The missing context is that this article is part of their CES coverage. At the expo the huge theme was everyone putting AI in every fucking device they could. A subtler theme that didn't get as much attention was a bunch of new devices launched with Wifi 7 for the first time. So the headline was what was happening at the expo.
I guess one reason why no one is paying attention to it is because is the Wi-Fi speed usually the limiting factor? In my case I've rarely ever maxed out my Wi-Fi 6 speeds. Typically the host or the network that I'm on that is the limiting factor.
Although I'm also in the US so I know where not know for having the fastest internet in the world. Maybe in other areas of the world WiFi 7 might be more useful.
Canada, one of our primary ISPs offers fibre to the home with speeds of 1Gbit and even higher. So many threads on their forums with users confused why they can't get anywhere close to 1Gbit and it always turns out to be WiFi.
This is very useful in places like big city where there are gazillion of devices fighting for airtime. Wifi 7 devices can dynamically switch channel, or even use multiple channels at once which should help a lot in congested environment.
I'm more excited about reducing congestion when more of my neighbors upgrade to 6, so that BSS coloring and other wifi 6/7 features can enable more efficient use of the spectrum. Before wifi 6 most of the upgrades were just increasing data rates, but really lacking in improvements to spectral use efficiency (like the resource unit allocation in OFDMA which splits channels into sub carriers and centrally plans assignment to multiple client devices for simultaneous use which results in much less wasted airtime compared to each device yelling and listening while waiting to see if they can have exclusive access to the whole channel which wastes time) and interference management (like preamble puncturing which allows partial use of a channel when only a portion has interference). In a crowded environment like an apartment building wifi 6 should help a lot in reducing channel utilization.
I have one WiFi 6 access point and unless I'm running a benchmark while right next to it, I can't tell the difference between it and the WiFi 5 access points. I doubt WiFi 7 will make much difference unless you are running 320MHz channels. There's only enough bandwidth for 3 of them, so good luck getting decent performance unless you live out in the country though.
High speeds are helpful for anyone that has network storage and doesn't want to plug in an ethernet cable. It doesn't have anything to do with how fast your internet is.
They're is so much wrong here I don't know where to start.
get a better wifi 6ap. You should be getting about 2x the bandwidth. I get about 900mbps on my 5 year old cell phone sitting on the couch.
Wi-Fi 7 smaller width channels to avoid interference. Pretty much everything you've said here is backwards/wrong and i encourage you to do some learning on your own.
I guess one reason why no one is paying attention to it is because is the Wi-Fi speed usually the limiting factor?
On a LAN? Pretty easily if you have a gigabit or greater network. Wi-Fi 6 can do close to gigabit but not consistently and needs to be close to an AP, and it's unlikely a bunch of devices using it at the same time will be able to do maintain that peak. Maybe 6E, although I don't have any devices myself that support it.
And WAN speeds of gigabit and greater have become more common, too.
And this ignores the improvements in latency with Wi-Fi 7, which is definitely an issue with traditional Wi-Fi.
Ok, I know why we changed the version naming scheme: a, b, g, n, ac, ax... It was a nightmare, just awful.
But I'll bet it does still have a IEEE designation, so how does 6 or 7 map to the previous scheme? Also, what's new, what are the impressive current speeds and features?
Yeah, I just upgraded to a new laptop 18 months ago, it does WiFi 6 I think, the one that's popular for the Quest 2 headset anyway, and this is going to be my computer now for at least another 8 years, like the last one was.
Same with the router, which I upgraded to get that newer WiFi, and now it's going to sit there doing it's job for probably the next decade, because it does it well.
Maybe in 2032 I'll upgrade to WiFi 7, but there's no real need to do so until then, unless something really important that WiFi 6 can't handle comes along.
EDIT: And "AI" was only mentioned a single time in the article.
The biggest names in laptops showed up to CES this week with new designs, new chips, and usually some way to sneak in the term “AI.”
The biggest names in tech reporting apparently showed up to the internet this week with some way to sneak the term "AI" into their headlines. Fuck you, Wes Davis.
