The 6 GHz Wi-Fi spectrum is complicated, and introduces the new concept of Lower Power Indoor (LPI) and Standard Power (SP) transmit modes for access points (APs). These are two different maximum power transmit modes for APs. SP is required outdoors, and can also be used indoors as well. SP mode requires the use of Automated Frequency Coordination (AFC). AFC’s go live date was spring 2024. The Ruckus R770 is one of the first APs to gain AFC (and thus SP) certification.Â
Why is this important? Not all 6 GHz clients are certified for both LPI and SP access points. All clients can connect to LPI APs, but only clients which receive the 6CD FCC certification can connect to both LPI and SP APs. These are called “dual mode” clients. Now the million dollar question is, what clients are dual mode certified? All manufactures went for bust and did 6CD right? WRONG!Â
Finding Dual Mode Certified Clients
Finding out if a 6 GHz device supports SP is not easy. I have yet to see a manufacturer put it on their data sheet. However, you can use the FCC’s site to easily dump a full list of all 6CD certified devices. Here’s the process:
- Go to the FCC’s Generic Search form.
- In the lower half of the form change the Equipment Class to 6CD-15E.
- At the bottom of the form pick your results format. I used Excel. Â
- Click Start Search and wait a little for the download to start.Â
5. Open the Excel spreadsheet and search the data as needed. You can easily sort on any column you want, such as vendor. After you find the FCC ID that’s of interest, I used Google to ‘decode’ FCC ID into the corresponding product name and model.Â
Dual Mode Apple Clients
As of the publication date of this post, the following list are all of the Apple devices that support 6 GHz dual mode (6CD FCC certification):Â
11″ iPad Pro (2022)
12.9″ iPad Pro (2022)
Mac Pro M2 (2023)
Mac Studio M2 (2023)
iPhone 15 Pro Max (2023)
iPhone 15 Pro (2023)
iMac M3 (2023)
MacBook Pro 16″ M3 (2023)
MacBook Pro 14″ M3 Pro/Max (2023)
MacBook Pro 14″ M3 (2023)
As you can see there are some notable missing products, like the whole MacBook Air lineup. The M3 MacBook Air supports 6 GHz, but isn’t certified as dual mode. In addition, non-pro iPads are also missing, as is the base model iPhone 15. It could be possible that firmware updates might add dual client mode, but I would not count on it. I would hope now that AFC is real and SP certified APs are coming on the market that manufacturers like Apple will do 6CD certifications for all 6 GHz capable devices.
What if my device is NOT 6CD Certified?
If you want to use an SSID that is dedicated to 6 GHz and the AP is in SP mode, then your client device won’t even see the SSID. So in short, you are out of luck! If, however, the SSID is combined with another band, like 5 GHz, then your client device should automatically see the SSID (like always) and can connect using the non-6 GHz band. This is one reason why in my Ruckus Unleashed and Ruckus One Best practices guide that I recommend one SSID that combines both the 5 GHz and 6 GHz bands.Â
What if my device IS 6CD Certified?
You would think that if a device is 6CD certified, and thus can use SP mode, that the client would increase its transmit power within FCC limits. This may not always be the case. Since AFC only recently went live, and the number of AFC certified APs is tiny, it’s not entirely surprising there may be firmware or OS kinks to work out in the ecosystem. So this is a nice way of saying, even if you enable SP mode on your AP, client devices may not increase their transmit power accordingly.Â
Summary
The 6 GHz Wi-Fi spectrum is complicated, and introduces the new concept of Lower Power Indoor (LPI) and Standard Power (SP) modes. SP mode is required outdoors, and can also be used indoors as well. Finding out which mode a device is certified for is not straight forward. However, you can dump the FCC database contents for 6CD clients to find out what has been certified. Only dual mode clients can connect to SP APs, so it’s worthwhile knowing the capabilities of your clients.Â
