Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

xda-developers.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 295 posts

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

#121

Post by Marsymars »

robertlagrant wrote: post #40
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.

It's 2026 and I'm running more cat-6 in my home to all my static devices. My theory is using wires lowers wireless contention, leaving more WiFi for the mobile devices.

I did this five years ago, and it's been great. My wired access points are still Wi-Fi 6 and I've got no inclination to upgrade them yet, connectivity has been near-bulletproof.

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

#122

Post by bordercontrol »

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…

Try OpenWRT if you want a good OS for routers. No need to change hardware.

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

#123

Post by bjackman »

bordercontrol wrote: post #122
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…

Try OpenWRT if you want a good OS for routers. No need to change hardware.

Yeah I was considering this actually, but then I realised that I really want a working LAN 100.0% of the time, so I'd only go tinker mode if I had a backup. So I was gonna be buying a router regardless.

Now I have a Ubiquiti one, it's antithetical to my DIY instincts but I think I'm OK with my router being one of the proprietary appliances in my life.

Plus now the wired section of my LAN is really fast.

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

#124

Post by bjackman »

rr808 wrote: post #102
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…

Powerline networking is worth trying for this too.

Yeah I have tried it! It beats WiFi to some rooms, but to my office it's very slow.

You would never be able to predict this, which is an unfortunate thing about powerline IMO. You just have to buy the modems and see how they perform on your particular wiring.

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

#125

Post by bjackman »

beAbU wrote: post #106
rr808 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Powerline networking is worth trying for this too.

Do you have personal success using powerline ethernet? I tried it once and it was utter shit. A very expensive "up to 1000mbps" kit maxed out at ~200 when both devices were plugged into the same outlet. It just got worse with distance.

(Repeating myself coz I saw this after writing my sibling comment..)

It's highly variable in my experience. I've had it work pretty well in some situations and barely at all in others.

I have certainly never got 1000mbps. I think I have got 300 at best. In my office I can only get about 50 even though it works pretty well in other parts of the same small apartment.

... Which is kinda annoying coz they aren't really all that cheap for something you have to just buy and then find out later if it actually works!

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

#126

Post by bordercontrol »

bjackman wrote: post #123
bordercontrol wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try OpenWRT if you want a good OS for routers. No need to change hardware.

Yeah I was considering this actually, but then I realised that I really want a working LAN 100.0% of the time, so I'd only go tinker mode if I had a backup. So I was gonna be buying a router regardless. Now I have a Ubiquiti one, it's antithetical to my DIY instincts but I think I'm OK with my router being one of the proprietary appliances in my life. Plus now the wired section of my LAN is really fast.

Honestly, you got me on this one. I probably break my OpenWRT setup every three months or so on average.

I recently decided to stop running anything too fancy on it and keep the router itself simple: just secure, robust networking. All the tinkering has moved to chained network VMs in QubesOS instead.

It was definitely nice having different LAN ports behave differently, multiple VPNs, policy-based routing, filtering, monitoring, and all that. But yeah, every extra thing I add is another chance to break the whole network.

All that said, I could never imagine going back from OpenWRT. The answer to basically any networking idea is always “yes.” There are pretty much no limits. I especially like that it doesn’t try to hide networking terminology or abstract everything away. You really get to understand what you’re actually doing and can choose the exact configuration you need, down to the smallest detail. Everything is exposed.

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

#127

Post by euduhdhbene »

Neikius wrote: post #112
moffkalast wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dead outside the US unfortunately, worse range than regular wifi due to being strangled by lower channel width and ridicolously low power limits. The two bulky HaLowLink routers are the only off the shelf thing with support for it, it's nonexistent as a wifi standard. I was so excited when I discovered it a few months back after struggling for years to set up reliable wifi for outdoor robotics, only to realize we can…

LoRa is not fast enough?

Don’t know about the parent, but I found LoRa adequate for (tiny) payloads (sensor data and such) but OTA updates are a PITA without some alternative channel. Speeds are measured in bytes / sec.

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

#129

Post by LoganDark »

SweetSoftPillow wrote: post #71
LoganDark wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you're talking about throughput aggregation, which indeed no device currently supports. Not even Apple's most recent devices have any sign of it, except that M5 Pro/Max MacBook Pro models are tested for simultaneous transmission on 2.4+5GHz and 2.4+6GHz: https://mrncciew.com/2026/03/17/macbook-pro-m5-wi-fi-7-missi...

> which indeed no device currently supports Aren't devices with Intel Wi-Fi 7 BE200/BE202 are supporting that? As well as latest Samsung phones?

Being connected to multiple frequencies simultaneously is one thing. Actually using multiple of the links in parallel to increase speeds has not really been seen in practice yet. That is called STR (Simultaneous Transmit/Receive; what I called "throughput aggregation" above), which requires MLMR (Multi-Link Multi-Radio), which almost nothing that supports MLO has right now. Maybe some bleeding-edge mesh networks are doing it, and Ubiquiti has one or two products that does it, but you basically won't see it anywhere else and especially not in client devices yet. Intel BE200/BE202 does not actually perform throughput aggregation, it connects to multiple frequencies and then uses only the best of them (eMLSR, or "Enhanced Multi-Link Single Radio").

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

#130

Post by Neywiny »

beAbU wrote: post #106
rr808 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Powerline networking is worth trying for this too.

Do you have personal success using powerline ethernet? I tried it once and it was utter shit. A very expensive "up to 1000mbps" kit maxed out at ~200 when both devices were plugged into the same outlet. It just got worse with distance.

Just a bit of side opinion working rf and some electrical, and fully understand if that was the best you could get, but some outlets are wired on different circuits. Also, some rf devices get overloaded if you're too close and that can degrade performance. Not saying that's definitively what happened, but you could have been either too close or further than you thought
Post reply on HN