802.11ax – the one they call Wi-Fi 6
IEEE Std 802.11ax-2021 dropped as the most ambitious WLAN update since… well, probably ever. officially led by the 802.11ax Task Group – with Osama Aboul-Magd as Chair and a crew of serious protocol pros – this was all about **high efficiency**, not just high speed.
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- Written by: Enrico Aderhold
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802.11aq – the one that let you see before you joined
IEEE Std 802.11aq-2018, Amendment 5 to the 2016 revision, tackled a simple but important problem: how can a device know **what a Wi-Fi network offers before it joins**? no "Task Group aq" named in the sources, but this update gave Wi-Fi something it sorely needed – **preassociation service discovery**.
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- Written by: Enrico Aderhold
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802.11ak – the one that played nice with bridges
IEEE Std 802.11ak-2018, Amendment 4 to the 2016 revision, wasn’t flashy, but it filled a real gap: making **Wi-Fi behave better in bridged Ethernet networks**. no "Task Group ak" officially named, but this one focused on getting **802.11 to cooperate smoothly with 802.1Q** – the backbone of modern LAN bridging.
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- Written by: Enrico Aderhold
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802.11aj – the one made for China’s mmWave
IEEE Std 802.11aj-2018, Amendment 3 to the 2016 revision, was all about adapting Wi-Fi to fit **China’s specific millimeter-wave regulations**. no "Task Group aj" mentioned, but the result was a custom-tailored update to **802.11ad**, making it work cleanly in **China’s 60 GHz and 45 GHz bands**. this one didn’t reinvent the tech – it repackaged it for a regional rollout.
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- Written by: Enrico Aderhold
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802.11ah – the one they called HaLow
IEEE Std 802.11ah-2016, Amendment 2 to the 2016 revision, brought Wi-Fi into **uncharted territory**: the **sub-1 GHz spectrum**. no official "Task Group ah" mentioned in the sources, but this one gave us **Wi-Fi HaLow** – a low-power, long-range version of Wi-Fi built for the **Internet of Things (IoT)**.
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- Written by: Enrico Aderhold
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