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> In an ultra packed City like HK, I could detect at least a dozen AP at any given time.

On a rooftop in Philadelphia, just standing in one spot and turning 360 degrees in a circle with my laptop, I was able to detect over 50 Wifi APs... (Good 'ol Netstumbler.)

This was in 2003.

A dozen in a city like HK seems quite low.

> A dozen in a city like HK seems quite low.

...which is the actual effect in a high interference scenario. The more interference you have, the less interpretable data you get.

Also you don't know how many people turned off their WiFi and just ran Ethernet cables everywhere after struggling to get usable connection speeds.

I'm also in HK. Keep in mind that there are solid walls and floorings between my home and other apartments and buildings.

I can count 67 APs right now.

Well I didn't double count all the 2.4/5Ghz Variant. But even so, 67 is.... insane.

And Oh Wow. I am checking out T1 now. :)

Japan in 2007 on a fairly high floor the list went off the end of my mac's screen. And my bluetooth mouse did not function.

2007.

Your comment resonates with me. From our rural house in Ontario there are no other APs visible. None, but our own. I've even started disabling encryption just because I can. But we struggle to get even basic internet connectivity. Interesting that on both ends of the spectrum there are issues.

Starlink is not available in your area?

starlink only just went publicly available - its going to take a while to filter out to people who it could benefit.

Just got a Starlink invitation. But it has very expensive monthly rates, that are more than twice the rate of standard isp's. In rural areas. $136 in Canada. Plus a lot of hardware. (625$) It is very cool, though. Haven't decided. At this time - Only worth it as a tech geek out, experiment. (Unless it gets better and cheaper.)

I see 24 APs other than my own just sitting here on my couch in a locale less dense than HK. So yes, agreed

>> It is not clear whether 6Ghz support is mandated to be certified as WiFi 6E.

It is.

>> Could we get new spectrum support via Firmware update?

Yes. In US/FCC, the procedure is called "Class II permissive change".

Also, US, Korea, EU/UK, Chile, Brazil have opened up 6 GHz band. More countries will follow in coming years.

I am confused. I thought "permissive change" referred to the ability of a device maker to avoid having to do a full fcc recertification when making changes to their device (hardware or firmware) that did not affect rf emissions

My mistake here actually. They still need to go through FCC testing but they can enable already deployed devices through SW/FW updates.

Correct me if I am wrong it was a long time since I checked the progress.

AFAIK, EU/UK, Korea only has plans to discuss and move forward on selected spectrum sometime in mid 2021. No exact date has been announced unlike the US. Which is a done deal. i.e It is not likely any part of the world other than US to get 6Ghz in 2021.

> Class II Permissive Change

Is that new? I remember Smartphone cant add new frequency spectrum support without going through FCC recertification again . Although that was many years ago.

Korea has rules in place since October, 2020. Certification has started. Samsung Galaxy S21 supports Wi-Fi 6E in Korea now [1]

UK/EU is in final stages of regulation. Final approval for EU countries is in March 2021; and after April, countries will implement it in their rules.

Brazil has approved their rules today! Chile and some other countries have rules in place as well.

[1] https://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/samsung-galaxy-s21-u...

Wifi 6 feels like the transition from 802.11b to 11g all over again i.e. having a single b-only device will cause your entire network to fall back to 11Mbps for compatibility. At least back then those devices were either quickly replaced or at least had upgradable wifi cards, and we many more monolithic phones and IoT devices to deal with.

802.11b to 802.11g was not much of a transition, just higher speeds without any real protocol improvements. Back then when I was using long distance (~4 km rural wireless hops -- was too far for DSL) 802.11g links, they were atrociously unreliable. It wasn't until 802.11n gear finally came out is when wireless finally began to work reasonably well for me. MIMO meant that reflections and other oddities were better compensated for. Moore's law strikes again - more transistors, more math, better performance!

> 1. WiFi 6 only improves / reduce congestions when all devices on the network are WiFi 6 only. As soon as you have older WiFi devices, the difference becomes negligible to non-existence.

I assume that can be worked around by creating a dedicated network for WiFi 6 devices?

Yeah, this is a super interesting question. Does anyone know if this is the case?

Figure one thing about the 6ghz band is it'll be new and less congested.. at least for at least a little while. Right now i use one of those DFS "radar ones" which seem unused by most nearby APs and i see a lot - i assume it's manually opt in/more expensive equipment.

I'm on the 24th floor in downtown vancouver and see 45 APs and none are using the DFH bands.

Uk has already approved 6ghz