WiFi 7 has been certified.

[Tech9]

You said you were interested about 320mhz so I just answered.

Usable range to a client obviously, not another router.

 

[glens]

Recall that my 40 year career has been in wireless across many flavors as a design and product development engineer..

I am not even remotely at your level.

Haha! Ask anybody "on the floor" about what the engineers are "good for"!

(From someone who's seen "both sides" through the years.)

 

[Itsjustmd15]

Usable range to a client obviously, not another router.

My iPhone, Fold, and Pixel 6 Pro I mentioned don't count? Is that because they're not connected at 320mhz? Basically you just want to see a client that supports connecting at the full 320mhz to see if the range drops off even more than a device connected at less than that. You're not concerned with clients connected to a router broadcasting at 320mhz. I think I've got it now.

 

[Tech9]

if the range drops off even more

Yes, curious how it is going to work. The higher the frequency the less wall penetration. The wider the channel the worse SNR ratio. The range will drop for sure. You have observed your 6GHz signal drops significantly behind a single wall. My realistic expectations for Wi-Fi 7 and 320MHz wide channel: 1) it will be usable in the same room only; 2) most client manufacturers won't bother supporting it.

 

[Itsjustmd15]

My realistic expectations for Wi-Fi 7 and 320MHz wide channel: 1) it will be usable in the same room only; 2) most client manufacturers won't bother supporting it.

Well those gaming motherboards that were coming out with only a BE202 support what you're saying.

I personally think the biggest benefit of 320mhz is for a wireless backhaul in mesh systems. Average consumer may get something like an Eero Max 7 that you just plug up and forget it and be able to get better speeds. Manufacturers will probably make a killing off selling stuff like that to people who really have no clue about Wi-Fi.

If you've got to be in the same room for clients that are 320mhz, might as well just use ethernet. It might not be cost effective to use unless you have a gaming laptop or desktop that you're just gonna use in the same room and want to use as few wires as possible.

 

[sfx2000]

Yes, curious how it is going to work. The higher the frequency the less wall penetration. The wider the channel the worse SNR ratio. The range will drop for sure. You have observed your 6GHz signal drops significantly behind a single wall. My realistic expectations for Wi-Fi 7 and 320MHz wide channel: 1) it will be usable in the same room only; 2) most client manufacturers won't bother supporting it.

Every time one doubles the bandwidth, one loses 3 dB of Rx sensitivity...

So going from 20 to 40 - you're effectively cutting things in half - but that ok...

Going from 80 to 160 - that's a hit, and we've seen subjective comments around that - double that again, one gets into an odd place where like @Tech9 mentions, you'll likely be in the same room...

That being said - AC/AX/BE do have the capability to dynamically adjust things based on the link conditions...

 

[Tech9]

I personally think the biggest benefit...

Wi-Fi standards become a marketing tool. The last kind of honest specification was Wi-Fi 4. It moved to 5GHz, supported 40MHz wide channels, users could actually see 300Mbps with their devices (mostly 2-stream) or 1/2 of the claimed maximum 600Mbps (4 streams). Than Wi-Fi 5(w2) arrived, 8 streams support, 160MHz wide channels... up to 6.9Gbps! We've got 866Mbps to most common 2-stream 80MHz support client or down to 1/8 of the "possible" speed. Then Wi-Fi 6(e) arrived, more 160MHz support, 6GHz band... up to 9.6Gbps! We've got 1200Mbps to common 2-stream 80MHz support client and very few used 6GHz or again about 1/8 if "possible" speed. Now Wi-Fi 7 comes up... up to 46Gbps! What a common Wi-Fi 7 client will be capable of? If 1/8 again that's around 6Gbps... we'll be cut down to >1/10 ratio this time.

Every time one doubles the bandwidth, one loses 3 dB of Rx sensitivity...

Indeed. And if we continue like this... remember what happened to 802.11ad?

 

[sfx2000]

But yesterday's absolute limits are regularly surpassed with each progress steps tech makes. While that doesn't change the Shannon limit, it does change the absolute possible with enough progress.

RF and Baseband engineers - they will do their very best to push those limits, and that's great!

I get a bit concerned as Marketeers will take those absolute numbers and put that on the box - setting expectations that can hardly be reached in normal use cases...

Crazy thing - one could actually drop an 80 MHz channel in the 2.4GHz band - but nobody is going to do it for WiFi

 

[Tech9]

Marketeers will take those absolute numbers

Happening already.

