9800 controller

[cisco8887]

all, 

Cisco 9800 controller supports wave 2 APs such as 2800 and wifi 6 such as 9100.

This is just the ap models supported but my guess is they can still run in 802.11b or a to support old handheld devices right despite aps being wave 2 or wifi 6?

based on this my answer would be yes 

Q.  Will Wi-Fi 6 be backward compatible with previous generations of Wi-Fi?

A.   In Wi-Fi 6, all devices must also support all the mandatory 802.11a, b, g, n, and ac modes of operation. This ensures that Wi-Fi 6 Access Points (APs) and clients are backward compatible with legacy APs and clients.

[Mark Elsen]

-  The answer is indeed yes.

 M.

[Rasika Nayanajith]

As you guess it correctly, simple answer is yes.

However, do you want to keep 11b devices in your network? If you do that will significantly degrade overall wireless performance. 

"This is just the ap models supported but my guess is they can still run in 802.11b or a to support old handheld devices right despite aps being wave 2 or wifi 6?"

I would not enable 11b rates (1,2,5,5,11Mbps) on my 2.4GHz network. If you have 11b only devices, I would suggest upgrade them rather than sacrificing everybody's WiFi performance by bringing those onto your WiFi networks. Here is a Cisco blog talk about same topic

https://blogs.cisco.com/networking/bring-out-yer-dead-5-steps-to-eliminate-802-11b-from-your-networks 

Here is a good document that covers Cisco Road to WiFi6

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/collateral/wireless/e-nb-06-preparing-for-wifi-6-ebook-cte-en.html?

HTH

Rasika

*** Pls rate all useful responses ***

[Rich R]

Agreed - get rid of b only devices so that you can disable the lower data rates.