Linksys launches world’s first Wifi 6E mesh router
12 January 2021
Breaking at CES: Linksys launches world’s first Wi-Fi 6E mesh router | Wi-Fi NOW Global
Who will be the first company to launch a Wifi 6E mesh router? Unsurprisingly we were fairly certain it would happen at CES 2021 and sure enough, Linksys — the smart home division of Belkin — today jumped ahead of the pack by launching the tri-band AXE8400 with Wifi 6E. The unit is powered by Qualcomm’s Networking Pro chipset series released in May of last year.
Yes, it was bound to happen at CES 2021: The debut of the world’s first Wifi 6E-capable (6GHz) mesh router. And although other new Wifi 6E routers could well launch later this week, it looks like Linksys really did get there first with the AXE8400 tri-band mesh system. The AXE8400 is powered by Qualcomm’s Networking Pro 1210 platform released in May of last year.
8400Mbps of speed including 4800Mbps (four streams) at 6GHz
The AXE8400 gets its by adding an ‘E’ from ‘Wifi 6E’ to its Wifi 6 version (called AX6000) and the rest from its tri-band speeds of 1200Mbps (2.4GHz) plus 2400Mbps (5GHz) plus 4800Mbps (6 GHz), which equals a whopping 8400Mbps of speed. Linksys says the AXE8400 is ‘the ideal solution for bandwidth-heavy homes’ and for supporting multiple concurrent home activities, including work-from-home video conferencing, VR gaming, remote learning, and more. The spec sheet as expected lists both major Wifi 6 and Wifi 6E features: 4×4 MU-MIMO and OFDMA.
One node covers 3000 square feet (about 280 square meters) and supports 64 concurrent devices, Linksys says. Another useful feature is that the AXE8400 is compatible with previous Linksys mesh units, such as the AX6000. The unit is certified by both the FCC and the Wifi Alliance and supports WPA3 encryption and security, Linksys says. The AXE8400 will be available in the US starting this spring at the fairly substantial retail price of US$849.99 for a two-pack.
Wifi 6E for backhaul means immediate performance gains for devices
One of the big benefits of Wifi 6E at the moment — before any significant number of 6GHz client devices are available on the market — is that the 6GHz band can be used to create a super fast mesh backhaul network. This in turn will deliver a serious boost to Wifi performance because the entire 5GHz band is then free of any backhauling duties and thus fully available to serve client devices only.
Qualcomm is of course very much aware of this major initial benefit of Wifi 6E and had this strongly in mind when designing the Network Pro series. The spec sheet says Linksys AXE8400 supports ‘tri-band dynamic backhaul’, which we take to mean that the unit will configure itself to make best use of the available bands. This is turn should mean that 6GHz is used for backhaul to the extent that other mesh units support it and exclusively so until client devices arrive and begin to request use of the band for fronthaul.
And there truly is a gigantic amount of 6GHz spectrum available for backhaul according to US regulations: All of seven non-overlapping 160MHz channels are available, each capable of delivering 4.8Gbps of data rate for four-stream 6GHz devices, such as the AXE8400.
Upgraded Linksys Aware motion detection
Last but not least the AXE8400 includes support for an upgraded version of Linksys’ motion sensing technology called ‘Linksys Aware‘, which was introduced in late 2019. The upgrade enables the use of third-party Wi-Fi devices to expand the motion sensing coverage area. There are also substantial updates to the sensing functionality available via the Linksys App. Motion sensing is offered separately as a service at a price of US$2.99 a month.
Linksys has been named a CES Innovation Award 2021 Honoree for the AX8400 product.
