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Ten years ago, the Wireless Gigabit Alliance made up of groups like Apple, Intel, AMD, Qualcomm, & and others got together to build a standard spec for wireless communication over the 60GHz frequency band to create "WiGig" because it offered gigabit speeds. Still, the official name was 802.11ad & never caught on. The people who created 802.11ad merged with the Wi-Fi Alliance, the organization responsible for developing every major Wi-Fi standard, including 802.11b, g, a, n, and ac so this 802.11ad may be the new standard for wireless in the future. So 802.11ad uses a maximum of 2.16 GHz bandwidth, but the 802.11ad standard is known for its 7 Gbps of speed, while the technology has its challenges, it could supplement existing wireless networks and high-speed video delivery. In 2019 the Wi-Fi Alliance created 802.11ay, the second coming of "WiGig".  Its biggest enhancement to the WiGig protocol is that it still uses the 60GHz frequency range, but should travel further and provide more bandwidth.  Now,  the history lessons of Wi-Fi streams and why they matter so much. When looking at specs for the new router in the interest of buying the fastest router, generally we look on the front of the packaging for AC1900 or AC2600. While this information is important, we can't forget the most important part of the router which is the engineers. Engineers, in the long run, can help casual buyers choose which router is right for them, and for the advanced buyer, it will help it can help also. As the buyer of the product, you look at some key features.  The 1st key feature is the frequency of the radio band that the signal travels on. In WiFi, there is the 2.4GHz band, which is what the first consumer WiFi networks used, and then, ten years later, we got a 5GHz band that was added, creating dual-band WiFi routers. The second band was to allow for greater _______ in which to allow WiFi signals to communicate.  The router determines the speed of the stream, multiplied by the number of streams the router has. Now the next question is what are streams?  The 802.11n or (WiFi 4) was the first protocol to use the streaming feature. The router’s WiFi speed was a function of how many streams it employs. First N routers had one (1) stream with a single band at 2.4GHz. therefore, it had a maximum speed of 150Mbps. Then came up to 4 streams per radio band,  and we also saw dual-band routers with 2.4GHz and 5GHz. So, if you had a 4-stream router, you could get up to 4 x 150Mbps = 600Mbps. Then there was AC routing or (Wi-Fi 5). So,  AC followed the same path as N, with up to 4 streams per band but unlike the N that had 150Mbps it doubled to 450Mbps but that was only for dual-band routers. One of the last things is What is a spatial stream? The spatial stream is defined as the output of the multiple-input & multiple-out encoder that is further processed through the precoder block. So multiple-input & multiple-out is an antenna wireless communications in which multiple antennas are used at both the source (transmitter) and the destination (receiver). The antennas at each end of the communications circuit are combined to minimize errors and optimize data speed. Back to Spatial Streams. By adding more streams, the more spatial streams a router has, the more data it can send and receive from devices, with multiple streams, overall reliability and speed improve due to increased diversity. So separate data signals can be sent to and from devices on different spatial streams, and the amount of information that can be sent over a network greatly increases. And so more spatial streams mean more available bandwidth and fewer traffic Jams for all the devices in the WiFi network. Finally, the future is here with 802.11ax or (WiFi 6). The next generation of Wi-Fi is here it will still do the same basic things connect you to all your Tech but faster. How fast is fast? WiFi 6 is about 9.6 Gbps which is up from 3.5 Gbps on Wi-Fi 5. Qualcomm’s latest flagship processor, the Snapdragon 855, includes support for Wi-Fi 6, and it’s destined for the next wave of top-of-the-line phones. ​