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Wi-Fi 8 is the first wireless upgrade in years that isn't chasing speed

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61–70 of 295 posts

Re: Wi-Fi 8 is the first wireless upgrade in years that isn't chasing speed

#61

We need reliable, real-world ~20mbit/s for our warehouse scanners, not 382722 theoretical Gbit/s 5cm from the access point. And roaming that works instead of stupid clients clinging to somewhere or being thrown into a reconnect loop when the AP tries to get them to roam. I know this is theoretically possible today. But in the real world, I have inherited the setup, so AP locations are fixed for now, clients are some…

DECT or DECT-NR+? I do kind of want to play with this.

Any DECT (NR) stuff is super expensive if you build embedded software/hardware for it. It's basically Nordic-only.

Re: Wi-Fi 8 is the first wireless upgrade in years that isn't chasing speed

#62

We need reliable, real-world ~20mbit/s for our warehouse scanners, not 382722 theoretical Gbit/s 5cm from the access point. And roaming that works instead of stupid clients clinging to somewhere or being thrown into a reconnect loop when the AP tries to get them to roam. I know this is theoretically possible today. But in the real world, I have inherited the setup, so AP locations are fixed for now, clients are some…

Warehouses, factories, etc need private 5G, not Wi-Fi.

Re: Wi-Fi 8 is the first wireless upgrade in years that isn't chasing speed

#63

We need reliable, real-world ~20mbit/s for our warehouse scanners, not 382722 theoretical Gbit/s 5cm from the access point. And roaming that works instead of stupid clients clinging to somewhere or being thrown into a reconnect loop when the AP tries to get them to roam. I know this is theoretically possible today. But in the real world, I have inherited the setup, so AP locations are fixed for now, clients are some…

> or being thrown into a reconnect loop when the AP tries to get them to roam The AP does not have visibility into what the client actually sees, and no, a coordinator that has knowledge what the APs see isn't that much better. Imagine a situation with two APs and a client being in the middle of the two in a RF-impeded situation (i.e. your typical office building). AP1 may "hear" the client better (i.e. it gets a hig…

How much money do you have? Nokia's Centralized RAN basically solves for cellphones by not choosing between AP1 and AP2. The device yells out a packet, both radios hear it, and the signals are combined in baseband processing. Wifi 8 doesn't quite do this, maybe 9's gonna have it. Or the patents run out and the telecom networks cooperate and everything gets a cell modem.

Re: Wi-Fi 8 is the first wireless upgrade in years that isn't chasing speed

#65

We need reliable, real-world ~20mbit/s for our warehouse scanners, not 382722 theoretical Gbit/s 5cm from the access point. And roaming that works instead of stupid clients clinging to somewhere or being thrown into a reconnect loop when the AP tries to get them to roam. I know this is theoretically possible today. But in the real world, I have inherited the setup, so AP locations are fixed for now, clients are some…

Warehouses, factories, etc need private 5G, not Wi-Fi.

Industrial 5G is super expensive. Also almost impossible to find a vendor that offers all the nice protocol features (Low Latency, native Ethernet tunneling, etc.) in their infrastructure.

Re: Wi-Fi 8 is the first wireless upgrade in years that isn't chasing speed

#66

Oh no. I haven't even upgraded to WiFi 7 yet!

Not missing much. I feel like it's in many ways misguided. 6ghz ftw because 5ghz penetrates too much and causes noisy neighbor problems. Well, from my experience, 6ghz doesn't penetrate at -all-. So unless you live in a barndo or studio apartment, it's mostly an exercise in frustration.

Re: Wi-Fi 8 is the first wireless upgrade in years that isn't chasing speed

#67
In typical WiFi fashion, for all the WIFi 8 features to working perfectly and debugged we have to wait for WiFi 9 [1]. This was true with WiFi 5, WiFi 6 and WiFI 7.

Unfortunately IMO WiFi router brand selection is getting increasingly small. I have no issue or problem with using UniFI myself. But it is not something I could recommend to family and friends as they don't know how to set it up. Eero is not available to much of the world outside US. I just wish Apple revive its AirPort Express business.

[1] https://www.nokia.com/blog/advancing-connectivity-with-wi-fi...

Re: Wi-Fi 8 is the first wireless upgrade in years that isn't chasing speed

#69
post #3

The peak-speed arms race stopped being interesting to me a while ago. I don't need 20+ Gbit/s theoretical Wi-Fi. I need the connection to stay boring when I'm at the edge of coverage or the neighbours are hammering the same spectrum. The 95th-percentile latency and packet-loss targets here seem much more meaningful than another 2x headline speed increase. My only scepticism is how much of this survives real consumer…

My neighbor thinks that they can increase their 100Mbps ISP speed by having 5 or 6 access points at 2.4GHz in their 1400sq ft (~140m2) apartment. There’s so much interference that the package dropout rate is around 40% at 2.4GHz usually.

Having a AP in every room can be as significant boost if the walls impede the signal a lot. In fact we have one wall which is especially bad. Stand in front of it or next to it and reception from the front of the house is decent. Take one step back behind the wall and signal drops to less than 10%.

So having the 5-6 AP is not the problem, then shouting at max power is the problem. Especially “gaming” routers tend to do this.

Re: Wi-Fi 8 is the first wireless upgrade in years that isn't chasing speed

#70
post #56
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And actually debugging this unless you have a bunch of enterprise level kit, or know exactly what the failure you’re looking for is is absolutely impossible

I used Wireless Diagnostics.app on macOS ("Scan" window) and looked for the 2.4 GHz radio's MAC address which was nowhere to be found. But yeah, you have to have a hunch.

Thanks - I’ll try this. I have a problem where my kindle only downloads books in one room (but I can make purchases in any), and I’m pretty sure that it’s connecting to a different AP and doing something stupid in the process
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