News Wi-Fi 7 is Coming: Here’s What You Need to Know

[Admin]

Wi-Fi 6 just came out a few years ago, but Wi-Fi 7 is here to boost performance and network reliability.

Wi-Fi 7 is Coming: Here’s What You Need to Know : Read more

 

[drivinfast247]

I can't wait for Wi-Fi 8! Even more performance and reliability.

 

[brandonjclark]

I just upgraded my entire home to WiFi 6. It's fast, REALLY fast!

I don't see a need to transfer very large files any faster with WiFi 7 at the moment.

I'm sure, however, new TV's with 8k and poor content support will be the standard soon.

Ugh...

 

[GasLighterHavoc]

I just upgraded my entire home to WiFi 6. It's fast, REALLY fast!

I don't see a need to transfer very large files any faster with WiFi 7 at the moment.

I'm sure, however, new TV's with 8k and poor content support will be the standard soon.

Ugh...

Fight that urge to have the best. The truth is that 4K TVs are more than enough at the distances that people sit from their TVs at current screen sizes. For 8K TVs to have a noticeable benefit, you are talking about 110-130 inch TVs since the sweet spot for 4K TVs is around 55-65 inches. Even if 8K technology is the same cost as 4K tech is now in X number of years, that is a very expensive TV.

WiFi 7's real benefit is with improved network congestion from large numbers of mobile and IoT devices operating in a small volume of space. You will not see the full benefits of this until all the clients are also WiFi 7-capable. That is at least 2 to 3 years away, judging by WiFi 6's adoption pace.

 

[tennis2]

Me still on WiFi 5.......

 

[TechieTwo]

Unfortunately virtually every consumer grade router, many printers, etc. are so insecure that a 10 year old can hack them and probably already has.

https://www.securityweek.com/pwn2ow...-speaker-exploits-earn-big-chunk-280000-total

 

[RandomWan]

AX still has low market penetration, but everybody switch over to BE! 6E has all the speed you will need for most home use cases, so there's no real reason to bother with 7.

 

[palladin9479]

Complete with a five meter distance and blocked by anything resembling a wall.

 

[kanewolf]

Complete with a five meter distance and blocked by anything resembling a wall.

Actually, if you can use all three bands simultaneously, then you get the coverage of 2.4Ghz, at low speed in addition to the five meter high speed interface.

 

[bluvg]

Unless I missed it, you missed one of the most important details: Wi-Fi 7/802.11be has not been finalized yet: "a final version expected by early 2024" (according to Wikipedia).

 

[bill001g]

Actually, if you can use all three bands simultaneously, then you get the coverage of 2.4Ghz, at low speed in addition to the five meter high speed interface.

But that will not be cheap to do since end device must now have 3 radio chips. Which maybe for a laptop might be a possibility but I wonder if they will give up the space it takes on cell phone cpu die.

 

[kanewolf]

But that will not be cheap to do since end device must now have 3 radio chips. Which maybe for a laptop might be a possibility but I wonder if they will give up the space it takes on cell phone cpu die.

Agreed. But two radios are baseline. Adding the simultaneous use should not significantly use space. The top end phones will get the three radios just to appeal to the FOMO crowd.

 

[bill001g]

Agreed. But two radios are baseline. Adding the simultaneous use should not significantly use space. The top end phones will get the three radios just to appeal to the FOMO crowd.

Not sure what you mean. Most end devices only have 1 radio chip that can change frequencies but it can't actually run both frequencies at the same time.

 

[dwd999]

New higher wifi bands are essential for those of us who live in densely populated neighborhoods. I can see approx. 30 neighbors on the wifi 5/6 bands and another approx. 30 on the 2.4 band. So I had to upgrade to the 6E 6Ghz band just to get decent transfers speeds between my computers.

 

[Kenshiro70]

I live in a neighborhood of townhouses, with neighbors' wifi stepping all over each other. I'm still a little irritated that no ever ever really answered the question of Wifi5 devices on Wifi6 networks and whether there was any improvement beyond the hand-wavey "when others move to Wifi6 that will make things less crowded for Wifi5 devices.."

