What a weird title. They are completely 2 different, independent things. Just to be categorized with AI hype articles...
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.
I can get very close to 1 Gbit on Ethernet but top out at maybe 400 Mbps on wifi.
Exactly, wifi 7 will probably get us to or close to practical 1Gbit wireless speed vs theoretical 1Gbit speeds.
Wifi 6E already does that, I get about 940 Mbps with my phone on my 6GHz network. That is maybe 10 Mbps less than I get wired.
If you have a non-congested area, 6e is just as fast as 7. 7 just brings a wider channel width and the ability to hop between 6ghz and 5ghz.
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.
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.
Did it take off? How many people are rushing out right now to buy a gaming laptop so they can have the best wifi?
No one, because their router probably doesn't support it.
Their router probably doesn't support 6, and neither does their devices.
Hell, my ethernet networking doesn't support the speeds wifi6 supposedly delivered.
Realistically, as long as it's faster than your internet connection, you're unlikely to give a fuck either way.
I only upgraded to gigabit ethernet for game streaming from my upstairs PC.
How many of your devices actually support this?
The article is about how new products are getting support for Wifi 7, so probably none of your current devices.
My comment was more a rebuke at the headline than the article
Why would we have eyes on something that won't be reasonably useful for years?
My laptop only supports 2.4 GHz lol
What an absurd headline.
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.
PowerShell 7 quietly took off while I was struggling with my IBS.
Get-Money | Buy-SomethingUseful | ?{$_.item -ne "WiFi 7"}
See ya in 5 years when ISPs will start providing WiFi 7 enabled routers
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.
Because most of the time they don’t let you, or make it super difficult to set up
Additionally, most end users aren’t tech savvy and just use whatever was given by the ISP
And when did decent mesh systems start costing $1K+?!?!
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.
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.
can the wifi teams finally allow bluetooth to copy their homework? 😂 they're still at 2mb/s roundabouts
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.
And it's always been terrible at it. And it still is. Pairing issues, overcompressed audio, dropping connections, overcomplicated protocol without universal support... I have no idea how it didn't get replaced by a competing standard.
Like Wi-Fi, honestly. How is Bluetooth not just "USB over Wi-Fi". Literally. Tunnel USB over a 2.4Ghz link. A transport layer that does transport, and then the endpoints can just... Talk to each other. It doesn't sound hard..
Instead we have a system where my wireless controller works great except with an Intel built-in BT chipset. So when I decided to play some games last night on my new TV and tried it out with my laptop, every 15 minutes or so the controller locks up and spins constantly to the right, and has to be re-paired.
Or where if I play anything with any sort of bass in my truck the compressor flattens the mids so you can't even hear the vocals, so I have to use a physical aux cord instead. Why is there dynamic range compression at all? Why is it not configurable? Why is this not just a raw PCM stream. WHY
We have had this protocol for 25 YEARS and it still works like beta
Where has it taken off ? Only a handful of routers are out for it and they are stupidly expensive. Are there even devices that can utilize wifi 7 ?
Maybe a flagship here and there and a high gaming computer
I literally just installed my unifi wifi6 pro a coupl weeks ago. ..I had no idea WiFi 7 was just around the corner.
That said, non of my devices support that as far as I know so I am not going to be missing out for a while I don't think.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
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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