Question Wifi 7 worth waiting for?

[pcslookout]

The new Wifi 7 routers.

 

[q52]

fwiw I didnt, I just got that TP-Link Wifi 6E router that has been deeply discounted on Amazon for like $170~ish after Amazon's coupons and such, its the TP-Link AXE5400 Archer AXE75

only one device in the house can actually use the Wifi 6E 6GHz (my Pixel phone), and that does not look like its gonna change in a long time, so I honestly cant imagine what the point is gonna be for Wifi 7 any time soon. You need to really look closely at the capabilities of the devices on your (home) network. For example, my network has a lot of devices, and as far as Wifi connectivity goes, they break down like this;

- cheap / old~ish ("smart home" products): Wifi 5, 802.11ac, 5GHz
- high-end / old~ish (Nvidia Shield, some Mac's): Wifi 5, 802.11ac, 5GHz
- high-end / new~ish (more recent Mac's, iPhones, PC's): Wifi 6, 802.11ax, 5GHz
- high-end / new~ish + Wifi 6E, 802.11ax, 6GHz

notice how only the very last group there can actually use the latest Wifi 6E and its 6GHz network

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worth mentioning for anyone confused by all the numbers, the *only* devices that can use the 6GHz network offered by Wifi 6E are the ones explicitly labeled for Wifi 6E; just having 802.11ax is not enough. This part confused me at first 🙂

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so, considering all this, does it even make sense to wait for Wifi 7?

well, if you are anything like me and already have a house packed with Wifi 5, Wifi 6, and the occasional Wifi 6E device, it actually does not make any sense to "wait" for a new Wifi 7 which none of your current devices will be compatible with. If you actually want to be able to use the Wifi 7 features, you will need devices that support Wifi 7, which currently dont exist afaik. There is an article here;

What is Wi-Fi 7? Everything You Need to Know

The Wi-Fi 6E successor is creeping closer, and it promises to significantly boost the speed and stability of your wireless connections.

www.wired.com

Their conclusion seems pretty solid to me; there will not be any benefit to upgrading to Wifi 7 for many years until after you have started to build up some number of Wifi 7 compatible devices in your repertoire.

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tl;dr: don't wait, just get the best Wifi 6 or Wifi 6E router within your budget, based on the Wifi connectivity capabilities (Wifi 5, 6, 6E) of the devices you have now

 

[Genx87]

The new Wifi 7 routers.

What are you looking for in WiFi 7 that you don't get in WiFi 6? For most people AC is still plenty good. Internet speeds in your home are the bottleneck, not wireless.

 

[q52]

What are you looking for in WiFi 7 that you don't get in WiFi 6?

Personally, I am not actually clear yet which Wifi 7 features will be the most useful.

For most people AC is still plenty good. Internet speeds in your home are the bottleneck, not wireless.

"most people" seems to always refer to people living in mid-sized houses in sparse suburbs; lets not forget the many millions of people who live in dense urban spaces like apartment complexes. For me and most people I know, 2.4GHz is mostly useless and unusable due to the saturation of every channel thanks to the hundreds of wireless devices per-floor. 5GHz is the bare minimum to maintain a connection, and even that is more than 50% full. The 6GHz offered by Wifi 6E seems to be the real god-send; the sharper drop-off in range means that the network does not extend much further than the limits of your own apartment, so there is less chance of getting any overlap and crowding from your twenty neighbors' networks.

Internet speeds do not matter anymore. Verizon FiOS offers 300Mbps as the "base" speed for $40, and its plenty fast for most everything you need to do at home. And if you want 1Gbps, thats easily accessible too. The features that matter most these days are the enhancements to device<->router connectivity and connection stability.

 

[mikeymikec]

@q52 Interesting experience of yours. In my line of work, I've never seen 5GHz wifi fare notably better than 2.4GHz with regard to connection reliability. At home, my router broadcasts on both frequencies (different SSIDs) and the main bedroom is just as spotty in terms of reception regardless of any configuration changes I've made. I ended up sticking a wireless access point (fed by powerline) directly beneath the bedroom, end of problem.

