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> Wi-Fi Alliance is naming the not-yet-complete IEEE 802.11ax standard as Wi-Fi 6, with ac being 5, and n being 4. One can guess then a is supposed to 1, b as 2, and g as 3, but this isn't mentioned anywhere I can see.

Most 802.11b and 802.11g devices didn't support 802.11a (due to it requiring 5Ghz), so I'm guessing version 1 is 802.11 and 802.11a isn't part of the version numbers.

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I would put 802.11a as 3 together with 802.11g, since they have the same rates (and are basically the same tech in a different band, 802.11g feels like 802.11a ported to 2.4GHz plus some extra compatibility stuff).

It sounds like the Wi-Fi Alliance doesn't particularly care which one is 1, 2, and 3. They've only strongly defined 4 (n), 5 (ac), and 6 (ax). [1] It also sounds like they don't think enough devices are left in the wild of a, b, g, to worry about branding them.

The best description I've heard for 1-3 was to use roughly the consumer hardware adoption curve which was 1 (b), [briefly] 2 (a), 3 (g).

[1] https://www.wi-fi.org/discover-wi-fi

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