A few years back, 802.11ad (the WiGig 60GHz standard) became quite popular for a limited window of time, as companies like Netgear began talking about its potential to transmit data via WiFi at speeds far greater than what we currently (and still do) have.
Netgear, specifically, was quick to launch a few router solutions like the Nighthawk X10 to be one of the first to the market with something you can use at home. The X10 was able to deliver up to 7.2Gbps (800 via 2.4GHz +1733 via 5GHz + 4600 via 60GHz), and it was starting to sound like 60GHz was going to take off.
However, soon after, everything came to a stop. Few were discussing the 802.11ad standard. Instead, everyone was casting their attention to 802.11ax (which eventually became known as WiFi 6). 802.11ax operated within the 6GHz spectrum, and although it wasn’t as fast as 60GHz, it eventually became the next standard used by most companies.
So what happened? The two technologies pitted with each other were similar to the Beta vs VHS or HD vs Bluway debates. The only difference here is that 60GHz never really stood a chance. The reason for this is broadcast distance more than anything else. Sure, 60GHz could move a LOT of data quickly across your network. However, you begin to lose connection past a short distance away. It isn’t ideal for covering a good-size home.
Take a look at 2.4GHz vs 5GHz. The higher you go, the less of a distance you will get out of it. So 2.4GHz may not be as fast as 5GHz, but it can cover a much greater distance. So let’s say you are doing well and have a 3,000 sq ft home and dropped a router in the middle. In this scenario, 2.4GHz is going to cover your entire home as well as some of your backyard and front, where 5GHz will reach most of the home but will drop off as you get close to the door (if you make it that far). This is where extenders or mesh networks come into play.
So consider if that router was the X10 and you had 60GHz enabled. You would be lucky to cover about 30% of the home, with the best success/reliability being a room away from it at most. Sure, there are ways to make it a little more powerful, but it just isn’t efficient.
802.11ax solves this since it is within the 6GHz spectrum and has a much better reach than 60GHz. This also made for a prime ingredient for modern mesh solutions. Minimal units, while covering as much area as possible. Trying to do that with 60GHz would get expensive fast.
Due to the drop in popularity, this also meant that you really couldn’t find any devices that supported connecting to it. We know, we have an X10 here at the office. We use it for benchmarks all the time but have never made use of its 60GHz support.
So this is the reason 802.11ad/60GHz fell off the map when it comes to consumer network technology. It was a nice pitch, and even we got excited for a short period of time (as you can see from the X10 review), but it just wasn’t a good option for its time.
In the near future, they plan on moving forward to the next generation of 60GHz through 802.11ay, which is going to “quadruple” the bandwidth, add up to 8 streams of MIMO, and offer a transmission distance of 300–500 meters (theoretically speaking for now). It will likely not be considered for residential solutions as much as commercial (outdoor solutions), but the next step of its approval process was supposed to be this month (September 2020). Details are still vague, but it does show that the WiGig standard has a future (or so it might look).
4 Comments
It drives me insane that this tech never went anywhere. At least it has sfp+ but still, this sucks. This was so expensive when I bought it and now I feel like it was the shortest lived expensive something I bought in very long time.
To think this was a competing standard to WiFi that had a even bigger niche only to be snuffed out by by bigger router oems & the big bad cellphone carriers wanting access to the spectrum. yet somehow had quite alot of client devices shipped too bad those widi/miracast docks that support it cant be repurposed as access points.
It’s not just the distance but 60GHz hardly passes through anything–I don’t think it requires much more than a sheet of paper to block the signal. The technology is ideal for line of sight applications.
Wireless AR and VR will be an ideal application on the consumer end. Modern VR headsets have throughput requirements around 15 to 20 Gbps and compression introduces artifacts and latency that degrade the experience
You’re spot-on. The Vive headset is the one thing I know of that uses 60GHz to this day. It only really makes sense for ad-hoc connections.