 

[Tech Junky]

For most coverage is the biggest hurdle. They don't tune their WiFi to use channels and just let the auto feature go wild jumping from one channel to the next. This is especially bad in mdu settings where every unit is doing it. I picked a channel and then forced 160mhz on it and pushed away the zombies. I get 1.5gbps over WiFi and don't have issues.

6ghz is just the easy way to get less congestion if you're not going to battle for bandwidth. WiFi 7 will be nice though double speed to 320hz bands. The issue will be getting adapters that support it and then APs. The adapters will come first and then we'll be left waiting for something to connect to. My phone supports 7 already and the boost in the hw already makes a difference compared to my last one. The WiFi has double the link rate which is on par for my laptop speeds now.

If you have a clue on what you're doing it's a worthwhile investment but, if you take it out of the box and don't tweak it then you're just going to be disappointed like you are now

 

[pcslookout]

I am not disappointed lol. Get well over 800 Mbps on wireless. (When really close to the router of course)

 

[Fallen Kell]

Personally, I am not actually clear yet which Wifi 7 features will be the most useful.



"most people" seems to always refer to people living in mid-sized houses in sparse suburbs; lets not forget the many millions of people who live in dense urban spaces like apartment complexes. For me and most people I know, 2.4GHz is mostly useless and unusable due to the saturation of every channel thanks to the hundreds of wireless devices per-floor. 5GHz is the bare minimum to maintain a connection, and even that is more than 50% full. The 6GHz offered by Wifi 6E seems to be the real god-send; the sharper drop-off in range means that the network does not extend much further than the limits of your own apartment, so there is less chance of getting any overlap and crowding from your twenty neighbors' networks.

Internet speeds do not matter anymore. Verizon FiOS offers 300Mbps as the "base" speed for $40, and its plenty fast for most everything you need to do at home. And if you want 1Gbps, thats easily accessible too. The features that matter most these days are the enhancements to device<->router connectivity and connection stability.

While you are absolutely correct that 5GHz is more likely the give you a good connection in an urban apartment/condo, the reason isn't really what you think. 5GHz has a much harder time penetrating objects like walls/ceilings/floors. As a result, the signals from one apartment/condo do not penetrate as well into an adjacent unit. This results in your router and wireless devices not seeing the crosstalk from the other nearby networks as much, giving you better performance because really only 1 radio can transmit at one time on a channel without messages becoming garbled and a collision occurring resulting in all the devices going into collision recovery protocol.

If you really want to help increase your performance, what you really need to do is put wifi shielding around the perimeter walls/ceiling/floor of your apartment/condo. Not something easily done to the floor, but the walls and ceiling should suffice in drastically reducing crosstalk. There are paints out there designed for this, as well as a wallpaper mesh shielding. It will not be "cheap", but if you really want to improve your situation, that is the correct solution.

 

[Tech Junky]

@Fallen Kell

Penetration of 5ghz is still an issue as you can see here. Not using default channels is part of the solution. Not allowing things to auto select is another part.

Having good equipment matters more than shielding the environment. Placement helps as well in avoiding cross talk. Even with all of the clutter around me I'm able to use 160mhz of bandwidth without any issues. I just scanned for 6ghz as well and didn't pick anything up which would make it even more ideal but, the cost to upgrade when there isn't an apparent problem doesn't make sense right now. When BE comes along though the doubling of bandwidth to 320mhz would be the appeal to upgrade again.

Knowing what's around you helps in making things work better. If you don't put in the slightest effort of scanning the air around you then you're just setup to fail. Picking a non auto channel makes a difference in the overall performance on either band. It might take some testing of each channel but, you should be able to find one that works better than the default pretty quickly.

 

[sdifox]

Waste of time.

