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

241–250 of 295 posts

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

#241

Post by amluto »

jychang wrote: post #212
kjellsbells wrote: post #202

Having WiFi 8 (or even 7) on your access point is only really useful if you have a population of clients that can use the features it offers. I regularly sample the devices attached to residential wifi routers and the facts are grim: in a house of 40+ devices, two can do wifi 7, about 10% can do 6Ghz, 50 to 60% can do 5GHz but not 6GHz, and a core rump of 50% of the devices are stuck on 2.4GHz. I suspect this is beca…

Even more important: I hope Wifi 8 makes all the good stuff MANDATORY even if it's expensive! For example, Wifi 7 doesn't make actually useful MLO mandatory. So most wifi router manufacturers - even Ubiquiti - don't implement it! What's the point of adding something to the standard if it's optional. Ideally, the standards body should make expensive stuff mandatory- then prices will come down as soon as everyone is bu…

Ubiquiti has a half-hearted MLO implementation with AFAICT utterly silly restrictions on WPA mode.

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

#242

Post by ValdikSS »

Razengan wrote: post #95

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)

Google/IETF works on that with QUIC multipath.

https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-ietf-quic-multipath/

> Last updated 2026-08-13

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

#243

Post by Dylan16807 »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #62
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…

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

Wi-Fi should be able to do it. Dense 5G uses similar bands after all and they'll go through a couple walls.

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

#244

Post by eigen »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #235
eigen wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume for something like a phone these things are non-linear. going from 2 PCIe lanes (nand, radios) to 3 (another radio) may cause an SOC to jump from entry-level to mid-level, larger PCB and increased layer count, more antenna for simultaneous use, etc. so its not just the cost of the chip but all the secondary effects.

A non-linear cost for a small fraction of the phone. A slightly larger PCB with two more layers is about twice the price for the PCB, more antennas is a couple dollars, a one lane PCIe switch is a few dollars if that's cheaper than upgrading your SOC. And if it shrinks your battery 10% you save money on that part. I blame niche-ness far more than the actual design and production costs. Edit: fixed the pcb wording

> PCIe switch is a few dollars if that's cheaper than upgrading your SOC

perhaps you're more familiar with these options than I am, but I see 4 lane PCIe switches are 10x10 mm and maybe they are a few dollars but take more board space, new/larger power supplies, etc so it seems that the costs are more than just a few dollar PCIe switch chip. not sure how many phone PCBs can handle additional 100 mm2 but definitely looking forward to learning more.

[1] https://www.diodes.com/products/connectivity/pcie-packet-swi...

add to the antennas are likely based on best/cheapest efficiency for the available area, then additional antenna would reduce the area for each and require more effort/cost.

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

#245

Post by burner420042 »

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 understand the question and the environment you're alluding to re RF noise and AP distance from clients, etc. in a warehouse environment.

By default clients will always try to connect at the highest wifi standard and link rate, regardless of that connection type's qos level.

I've not seen an AP setup where the wifi standard (a, b, g, N, 5, 7, ...), channel size (20 vs 40mhz), channel, and in some cases speed stepping, couldn't be forced at the AP.

If you force the APs to only broadcast G, each on a specific channel, (literally just an example for discussion) the clients will connect that way if the device radio supports it,while re-using existing auth credentials. No client-side changes are necessary here and thus easy to test. I've encountered device radios that are only 5GHz, but that'd be clear in your testing. Forced AP settings do wonders for wireless networks.

Regarding user's opinions, they may claim to need the latest and greatest but in real life if their network use only needs megabits and the connection type satisfies that, they don't notice. And you don't tell them. :-)

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

#246

Post by pseudohadamard »

BatteryMountain wrote: post #150
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…

Here's another one for you: today I found out that my dual-sim android phone has a single radio that is shared between the two sims. So when you are on a call, the 4G/5G doesn't work on the other sim, likewise, sometimes the the voice sim is unavailable while the other sim engaged with 4G/5G things... which is just stupid. Can't they just add two radios/chips (like many wifi AP's....)? So the whole setup on a consume…

It depends on the phone. The rule of thumb in the past for typical dual-SIM phones was nG on the first SIM, n-1G on the second. Then, after you encounter that for the first time, you make sure that your next phone has a baseband that supports nG on both SIMs, although with 5G it's become a bit blurred, typically 5+4 or 4+4, not that that makes any difference (5 vs 4 I mean).

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

#247

Post by rolandog »

mytailorisrich wrote: post #62
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…

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

Or at least prevent WiFi sensing tracking

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

#248

Post by pseudohadamard »

tecleandor wrote: post #165
UltraSane wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Voice is normally done using VoLTE now.

Yep, although (at least in my experience) it's not enabled by default. I also learnt about VoWiFi (also called "WiFi Calling") that allows you using WiFi for calling, including when you're abroad or you don't even have phone signal. Support for VoWiFi is a bit weird. Some operators don't allow it outside of your region (for example, the EU), some others will allow it and even bill you as if it were a local call made…

VoLTE was an advertising feature for a long time. Major carriers here were advertising it as active and available for at least a year before it was actually available.

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

#249

Post by amluto »

InvaderFizz wrote: post #27
manmal wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The upgrade to 6E was a big jump in my network (Wifi7 Unifi Wall AP). On the same spot, the M3 MacBook (6E) has basically zero lag over VNC, while the M1 MacBook (6) has a noticeable lag. It’s a bit mind blowing how big the difference is.

That is likely because of AWDL and your WiFi card doing channel hopping to listen between packets. Set your channels to 6/149/37 and the lag will probably vanish. Exactly because of this, I only run those channels, even across multiple APs. In Europe, you may need to use 44 instead of 149. There is currently no good way to keep AWDL off other than a script that just turns it off every 200ms, because of course Apple.…

My favorite thing about AWDL is that AirDrop barely even works between Apple devices that are right next to each other.

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

#250

Post by thomastjeffery »

lucb1e wrote: post #234
thomastjeffery wrote: post #186

I recently had to change from wpa_supplicant to iwd to get around the 200 access point search limit. It would be nice to have fewer than 200 access points in range..

My phone uses wpa_supplicant v2.10-devel-11 (from late 2021 I think) and I see in NeoStumbler that the record is at 227 access points (from this vantage point: https://osm.org/go/0GAnN~St0?m ) The query for anyone else who has that app and is curious: > .he on > select reportId, count(id) as c from WifiAccessPointEntity group by reportId order by c desc limit 10; reportId|c 123|227 > select * from PositionEntity wher…

It's ostensibly a configurable variable (bss_max_count). I bet your phone's system has done so. I'm talking about my laptop and NixOS, and I was definitely getting limited to 200.
Post reply on HN