Reading the Wifi7 description, it looks to me like neighborhood legacy routers and devices will significantly limit much of the theoretical gains. And since most non-techies just use the router/wifi AP they get from their provider, that won't change any time soon.

I'd love to be wrong on this one.

 

[Kenshiro70]

New higher wifi bands are essential for those of us who live in densely populated neighborhoods. I can see approx. 30 neighbors on the wifi 5/6 bands and another approx. 30 on the 2.4 band. So I had to upgrade to the 6E 6Ghz band just to get decent transfers speeds between my computers.

I saw your message just after posting mine. Did you ever see a jump in your wifi5 devices after moving to a wifi6 router? I'm in the same type of neighborhood, and I was hoping the coloring implementation would help legacy devices also, but I could never find a clear answer.

 

[dwd999]

I saw your message just after posting mine. Did you ever see a jump in your wifi5 devices after moving to a wifi6 router? I'm in the same type of neighborhood, and I was hoping the coloring implementation would help legacy devices also, but I could never find a clear answer.

I hesitate to post about this topic since I don't want to make the situation any worse than it already is. In my area, the major internet providers have started offering new modem/router devices to those who prefer to rent their equipment. These devices, from a company I won't name so as not to give them additional publicity, contain 6 antennas and emit a HUGE signal. Most of them are using the 5.7GHz wifi 6 band with a few in the 5.1GHz wifi 5 band. I have signals coming into my house from across the street that are just as strong as the signal coming from my own non-isp router in the back room of my house. So I had no choice but to move up to 6E where at the moment I have the entire 6.1GHz bandwidth to myself. In this limited way, there is one less device on the 5/6 bands because of 6E, so yeah, they're right about that. But if you're really interested in improved performance, you have to be the one who moves up to the higher bands; you can't wait for your neighbors or their ISPs to do it. It will take years for enough people to move out of the 5GHz bands to make a performance difference.

 

[bill001g]

Wifi7 though already is starting down the path it should not. In the USA there are only 4 full power 160mhz blocks and 3 low power ones. So in theory 7 people could share with no overlap. Wifi7 is going to use 320mhz so that means you would only have 3 people who could use it without overlap.
But even then it is not that simple the channels are not contiguous there is only what they call UNII5 that has 3 160mhz blocks. So that mean every wifi7 router will only run in that block unless it uses low power and then there is another 320 mhz block in unii7

The EU only has the 3 160mhz channels in UNII5 total and they allow lower power than the USA.

This is of course ignoring that everyone will want wifi7 mesh units that use even more radio channels.

How long before we again have every house on the block attempting to use every possible radio channel like they do on 2.4 and 5.

 

[GasLighterHavoc]

Unless I missed it, you missed one of the most important details: Wi-Fi 7/802.11be has not been finalized yet: "a final version expected by early 2024" (according to Wikipedia).

Good catch. This brings to mind the draft-N routers sold back in the day when the 802.11n spec (aka WiFi 4) was still not finalized yet products were selling with whatever draft spec existed at the time of design. Speeds varied greatly depending on when in the 802.11n development timeline the product was designed.

Anyone buying WiFi 7 products now are just buying something that will be outdated in months as the spec evolves. Not to mention all the legacy products like routers and clients on old WiFi standards that will restrict the true practical speed.

 

[Kenshiro70]

But if you're really interested in improved performance, you have to be the one who moves up to the higher bands; you can't wait for your neighbors or their ISPs to do it. It will take years for enough people to move out of the 5GHz bands to make a performance difference.

I've done that for my phone, but it's all the other devices that are the issue. I was hoping that the wifi6 routers would be able to use coloring to at least filter out the unknown wifi5 devices. I ended up getting a wifi6 router and setting up an ethernet backhaul <cough>ethernet drop out a window from second floor to first</cough>. That seems to have helped.

Now if we can just ban the home automation devices that are 2.4 only with no Bluetooth , which makes setting them up a major pain in the rear. There should be a warning label for those things.

In any event, thanks for your response.

 

[SyCoREAPER]

Absolutely nothing supports 320mhz.