 

[mikeymikec]

@Tech Junky which app is that? Admittedly I live out towards the sticks so I think problematic penetration by other networks is somewhat less likely (esp. the bizarre wifi issue I encountered the other day), but it might be a useful tool when troubleshooting more bizarre scenarios.

 

[Tech Junky]

which app is that?

WiFi analyzer. I have a few different versions on my phone though. There's also a desktop app I can get a lot more detail with called Acrylic

 

[mikeymikec]

WiFi analyzer. I have a few different versions on my phone though. There's also a desktop app I can get a lot more detail with called Acrylic

Thx. I find it interesting that apparently I left the channel-picking on my router and extra access point to auto last time I messed with them, and my 2.4GHz networks have picked mostly vacant channels but the 5G network sits straight on top of a nearby network. Changing the channel number of the 5Ghz network doesn't seem to make any difference to that either. There's only 2-3 5GHz wifi networks within range though including mine so I don't think I'll spend much time worrying about it.

 

[aigomorla]

Wifi 7 requires a new access point / router + client dedicated cards, because i can't think of many boards which have them built in.

Although it only uses pci-e 1x, its still a card that needs to be installed, and then drivers installed manually.
Too much hassle.

1. There are not enough portables which can even support wifi 7 without new hardware, or replacing the portable entirely.
2. Its still SLOW compared to a direct ethernet connection.
3. Wifi will never be as reliable as a direct ethernet connection.

So no... id rather invest the money on that AP to wire up my infrastructure, and run cables unless its a portable, which then i do not think i will care if im getting 200mb/s vs 1.5gb/s as i would be a fool to transfer that much data from a portable to a NAS constantly over wifi, vs pulling the MicroSD and doing it though my PC with robocopy if its a big backup like pictures and video with ECC Memory on top to check for errors.

 

[Tech Junky]

Wifi 7 requires a new access point / router + client dedicated cards, because i can't think of many boards which have them built in.

True to an extent. My new phone has WIFI7 on board that was just released but, the lay man won't be looking at the intricacies of devices typically. Most just care if it has an Apple logo and stop thinking there. Network nerds dig a bit deeper and avoid Apple since they deem network advancement to be time wasting to them. They still sell AC only new devices and just now are putting in AX cards into some of their devices.

1. There are not enough portables which can even support wifi 7 without new hardware, or replacing the portable entirely.

They're coming sooner than you think if you're in the market anyway to pick up something new it's something to look for.

2. Its still SLOW compared to a direct ethernet connection.

Depends on your setup. I get 1.5gbps out of mine and most non-nerds average 600mbps. If you pick the right HW on both sides it makes a difference.

3. Wifi will never be as reliable as a direct ethernet connection.

It's already faster than 1GE and soon to be about 3GE with BE when the server side arrives i.e. AP / router. I would say that's better than most wired and even todays devices shipping with 2.5GE NIC options will be surpassed in the near future.

i would be a fool to transfer that much data from a portable

Sometimes you don't have the option to be wired with some devices and other devices don't have SD cards. Phones that are within the last couple of years don't have SD as an option for 99% of them. I would have to think hard and long to recall the last phone I had that had one. Funny enough my car systems do have them as an option for file management and I do use them occasionally to upgrade their software / maps / import music to the system.

As to the phone though sure you could use the cable to move things but, in my case to get 80W charging the data speed us USB2 @ 480mbps compared to WIFI offloading at considerably higher MB/s around 30MB/s. It would probably be higher with smaller files but, moving a big MKV isn't going to be the fastest. Laptop with the same file hits 100MB/s though if I were seriously copying data then I'd pull pout my 5GE dongle and wire up as the NAS drives in my DIY box would then allow 400MB/s+.

 

[bretbernhoft]

The features that matter most these days are the enhancements to device<->router connectivity and connection stability.

This is something that I agree with. Internet speeds are wonderfully fast. What matters is how stable that connection is; from the user to the server, and back again.