thick walls and stuff) to future-proof my investment.
1) My first question is: Being all my devices there with WiFi 6 or 6E capabilities (such as the M2 iPad Pro) as a bare minimum EXCEPT the not-so-old iPad 9 which is still WiFi 5 (ac), will it disturb or reduce the range/speed/efficiency of the WiFi 6 network? In other words, is it worth it to make another effort and replace this iPad 9 with an iPad 10 which does support the IEEE 802.11ax protocol?
2) Not sure how WPA3 encryption related to WiFi6 but my plan is again, to make all the network WPA3-only encrypted. If one single device, such as the not-so-old iPad 9, or a cheap WiFi cam, only supports up to WPA2 encryption, then all the network encryption is downgraded? I t ey peat that my plan is to have both 2,4GHz and 5GHz bands under the s as me SSID and let the ASUS router manage the best bands, so no, splitting bandss as with different encryption is not among my plans.
Thank you all in advance! Feel free to share your advice about any of the presented topics.
