Is Wi-Fi 6 fast enough? Apparently not, as the Wi-Fi Alliance has updated its official page for Wi-Fi Certified 7 (IEEE 802.11be), confirming that the next generation of wireless technology will be debuting very, very soon.
Here’s the word from the worldwide network of organizers behind Wi-Fi, which has promised Wi-Fi 7 will be available “before the end of Q1 2024,” with Wi-Fi 7 devices already entering the market today:
…Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 7 will facilitate worldwide interoperability and bring advanced Wi-Fi performance to the next era of connected devices. Enhancing wireless local-area network (WLAN) performance in the 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz, and 6 GHz bands, Wi-Fi 7 brings cutting-edge capabilities to enable innovations that require high throughput, lower latency, and greater reliability across home, enterprise, and industrial environments, including key applications like augmented, virtual, and extended reality (AR/VR/XR), immersive 3D training, and ultra-high definition video streaming.
The Wi-Fi Alliance goes on to show five key benefits that Wi-Fi 7 will introduce, including, not surprisingly, faster speeds:
- Higher throughput
- Improved support for deterministic latency
- Enhanced efficiency, even in dense networks
- Increased robustness and reliability
- Reduced power consumption
And here are the advanced features of Wi-Fi 7, per the Wi-Fi Alliance:
- 320 MHz superwide channels that are only available in 6 GHz provide twice the throughput of Wi-Fi CERTIFIED 6, enabling multigigabit Wi-Fi device speeds
- Multi-Link Operation (MLO) supports more efficient load balancing of traffic among links for increased throughput, lower latency, and enhanced reliability in AR/VR/XR and cloud computing
- 4K QAM achieves 20% higher transmission rates than Wi-Fi 6’s 1024 QAM for greater efficiency, enabling flawless high-definition video streaming and social cloud-based gaming without lag
“Wi-Fi 7 supports superior connectivity for emerging use cases with high levels of interactivity and immersion,” the group added. “As user demand for high capacity, low latency technologies like AR/VR/XR, cloud computing, and Industrial IoT grows across market segments, Wi-Fi 7 devices will deliver optimized performance, even in dense environments in the 2.4 and 5 GHz band. Countries with access to 6 GHz will experience the full scope of Wi-Fi 7’s unparalleled performance.”
Wi-Fi 6 (IEEE 802.11ax), which was standardized back in 2020, features a maximum link rate of up to 9,608 Mbits/s.
Discussion (7 replies)
Join Discussion →the wheels on the wifi standards bus go round and round.....
I'm betting like cdrom drives back in the day they have some staged improvements in the channel to maximize income over time.
1.) I still find it annoying they dumbed down the Wifi naming scheme. Using the chapter reference from the 802.11 was fine. It actually meant something.
2.) So this "Wifi 7" I presume is artificially limited to Windows 11 to coerce people to upgrade, just like "Wifi 6E" was?
3.) I'm still on 802.11ac at home. I've had literally no reason to upgrade. Everything I care about performance on is hard wired using either fiber or copper. For everything else, ac speeds are more than sufficient. What is the selling point again?
For people in really congested areas (dorms, apartments, etc), and people who just run every device they own on WiFi because they don’t know any better
My guess is "Yes" it will. Even though it will be backwards compatible with older standards (it has to, or older devices break), and there's no real compelling reason to upgrade your WiFi device to these standards - other than just to say you did.
My house is still running on 802.11N and that's still perfectly serviceable. Like Zath, anything that needs performance is wired - it's just random mobile devices and IoT crap that's on WiFi. A lot of my devices don't support anything past B/G, and they don't really need to for what they do.
So the argument here is... You run a homewifibg, a homewifi e or C or whatever, and maybe a homewifi7 network. (many routers support at least 2.) Then you join your devices to the standard they can use at the range you can fulfill.
Your doorbells, thermostats, Tablets, and whatnot you throw on the BG network. The stuff that's still wifi but you want better speed on you put on the other one.
Why? Because Wifi is a freaking HUB in network technology. Every device you have attached to a specific SID is effectively dividing your available bandwidth as long as it's online. There is no segregation of traffic or demand use stuff going on.
For Wifi to get REALLY good they need a way to have individual paths of traffic.. through I don't know... advanced beam forming... channel proliferation... something... so every device has a unique connection.. you know... like a network switch. THEN you will have great per device performance even on heavily populated SSID's.
A good WiFi AP can already do this, provided is has sufficient width in the channel. Staring with N, a good AP can channel bond and allow devices to communicate on multiple channels simultaneously for higher throughput. MIMO was also added in N, allowing a device to utilize multiple antenna connections simultaneously. Beamforming was added in AC, again, for APs that support it.