For those of us on older desktops with plenty of PCIe slots to go around, and a brand new 802.11ax router in the house to drive a swanky new gigabit fiber Internet connection, TP-Link released the Archer TX3000E, a PCI-Express add-on card that gives your desktop 802.11ax Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.0 connectivity. The product consists of three components, the add-on card, an antenna assembly, and cabling. The add-on card features PCI-Express 2.0 x1 (5 Gbps per direction) host interface, and uses an Intel AX200 WLAN controller that's passively cooled by a heatsink.

The Archer TX3000E supports dual-band 802.11ax, with up to 2402 Mbps on the 5 GHz band, and up to 574 Mbps in the 2.4 GHz band, along with support for WPA3. Besides PCIe, a 4-pin USB 2.0 cable connects to one of your motherboard's vacant USB 2.0 headers, for the Bluetooth 5.0 component to work. The desktop antenna assembly features two multi-directional antennae, and a magnetized base. Available now, the Archer TX3000E is priced at 79.90€.

For those wanting 802.11ax Wi-Fi 6 on their desktops without an M.2 E-key slot on their motherboards, ASUS came up with the PCE-AX3000, a low-profile capable (half-height) NIC that provides up to 3000 Mbps (2.4 Gbps over 5 GHz and 600 Mbps over 2.4 GHz) wireless connectivity, and the added convenience of Bluetooth 5.0 for short-range communications. A set of MU-MIMO antennae come included. Besides MU-MIMO, the card supports OFDMA for better collision-prevention with other devices in the same channel, and WPA3 security protocol. The NIC is essentially a PCI-Express 3.0 x1 add-on card with an M.2 E-key slot that holds an Intel AX200 "Cyclone Peak" WLAN card. We expect the AX3000 to be priced well under $50 given that the "Cyclone Peak" card at the heart of it costs just $10-17 in volume pricing.

The Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6 certification program from Wi-Fi Alliance is now available and delivers the best user experience with devices based on IEEE 802.11ax. The certification program brings new features and capabilities that enable substantially greater overall Wi-Fi network performance in challenging environments with many connected devices such as stadiums, airports, and industrial parks. With adoption of the latest Wi-Fi generation increasing, product vendors and service providers can trust Wi-Fi CERTIFIED will distinguish Wi-Fi 6 products and networks that meet the highest standards for security and interoperability. Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6 provides significant capacity, performance, and latency improvements to the entire Wi-Fi ecosystem, while ensuring products across vendors to work well together to deliver greater innovation and opportunity.

Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6 supports a more diverse set of devices and applications, from those requiring peak performance in demanding enterprise environments to those requiring low power and low latency in smart homes or industrial IoT scenarios. Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6 delivers nearly four times the capacity of Wi-Fi 5, and is an evolutionary advancement for Wi-Fi's ability to deliver high-performance infrastructure and optimized connectivity to all devices on a network simultaneously - bringing noticeable improvements in densely connected Wi-Fi environments. Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6 delivers critical connectivity that supports cellular networks, and leverages high speeds, low latency, power efficiency, greater capacity, and enhanced coverage to deliver many advanced 5G services.

Today, Intel introduced eight additional 10th Gen Intel Core processors for modern laptop computing. The new mobile PC processors (formerly code-named "Comet Lake") are tailor-made to deliver increased productivity and performance scaling for demanding, multi-threaded workloads while still enabling thin-and-light laptop and 2 in 1 designs with uncompromising battery life. These processors are performance powerhouses that bring double digit performance gains compared with the previous generation. The lineup also includes Intel's first 6-core processor in the U-series, faster CPU frequencies, faster memory interfaces and the industry redefining connectivity with Intel Wi-Fi 6 (Gig+) and broader scaling of Thunderbolt 3. More than 90 additional designs based on the 10th Gen Intel Core processor family will hit the shelves for the holiday season.

"Our 10th Gen Intel Core mobile processors provide customers with the industry-leading range of products that deliver the best balance of performance, features, power and design for their specific needs. From multitasking to everyday content creation, the newest additions to the family scale performance for even higher levels of productivity -- in addition to offering best-in-class platform connectivity via Wi-Fi 6 (Gig+) and Thunderbolt 3 that people expect with 10th Gen," said Chris Walker, Intel corporate vice president and general manager of Mobility Client Platforms in the Client Computing Group.

Today, at Mobile World Congress Shanghai, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., a subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated, and Tsinghua Unigroup Subsidiary New H3C (New H3C), announced the availability of the H3C WA6628, an 802.11ax enterprise grade Access Point (AP), based on Qualcomm Technologies' IPQ8078 802.11ax chipset. This new solution is designed to offer one of the fastest throughput rates for an enterprise AP, by supporting 12 stream channels that serve data to up to 1000 client devices simultaneously. The WA6628 is targeted to begin shipping to customers in September 2018.

Qualcomm Technologies' IPQ8078 chipset is based on a powerful networking platform that supports up to 10 Gigabits per second (Gbps) wide-area networks and up to 6 Gbps peak physical (PHY) layer rates on Wi-Fi. The WA6628 makes full use of IPQ8078 capabilities, with a 10G Ethernet port and built-in Bluetooth. WA6628 can improve wireless network transmission rates by at least three times more than the mainstream 11ac Wave 2 AP.

Wi-Fi Alliance introduces Wi-Fi CERTIFIED WPA3 , the next generation of Wi-Fi security, bringing new capabilities to enhance Wi-Fi protections in personal and enterprise networks. Building on the widespread adoption of WPA2 over more than a decade, WPA3 adds new features to simplify Wi-Fi security, enable more robust authentication, and deliver increased cryptographic strength for highly sensitive data markets. As the Wi-Fi industry transitions to WPA3 security, WPA2 devices will continue to interoperate and provide recognized security.

WPA3 security continues to support the market through two distinct modes of operation: WPA3-Personal and WPA3-Enterprise. All WPA3 networks use the latest security methods, disallow outdated legacy protocols, and require use of Protected Management Frames (PMF) to maintain resiliency of mission critical networks. Key capabilities of WPA3 include:

• WPA3-Personal: more resilient, password-based authentication even when users choose passwords that fall short of typical complexity recommendations. WPA3 leverages Simultaneous Authentication of Equals (SAE), a secure key establishment protocol between devices, to provide stronger protections for users against password guessing attempts by third parties.
• WPA3-Enterprise: offers the equivalent of 192-bit cryptographic strength, providing additional protections for networks transmitting sensitive data, such as government or finance. The 192-bit security suite ensures a consistent combination of cryptographic tools are deployed across WPA3 networks.

Wi-Fi Alliance introduces enhancements and new features for Wi-Fi Protected Access, the essential family of Wi-Fi CERTIFIED security technologies for more than a decade. Wi-Fi Alliance is launching configuration, authentication, and encryption enhancements across its portfolio to ensure Wi-Fi CERTIFIED devices continue to implement state of the art security protections.

WPA2 provides reliable security used in billions of Wi-Fi devices every day, and will continue to be deployed in Wi-Fi CERTIFIED devices for the foreseeable future. Wi-Fi Alliance will continue enhancing WPA2 to ensure it delivers strong security protections to Wi-Fi users as the security landscape evolves. Advanced Wi-Fi applications will rely on WPA2 with Protected Management Frames, broadly adopted in the current generation of Wi-Fi CERTIFIED devices, to maintain the resiliency of mission-critical networks. New testing enhancements will also reduce the potential for vulnerabilities due to network misconfiguration, and further safeguard managed networks with centralized authentication services.