Wi-Fi 8 is the first wireless upgrade in years that isn't chasing speed

(xda-developers.com)

39 points | by taubek 49 minutes ago

5 comments

  • riobard 4 minutes ago
    > with Wi-Fi 7 reaching a maximum theoretical throughput of 23Gbit per band

    Note to tech reports: do not EVER quote this metric as it is the most useless piece of information.

  • swiftcoder 11 minutes ago
    Makes sense. Last router upgrade I reached the point where my wifi speeds (at least near the router) were indistinguishable from plugging into gigabit ethernet - that's fast enough for any home task, and the same speed as my fibre uplink. I can't see chasing speed further, outside of very specialised setups.
  • Reason077 28 minutes ago
    Oh no. I haven't even upgraded to WiFi 7 yet!
    • BlackRabbit1 23 minutes ago
      You are not missing too much.

      One of the core features (MLO) is currently mostly scam. APs/Clients negotiate the protocol (and it shows up in the status) but doesn't it to either increase robustness or bandwidth.

      Also the driver quality is a huge mess.

      (We tested it using the latest generation Cisco Enterprise gear but also with Prosumer stuff like Ubiquiti or TP-Link)

      But honestly: we need WiFi-8. It finally brings infrastructure-controlled roaming which is super important for any VoIP service.

    • manmal 18 minutes ago
      The upgrade to 6E was a big jump in my network (Wifi7 Unifi Wall AP). On the same spot, the M3 MacBook (6E) has basically zero lag over VNC, while the M1 MacBook (6) has a noticeable lag. It’s a bit mind blowing how big the difference is.
    • LoganDark 28 minutes ago
      I have a Wi-Fi 7 AP and this confused some members of my family that didn't even know it went higher than 6. I thought it was pretty funny
      • avhception 5 minutes ago
        My family doesn't know that the WiFi AP is not the DECT base. They understand when I tell them, but that's gone after a week. They use the words WiFi (or, as we say in Germany, WLAN) and "Internet" almost interchangeably. At work, too. "Internet kaputt" can mean anything from "my device is broken" to "our ERP app is not doing the right thing / responding too slow".
  • LoganDark 30 minutes ago
    Makes sense since a lot of networks don't have access to speed. The highest speeds in my area are around 150MBps, so 5-6GBps or whatever is a perfectly fine upper bound for me. Range and congestion however has been an issue.
    • Gigachad 5 minutes ago
      You can still make use of more. Local video streaming from your PC to tv, file transfers between nearby devices etc.

      Modern wifi is fast enough that using cables is often not required.

    • trvz 20 minutes ago
      You used the wrong units there. Should be Mbps and Gbps.
      • LoganDark 15 minutes ago
        I did not use the wrong units, I converted them. The speeds available in my area currently max out at 1.2Gbps which is 150MBps.
        • riobard 1 minute ago
          When talking about network bandwidth, it is custom to measure in bit-per-second therefore the "bps" notation. If you convert to bytes, it is highly recommended to use "b/s" notation instead, i.e 150MB/s, to avoid confusion.
        • gib444 9 minutes ago
          The widely-accepted convention is to use bits when discussing line speeds (as the article does).
  • LogTrim 29 minutes ago
    The peak-speed arms race stopped being interesting to me a while ago. I don't need 20+ Gbit/s theoretical Wi-Fi. I need the connection to stay boring when I'm at the edge of coverage or the neighbours are hammering the same spectrum.

    The 95th-percentile latency and packet-loss targets here seem much more meaningful than another 2x headline speed increase.

    My only scepticism is how much of this survives real consumer hardware. Wi-Fi 6 had things like OFDMA that sounded great on paper, but support/implementation was pretty uneven.