Abstract
This paper presents a performance evaluation of WPA2 and WPA3 security protocols in private Wi-Fi 6 environments. The study investigates how the transition from WPA2-PSK to WPA3-Personal affects wireless network performance under practical residential conditions. Measurements were conducted using a consumer Wi-Fi 6 access point operating in the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz frequency bands. TCP throughput was measured with iperf3, while UDP tests and ICMP ping measurements were used to evaluate bitrate stability, jitter, packet loss, and round-trip latency. A Wi-Fi 5 WPA2 configuration was additionally considered as a baseline to provide contextual comparison with the Wi-Fi 6 results. The experimental results show that, in the tested Wi-Fi 6 configuration, switching from WPA2 to WPA3 caused only a moderate decrease in average TCP throughput: approximately 5–6% in the 2.4 GHz band and 2–3% in the 5 GHz band. UDP and ICMP measurements also indicate that WPA3 did not introduce noticeable degradation in jitter, packet loss, or latency. These findings suggest that WPA3-Personal can be enabled in private Wi-Fi 6 environments with relatively low performance cost, making it a practical choice for users who seek stronger wireless security without substantial loss of network performance.