802.11ax USB or USB-C Adapter?

Wi-Fi provides a limited amount of bandwidth, even in Wi-Fi6 802.11ax. Although it is possible to support a lot of data movement, that is NOT what Wi-Fi is especially good at doing.

In an office environment, you should provide at least some Ethernet wiring in addition to Wi-Fi to reduce congestion. Consider wiring up your heaviest Users areas with Ethernet.

Macs have good Ethernet support built in, with Gigabit Ethernet speed capability, although MacBook Pro models (2012 with Retina display and later) require a ThunderBolt adapter for the wiring.

Bob Johnston1 wrote:

Our company is moving to a 802.11ax (WiFi 6) wireless network soon, but none of our MacBook Pros support AX, only AC.

I've searched and searched for a MacOS compatible USB or USB-C AX adapter, and am getting nowhere fast. The only USB AX adapter I found is made by D-LInk and it's available in July, but appears to be only Windows compatible.

Anyone know of an AX adapter for MacOS?

My hope is to move 15-20 MacBook Pros over to AX and then as funds allow, purchase some new M1 MacBook Pros in 2022.

Thank you...

AX is backwards compatible with AC, I see no issue here.

802.11ax Wi-Fi 6 wireless networking IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n/ac compatible

https://support.apple.com/guide/deployment-reference-macos/wi-fi-specifications-for-mac-computers-ior1faf9de44/web

M1 ship with 802.11ax hardware

https://support.apple.com/kb/SP824?locale=en_US

Apple-Silicon M1 Macs feature 802.11ax today.

As leroydouglas mentioned, it is backward-compatible with 802.11ac, "Wi-Fi-5". Speeds will be good, even without special dongles.

Your 802.11ax Access Points may need higher capacity wiring, such as 10GB Ethernet over copper, which may requires 'better than Category-5' cables such as category 6 or 6e. Category-5 cables longer than 100 feet may limit the throughput achievable between Access Points.

For growth beyond that, you may need to add some fiber optic trunks.