30Gbps home router. If you want one - available.

 

[sfx2000]

30Gbps home router. If you want one

Well, at least it can stream 4K Netflix perhaps...

Of course, that does depend on the WAN side.

 

[Itsjustmd15]

Wi-Fi standards become a marketing tool.

Yep, I believe it. It's all about money. I just buy what works for me. I don't particularly care what they call it. Only way to get faster speeds for my situation was to buy the newer units. Maybe it's all due to more processing power and nothing to do with the the newer standard. Unfortunately, upgrading was the only way to get it. Same for the Eero. Easy to find reviews that compare speed with it to their past routers and it's faster. Whatever it's from, I'm just glad things are getting faster.

Do you think an Asus wifi 6E router would perform the same as an Asus wifi 7 router if the SOCs were equal? I'm just curious.

 

[RMerlin]

Do you think an Asus wifi 6E router would perform the same as an Asus wifi 7 router if the SOCs were equal? I'm just curious.

They are not. Different CPU, and also different wifi radios, so you cannot speculate on performance unless someone actually benchmarked it.

 

[iwod]

I am expecting WiFi 7 to be an improved or refined WiFi 6E with more features. Just like WiFI 6E was a bit like the 2nd gen of WiFI 6.

I am hoping we finally see working OFDMA. MLO will likely only be usable with WiFi 8. BTW is MLO a mandatory feature for WiFi 7?

I mean china are already selling WiFi 7 router for as little as $30......( Without 6Ghz support since they dont have 6Ghz spectrum approval )

 

[RMerlin]

I am expecting WiFi 7 to be an improved or refined WiFi 6E with more features. Just like WiFI 6E was a bit like the 2nd gen of WiFI 6.

Wifi 6E was basically just Wifi 6, but it opened the 6 GHz band to it.

Wifi 7 however introduces a number of major changes, more like Wifi 6 did over Wifi 5.

 

[pirx73]

Happening already.

View attachment 55675

30Gbps home router. If you want one - available.

Well even for my first ASUS router - N66U, remember it had "900Mbps"?
Achieved how? 3 antennas, 150Mbps theoretical maximum each, so 3x150Mbps=450Mbps. Plus it has 5GHz band - another 450Mbps. Put them both together - 900Mbps!
Theoretically you can achieve it but only by connecting two N66Us to each other in point-to-point wireless bridge mode where both routers use all available capacity on both bands to talk directly to each other and no one else.
So, "truth but from only a certain point of view" so to speak...

 

[Tech9]

Theoretically you can achieve it

With the routers in your example - you actually can’t. They can’t combine two bands for the same data transfer. Anyway, from up to 600Mbps (4-stream) on 5GHz we could get 300-450Mbps in real life. That’s 50-75% of advertised Wi-Fi 4 speed. What % we are going to get from Wi-Fi 7 with up to 46Gbps advertised speed?

 

[RMerlin]

With the routers in your example - you actually can’t. They can’t combine two bands for the same data transfer. Anyway, from up to 600Mbps (4-stream) on 5GHz we could get 300-450Mbps in real life. That’s 50-75% of advertised Wi-Fi 4 speed. What % we are going to get from Wi-Fi 7 with up to 46Gbps advertised speed?

Wifi efficiency has improved over the years. That's why my laptop with a 2400 Mbps link can reach ~2 Gbps of throughput using Wifi 6e.

 

[Tech9]

We are getting something faster, but also much slower than advertised speeds. What was Wi-Fi 6 capable of on paper, 9.6Gbps?

 

[RMerlin]

We are getting something faster, but also much slower than advertised speeds. What was Wi-Fi 6 capable of on paper, 9.6Gbps?

600Mbps per stream, at 80 MHz, for the 5/6 GHz bands. The standard support up to 8 streams if I remember correctly, and you can also go up to 160 MHz. So, 9.6 Gbps indeed, for the link rate.

Throughput will indeed still be lower than that, except that the overhead is no longer as bad as the the 50-75% range we used to experience in the Wifi 4 era. I don`t know if Wifi 7 improves even further in that area.

 

[Tech9]

Exactly. From link rates alone we were getting 300/450 of 600, then 1200/2400 of 9600, now we are hoping for up to 5800 from 46000. The ratio of real vs advertised speeds is getting worse. The usable range is shrinking. The reason I said above the marketing is actually getting the most benefit from newer Wi-Fi standards.