Why would you use your ISPs router? Mine is set to modem mode an do have my own router which is far better quality and also totally under my control security wise.
I'm surprisingly super happy with my current one. I got ATT fiber and was planning on swapping out their router and adding an access point but it's actually great and covered my entire house including the garage and back yard, and they don't charge a monthly fee for it.
Google fiber and any other ISP that offers 1gbit or greater speeds are already giving with 6 routers, and 7 is soon to follow. Wifi 7 is already planned for Google Fiber and I know others have it on the way. Basically any ISP offering >1gbit speeds is going to have a wifi 7 router soon.
I used to scoff at people who would say “just get an access point”, but after looking at too many mesh systems last years with their ridiculous prices, I went with couple of access point and I do not regret it.
Oh I know… I get leftovers from work for my home lab. But enterprise WiFi will never be a thing you’d need in a DC. 48 port 10GbE Cisco switches is another story 🙂
It feels like the rollout of client modules and APs/routers was better synchronized this time. Back with wifi 6 I ordered the Intel modules within a week of them being available on AliExpress and then waited for what felt like months for APs to be available (it looks like unifi's wifi 6 ap finally came out in November 2021 based on when I bought it). Unifi's U7 pro dropped a few days ago so I nabbed one as soon as I saw the email and that arrived today so that's already set up, and the wifi 7 modules have already been out for a bit, i just didn't order them since I was anticipating a wait for APs. So now I just gotta wait a bit for shipping and I'll have all my laptops upgraded too.
My gaming PC doesn't even have wifi, I just ran a cable. I wire everything I can, even my Chromecast using USB otg adapters. The less stuff that's on the WiFi, the less crappy of an experience the stuff that's left will have. Also I'm just about there with you, my non-work laptop is an almost 6 year old XPS 15 with a 7700k, but I swapped the wifi chip for an ax200ngw wifi 6 one for $15.
Bluetooth has completely different design and goals. When it came out it wanted to do notifications. Nowadays it's been shoehorned into lots of things it wasn't originally supposed to do, like media streaming, controllers, file transfer etc. That's a limit to how far the spec can be twisted.
I think you're confusing BLE and Classic Bluetooth here. Classic Bluetooth was design for streaming data (serial-port emulation and voice audio) from the very first spec.
Sounds like the usual introduction for a new wifi protocol. It's a niche market until enough devices become compatible. Then a rapid adoption as things reach their normal end-of-life and are replaced.
So wifi 7 will be widely adopted in 5-7 years if it proves stable.
One of the biggest benefits of Wi-Fi 7 is that it allows for one device to connect to your router on multiple bands — a feature called Multi-Link Operation — which gives your laptop options when it comes to where to funnel its packets.
But some of the earliest are, at least for now, very expensive: the 16-inch Razer Blade 16 starts at $3,000, and the 18-inch MSI Titan 18 HX A14V costs at least $5,000.
If you’re not in the mood to dump your life savings into a laptop, some more affordable gaming models with Wi-Fi 7 were announced, too.
The one big exception at the show to the unspoken Wi-Fi 7 gaming laptop rule appeared to be Asus.
None of the laptops that the company announced in its ROG lineup, including the Zephyrus line, have Wi-Fi 7 listed in their specs.
If you’re looking to upgrade your gaming laptop and you’re not the type to insist on a wired connection, now is a fine time to start looking at Wi-Fi 7 routers.
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Sure, it’s already good enough for everything I use it for. However, I hope and expect to be doing cool new shit with way better wifi in 20 years. So, in the chicken and egg problem of technical capability vs cool applications, I am fine with increasing specs way in advance of killer apps.
No. It's not good enough yet. I'd like to have wifi that doesn't instantly drop speeds if I'm not less than 2ft away from the router. Still waiting on that technology. Wifi will never be "good enough" until it's as good as ethernet.
That's probably fixed by getting a better quality router or adding access points if the issue is the building blocking signals. That's not a problem with the standard, and the new standards are for even higher speeds which actually have lower range at those bandwidths.
That standard is mainly designed for things like IOT and wireless security cameras, but nothing stops you from getting an HaLow access point and network adapter.