WiFi Explained: Frequency Bands, Wireless Standards & Optimising Performance

WiFi has become an essential part of our daily lives, keeping us (digitally) hooked up to everything from work to entertainment and even our smart refrigerators at home. In fact, you’re probably reading this very article over a WiFi connection right now! But daily applications aside, how much do we really know about this powerful yet often overlooked technology?

Today, let’s dive into what exactly WiFi is, how it works, and how can you make sure you’re getting the best possible performance from your home setups. So, if frequency bands, wireless standards, security protocols, or performance optimisation have ever kept you up at night, you’re in the right place.

📍Quick Navigation

Interested in a particular topic? Click on the links below to hop right down!
 

🤔 How Broadband, Routers and Wi-Fi Work Together (Up next!)

• What is Broadband?
• What are Modems?
• What are Routers?
• What is Wi-Fi?

🪢 What are WiFi Frequency Bands?

• 2.4 GHz
• 5 GHz
• 6 GHz

📶 How WiFi has Evolved: From WiFi 4 to WiFi 7

• WiFi Frequency Bands & WiFi Standards
• WiFi 4
• WiFi 5
• WiFi 6/6E
• WiFi 7

⏱️ What affects WiFi Speed & Coverage?

• Network Congestion
• Router Capabilities
• Interference
• Broadband Plan
• How to Improve WiFi Speed & Coverage

🛡️ WiFi Security Protocols: WPA2 vs WPA3

• WiFi Protected Access 2 (WPA2)
• WiFi Protected Access 3 (WPA3)
• Tips to Improve Home WiFi Security

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

🤔 How Broadband, Modem, Routers & Wi-Fi Work Together

To understand how we stay connected in today’s world, we first need to understand the role of broadband, routers, and Wi-Fi and how these elements work together to ensure a seamless internet experience:
 

🌐 What is Broadband? 

Broadband is the internet service provided by your Internet Service Provider (ISP). Think of it like the highway that carries the internet to your door. Whether it’s fiber, DSL, or cable, broadband provides the speed and bandwidth needed for different online activities.

• Speed determines how fast you can load websites or stream videos
• Bandwidth is the amount of data that can flow at once.

The higher both are, the better your experience with everything from browsing the web to streaming your favourite shows.

📡 What are Modems? 

A Modem takes the broadband signal coming from your ISP and converts it into a digital signal that can be understood by your router.

🛜 What are Routers?

After receiving these digital signals, the router then distributes it throughout your home. It can do this through cables (Ethernet) or wirelessly (WiFi), the latter of which is where the term "WiFi routers" comes about.

📶 What is Wi-Fi?

WiFi, short for "Wireless Fidelity," is a technology that allows devices to connect to the internet without the need for physical cables. It enables the transmission of data using radio waves, making it possible for devices like smartphones, tablets, and laptops to stay connected anywhere within range of a router.

Putting It All Together

🪢 What are WiFi Frequency Bands? 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz & 6 GHz

Learn about the different highways that your network traffic moves on.

With the groundwork down, it’s time to learn how WiFi works, and the first thing we’ll need to tangle with are WiFi frequency bands. To put it simply, these are like the different highways your internet traffic travels on as they’re transmitted throughout your home. Some are wider and faster at the cost of reduced coverage, while others are slower but more reliable over long distances.

Currently, three main frequency bands are available for consumer use—specifically, 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz, and 6 GHz, but whether you can access them usually depends on the wireless capabilities of your router.
 

2.4 GHz Band

• Offers broader coverage and better penetration through walls due to its lower frequency.
  
  
• More prone to interference from household devices like microwaves and cordless phones because these devices also operate on this frequency.
  
  
• Best for: General browsing, smart home devices, and larger homes needing extended coverage where speed is not the top priority.
   

5 GHz Band

• Provides faster speeds because it uses wider channels and supports more data transmission at once.
  
  
• Less prone to interference since fewer household devices use this frequency, reducing congestion.
  
  
• Shorter range due to the higher frequency, making it less effective through walls.
  
  
• Best for: Streaming, gaming, and high-bandwidth activities where speed is crucial.
   

6 GHz Band

• The newest band, faster and with less congestion, as it is currently less commonly used.
  
  
• More bandwidth available, reducing interference even in crowded areas.
  
  
• Requires newer devices that support WiFi 6E or WiFi 7, making it less accessible for older technology.
  
  
• Best for: High-performance applications like VR, 8K streaming, and ultra-fast gaming where minimal latency is essential.

📶 How WiFi has Evolved: From WiFi 4 to WiFi 7

Let's review how key WiFi capabilities have changed over the years.

🔗 WiFi Frequency Bands & WiFi Standards: What’s the Link?

At this point, you might be wondering what terms like 'WiFi 6' or 'WiFi 7' mean. These are what we know as wireless standards and basically represent the different generations of WiFi technology. On the market, they’re typically associated with your router and indicate the available frequency bands as well as how efficiently they are used.

The authority overseeing the rollout, or "ratification" of these standards is the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and with each new generation of WiFi, we enjoy faster speed limits, better efficiency, and enhanced security protocols.

At the time of writing, WiFi 7 is the most recent standard, and we’ve certainly come a long way since the introduction of WiFi 4 in 2009. That's as far as we'll cover for this article, but the history of WiFi actually extends even further back to 1997, and we've linked you to the IEEE's official writeup at the end of this section if you'd like to check that out.

4️⃣ WiFi 4 (802.11n, 2009)

• Introduced MIMO (Multiple Input, Multiple Output), enabling multiple antennas to transmit data simultaneously.
  
  
• Supported both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz, offering data transfer speeds of up to 600 Mbps.
  
  
• Improved network efficiency, making it the first widely adopted high-speed WiFi standard.
   