160 is barely supported. This feels like releasing something just to say "First".

Not just that but WiFi 7 shouldn't be focused on speed beyond what 6e can already do. Rather it should take what 6e has and improve stability, range and wall penetration (let's all laugh like we are 5 at that word)

 

[Finagelit]

Wi-Fi 6 just came out a few years ago, but Wi-Fi 7 is here to boost performance and network reliability.

Wi-Fi 7 is Coming: Here’s What You Need to Know : Read more

Just saw the great post, But I am kinda on the bleeding edge of what can I do. So.... I am moving and looking for a better solution then wiring my house. Not paying for 10GB switches then linking them to other rooms where other computers/ servers might me. So am I crazy or what. I was looking at orbi 6GE but it has great wifi speeds but only a 2.5GB Ethernet port . Am I head of my time but I am looking for a wifi to wifi bridge and maybe a a wifi to direct ethernet that can handle 10gb or even 2.5GB. Can I get a dongle at least? Maybe PCIE 10GB to dongle or bridge?

Imagine a WAN (2 separate locations even in the same home / local) over WIFI with 10GB or at least 2.5gb with bridge? With WIFI 7 or eve 6E this should be possible but I see no solutions. I understand I am doing this for my house and many servers that I dont want in the laundry room and dont want to run copper. FYI been doing this for 30+ years and excited if something new can make a differece.

I have seen over the many years from wifi a the b then g the a/g. I currently work in a company that is high tech with fiber / san / vsan / WAN ... ect... but for someone who has home servers and wants fast connections to his SAN (not san fiber obviously direct connect) / iscsi with wifi might now be possible!!!

Eager to hear how to do this. Router / AP one area. Servers in another area WIFI (fastest speed)/with switch) Then to get 10GPB or even 2.5GB bridged? The Tech seems to be there per Toms hardware and other sites as wifi 7 but I don't think anyone in implementing it.

Sorry Im a tech nerd for over 30+years

Thanks

Sean

 

[bill001g]

Just saw the great post, But I am kinda on the bleeding edge of what can I do. So.... I am moving and looking for a better solution then wiring my house. Not paying for 10GB switches then linking them to other rooms where other computers/ servers might me. So am I crazy or what. I was looking at orbi 6GE but it has great wifi speeds but only a 2.5GB Ethernet port . Am I head of my time but I am looking for a wifi to wifi bridge and maybe a a wifi to direct ethernet that can handle 10gb or even 2.5GB. Can I get a dongle at least? Maybe PCIE 10GB to dongle or bridge?

Imagine a WAN (2 separate locations even in the same home / local) over WIFI with 10GB or at least 2.5gb with bridge? With WIFI 7 or eve 6E this should be possible but I see no solutions. I understand I am doing this for my house and many servers that I dont want in the laundry room and dont want to run copper. FYI been doing this for 30+ years and excited if something new can make a differece.

I have seen over the many years from wifi a the b then g the a/g. I currently work in a company that is high tech with fiber / san / vsan / WAN ... ect... but for someone who has home servers and wants fast connections to his SAN (not san fiber obviously direct connect) / iscsi with wifi might now be possible!!!

Eager to hear how to do this. Router / AP one area. Servers in another area WIFI (fastest speed)/with switch) Then to get 10GPB or even 2.5GB bridged? The Tech seems to be there per Toms hardware and other sites as wifi 7 but I don't think anyone in implementing it.

Sorry Im a tech nerd for over 30+years

Thanks

Sean

You really should actually read the threads you hijack. Wifi7 is not going to be a official thing until 2024 so any equipment manufactured before the standard is finalized may not work with the official equipment. This happened with 802.11n when they produced "draft" equipment that did not fully function with the official standard equipment. So you might see some routers in early 2024 but end devices like cell phones etc will not likely be around until 2025. You are just starting to see wifi6e stuff be more common and that has been official for over 2 years.

Without going into a large discussion of why pretty much all the numbers you see on wifi are lies. The reason they only put 2.5g ports on things like orbi is in real life conditions you seldom get even 1gbit. Sometimes if you are lucky you can get just over 1gbit but that is not real common.