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

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

#91

Post by ButlerianJihad »

blfr wrote: post #33

It's the first because we finally caught up on speed. We have it better than I imagined possible. Last year, I saw 1600 Mbit/s from the Internet at a normie's place with an ISP-provided router. Still have a cat 6 cable around the living room but haven't used it in the last 2 years. Not exactly wifi but I routinely get 600-800 Mbit on 5g networks in crowded areas.

A few years ago, for some reason my ISP began to screw up my WiFi. Tech support could not help; I had at least two devices showing the same symptoms; at one point I even shut down my home connection out of frustration. I could only think of two possibilities: that there had been some kind of security event that tripped their security AI and was blocking my WiFi (and inexplicably leaving all Ethernet connections unhindered.) Second possibility: they were deliberately (but deniably) messing with my WiFi access at home so that I would use more mobile data. In fact a salesman told me that would be a logical move. Except it was affecting my Chromebook too.

So my only choice was to purchase a third-party router/WiFi. I did not want to make the network more complex, but if my ISP router couldn't provide WiFi, it would need to happen.

So now I have a working WiFi 7 router, and my ISP's device is permanently in Bridge Mode. I went to the hardware store and purchased a bunch of little cable staples, and I nailed up an Ethernet cable from the router to the bedroom. There are 3 desk positions in here that can be reached by Ethernet cable.

Unfortunately, if I am out on the balcony, I normally need to use WiFi, because I can't fully shut the door when a cable is snaking out of it. Also, I picked up a little USB-C-Ethernet dongle for my phone, if worse comes to worst. The bandwidth is great; besides, my downstream is only 100Mbps, so who needs overpowered LAN bandwidth?

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

#92

Post by moffkalast »

abhinavk wrote: post #43
avhception wrote: post #23

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…

Ensure your network has no <WiFi6 devices.

Things you can say in 2062, not 2026.

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

#93

Post by sandworm101 »

>> But with Wi-Fi 7 reaching a maximum theoretical throughput of 23Gbit per band

No. Just no. That speed is only possible when standing at a Nevada test range, in late spring, on a ladder, holding the router above your head, with a black cat sitting on your left shoulder. Any minor change from those parameters and your speeds will be 30% the theoretical maximum ... maybe 50% if you can only find a grey cat.

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

#94

Post by euduhdhbene »

BlackRabbit1 wrote: post #59
euduhdhbene wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was recently made aware of WiFi HaLow. Official standard, ranges into the hundreds of meters. Speed suffers at long ranges of course, but still respectable (50-100kbs). Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11ah

Difficult within the EU due to ISM limits. Maybe ok for your garden camera where the authorities just don't care. But no go for any industrial usage.

We have devices sending telemetry and occasional OTA updates without urgency (if it takes a few hours to get it over it’s not a problem).

If you need consistent MB range traffic for cameras I wouldn’t advise it but for low (5kbs) traffic it can be attractive. A few thousand bits can encode quite a bit of information. Don’t be fooled by the “kbs”.

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

#95

Post by Razengan »

Are we not yet at a point where we could have a truly global network that uses multiple technologies and mediums to keep a user always connected?

Like seamlessly switching between Wi-Fi, nG, Bluetooth, satellite, pigeons, cans-and-wire.. and still having a stable global address? (that you could change later of course)

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

#96

Post by PaulKeeble »

bjackman wrote: post #41

I recently upgraded from a WiFi 5 router to a WiFi 7 one, and my bandwidth increase was a grand 0% (that's ok though I was actually just sick of my old router's shitty UI!) There is about 10m and a brick wall between my AP and my desk so yeah, a fancy new MCS that can theoretically deliver 25Gbps was just never gonna be useful to me. Also I've worked on (other non-WiFi) 802.11 products where our competitive edge was…

I saw a really good improvement through a floor for a device that has wifi 7 radio. Went from about 300mbps to 2000mbps. Going from 5Ghz 80Mhz channel to 6Ghz and 320Mhz was a big change. What has not worked with wifi 7 is MLO, openWRT doesn't really support it very well yet and neither did the original firmware but I have no one on 6ghz within range so its been stable and performant.

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

#98

Post by metek »

euduhdhbene wrote: post #94
BlackRabbit1 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Difficult within the EU due to ISM limits. Maybe ok for your garden camera where the authorities just don't care. But no go for any industrial usage.

We have devices sending telemetry and occasional OTA updates without urgency (if it takes a few hours to get it over it’s not a problem). If you need consistent MB range traffic for cameras I wouldn’t advise it but for low (5kbs) traffic it can be attractive. A few thousand bits can encode quite a bit of information. Don’t be fooled by the “kbs”.

You can do quite a lot with a few MB. Don't tell every React behemoth on the web that we know this trick.

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

#99

Post by gumby »

avhception wrote: post #23

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…

I hadn’t realised that DECT is still in use. It was pretty good in its heyday so glad it’s survived.

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

#100

Post by namibj »

avhception wrote: post #23

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…

Yeah you can run stuff through DECT I'm not sure what handheld suitable gateway you'd use and strap to the holster of the associated scanner, but otherwise...

That said, in theory at the level you're asking for it'd be acceptable to run the system as a single frequency network by using the AP locations as remote radio heads and just not telling the handhelds that there are multiple APs in listening range.

I'd probably aim for using the wifi support mechanisms to dynamically fake nearby APs as "mimo antennas" from the POV of the handheld, but not doing so would also suffice, just transmitting from the one AP that's nearest to the specific handheld/client would already basically do the trick and could probably run with hacked firmware on commodity AP hardware basically turning the entire setup into a soft-MAC with that very software juggling the army of radios.

The setup btw. would not have the clients aware they're dealing with more than one radio on the other side.

You could be forced to ask/ping the client from multiple APs one after another if you've not heard from it in a while and it moved, but otherwise, you just rely on hearing it from multiple APs and tracking it so you don't have to make APs across the facility speak up and risk interrupting other clients that try to get a word in.

Oh, and ban by building ordinance usage of any other Wi-Fi on the channel your doing this on, or that's gonna eventually get you problems with congestion.

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