5️⃣ WiFi 5 (802.11ac, 2014)

• Focused on the 5 GHz band, delivering higher speeds and reduced congestion.
  
  
• Introduced MU-MIMO (Multiuser Multiple Input, Multiple Output) technology, which allowed multiple devices to connect without slowing down the network.
  
  
• Offered data transfer speeds of up to 1 Gbps, making it a swift yet stable pick for both day-to-day usage and higher-intensity tasks at the time.
   

6️⃣ WiFi 6 (802.11ax, 2019)

• Brings increased efficiency with OFDMA (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access) technology, reducing latency for multiple simultaneously connected devices.
  
  
• Supports more devices while minimising performance drops.
  
  
• Introduced TWT (Target Wake Time) to improve the battery life of connected devices.
  
  
• Offers data transfer speeds of up to 9.6 Gbps, which greatly smoothens the flow of information in high-traffic environments.
   

6️⃣ WiFi 6E (802.11ax, 2021)

• A modification of WiFi 6 that expands coverage into the 6 GHz band, further reducing congestion and increasing bandwidth.
   

7️⃣ WiFi 7 (802.11be, 2024)

• Introduced multiple new wireless technologies, including 4K Quadrature Amplitude Modification (QAM), Multi-Link Operation (MLO), and Multi-RU Puncturing, enabling devices to connect across multiple bands for even greater speed and stability.
  
  
• Can accommodate peak speeds of over 30 Gbps, making it the WiFi standard with the highest ceiling to date.
   

Interested in learning more about wireless standards? Check out our dedicated guides below, or look up a more detailed history on the official IEEE website.

👉 WiFi 5 vs. WiFi 6 vs. WiFi 6E: What’s the Difference

👉 What is WiFi 7? All You Need to Know

👉 IEEE Standards Association: The Evolution of WiFi Technology and Standards 

⏱️ What Affects WiFi Speed & Coverage?

Find out what makes your home WiFi tick and how to optimise it.

Generally, the overall speed and coverage of your home WiFi are influenced by multiple factors. From the amount of network congestion to router capabilities and even your broadband plan, it’s crucial to understand what matters so that you can optimise your setup for maximum performance.
 

🛣️ Network Congestion

The more devices connected to a network, the more bandwidth is shared, which in turn slows down speeds. This is especially common in homes with multiple streaming and gaming devices.
 

⚡ Router Capabilities

Older routers may not support the latest WiFi standards. This limits the number of accessible frequency bands, hampering data transfer speeds and performance.
 

🚧 Interference

Although devices connected to the 2.4 GHz band are most likely to experience interference from other household electronics, those that can utilise the 5 GHz band will also affect each other’s connectivity if congestion occurs.
 

🌍 Broadband Plan

Ultimately, your internet speed is capped by the plan you’ve subscribed to, and no matter how advanced your router is, having a slow ISP connection will bottleneck performance. Fortunately, this concern can be nipped in the bud with any of our StarHub UltraSpeed plans.
 

🛠️ How to Improve WiFi Speed & Coverage

Here are some suggestions you can try out to improve the performance of your home WiFi setup.
 

For more quick fixes, hop on over to check out the following article:

👉 Why is My WiFi Slow? Tips to Boost Speed, Signal, & Fix Disconnections

🛡️ WiFi Security Protocols: WPA2 vs. WPA3

Learn more about the tech keeping our network traffic safe.

Having an ultra-swift WiFi connection is all well and good, but that means little if cybercriminals and other online threats can easily swoop in and steal your data. In this day and age, securing your WiFi network is nothing short of crucial, which is why we need to have at least a basic understanding of things like WPA2 and WPA3 – or, in other words, wireless security protocols.  

Functionally, these help to ensure that your data remains protected as it travels through wireless networks, and like wireless standards above, WPA2 and WPA3 represent different generations of it. We won’t be delving into the overly-technical aspects in this article, but here’s a rundown of what you need to know about them, followed by several quick tips to beef up network security at home.
 

WiFi Protected Access 2 (WPA2)

Introduced in 2004, WPA2 offers strong all-around data encryption and is still used quite extensively today. However, it is noticeably more vulnerable to brute-force hacking and digital exploits like KRACK (Key Reinstallation Attacks) compared to newer standards like WPA3.
 

WiFi Protected Access 3 (WPA3)

Introduced in 2018, WPA3 is designed to address many of the cybersecurity flaws previously identified in WPA2, making it much more secure. Specifically, it uses much stronger encryption methods than its predecessor, such as individualised data encryption, to better protect important information and make it more resistant to brute-force hacking.
 

Interested in delving deeper into wireless security protocols? We’ll have a dedicated article up soon, so stay tuned!
 

👤 Tips to Improve Home WiFi Security

1. Enable WPA3 encryption in your router settings if supported.
   
   
2. Change the default admin credentials to prevent unauthorised access.
   
   
3. Set up a guest network for visitors to keep your primary network secure.
   
   
4. Regularly update your router’s firmware to stay protected against new security threats.
    

Want to know more about modern cyber threats and how you can safeguard against them? Check out our article below:

👉 What is Cyber Security? Definition, Threats, Best Practices & Why It Matters
 

🌟 Find Broadband Peace of Mind with StarHub!

Over the past two decades, WiFi has evolved from a basic wireless capability to high-speed, multi-band networks that power our daily lives. Its sheer importance makes it crucial for us to understand topics like frequency bands, WiFi standards, and security protocols, not just because we want to optimise performance, but because they help safeguard our loved ones too.

By applying these insights, you’ll stand to enjoy faster, more reliable, and secure WiFi. So, if you’re ready to take your WiFi to the next level, feel free to peruse the other helpful guides we’ve appended throughout the article, or scoot over to check out our StarHub UltraSpeed broadband plans.

❓ Frequently Asked Questions