Does MLO negate DFS channel dropouts?

[portets]

Since the 2.4 band will remain active does that mean if the router is on a 5ghz DFS channel that the client signal won't drop out due to channel scanning and DFS channel switching?

I know there are two MLO methods, one being where one band is TX and one is RX. The other being simultaneous per band. I take it the latter wouldn't have droupouts but the former would? Unless it can change MLO modes quickly.

I know MRU/puncturing will also fix this issue, but puncturing is mostly unavailable still and may mostly come to 6ghz bands

 

[sfx2000]

The MLO implementations are still very much in flux due to requirements of the component bands - e.g. 6GHz requires WPA3, where 2.4 and 5GHz do not...

MLO operations in 5GHz, well, there's more commonality obviously...

An AP running in a DFS channel, if it gets a DFS detection hit, should fall over to a non-DFS channel, and this is normally going to be an 802.11 Action Message telling the clients what to do.

MLO, like other features, should be fairly transparent in my opinion - sadly, there are complications around auth, mesh, and a bunch of other things that make MLO an extra level of complicated...

 

[portets]

The MLO implementations are still very much in flux due to requirements of the component bands - e.g. 6GHz requires WPA3, where 2.4 and 5GHz do not...

MLO, like other features, should be fairly transparent in my opinion - sadly, there are complications around auth, mesh, and a bunch of other things that make MLO an extra level of complicated...

Ah so basically I'm asking this question too early. I found a Qualcomm whitepaper talking about MLO negating DFS channel switching latency and disconnection issues. I'm unsure if that'll be true of all Wi-Fi 7 devices or just certain Qualcomm chips.

For anyone reading this in the future, it appears MRU and preamble puncturing will be coming to all Asus Wi-Fi 7 devices based on some posts from Asus China I found. Including ones lacking the 6ghz band like the RT-BE88U. Likely in late 2024 or 2025. This means if you use a 5Ghz channel that's non-DFS but overlaps into the DFS spectrum(like say channel 36 set at 160Mhz), the router will intelligently cut out the DFS portion when sensing interference, seamlessly reducing you to 80Mhz with no channel drops or lost packets or latency of any kind. I'm unsure what would happen if using entirely DFS spectrum, like channel 100. This is where I'm hoping MLO comes in, seamlessly dropping you just to 2.4Ghz-only temporarily.

 

[sfx2000]

Pretty much - I think the QC whitepaper is more about level-setting expectations perhaps to the the pros/cons of MLO - it's a complex topic...

In 5Ghz/2.4 combo - for example, if the control channel is in a non-DFS block, it should be transparent if one is running 160MHz channels, as one just disables the supplementals for the required clearance time if the DFS recheck passes - much like what we see in HT mode for 2.4 and wide channels if we get a CCA hit from an overlapping neighbor AP/BSS...

Mesh will offer some interesting scenarios where MLO could get into a situation where one has 2.4 on Node1 and 5 (or 6) on Node 2 - how to manage things there where the device initially camps on node1, but RF conditions trigger the upper band client connection ID to transition to node2...

That along with connection load balancing and airtime management - it'll be interesting times for sure