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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

#251

Post by vlan0 »

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 it sucks. But it will always be a dance. And the folks that make the clients will always choose “best effort”. Sadly, we can only reduce clients decision so far before things break

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

#252

Post by kalleboo »

dragontamer wrote: post #224
jychang wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real reason why 5G and Wifi are separate is because one is licensed spectrum, and the other is unlicensed spectrum. I'm not talking about legal differences- laws can always be changed- but rather how bandwidth is allocated. The biggest benefits of cellular comes from: Verizon owns/controls channel ↓ gNB decides: "You transmit here." "You transmit here." "You get 20 MHz." "You get these time slots." Wifi needs to…

And furthermore, the unlicensed spectrum problem is complex. "Anyone transmitting" includes Bluetooth devices, and Zigbee, and many other protocols that will never even try to follow the 802.11 spec.

> many other protocols that will never even try to follow the 802.11 spec

Such as microwave ovens (although my microwave oven does indeed follow the 802.11 spec)

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

#253

Post by runjake »

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…

Your first paragraph is possible now with most enterprise 802.11ac equipment (Cisco, Aruba, Mist, Ruckus, etc) but it needs to be properly designed, placed, and configured.

DECT is a different frequency and is much less vulnerable to nearby metal, backscatter and so on.

You need to get someone in there who is competent at wi-fi design (I am only marginally so, but I’ve done a lot of learning by failing)

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

#254

Post by riobard »

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…

> because all those cheap smart home things like roku sticks and pet feeders and so on are built for cost and a decent 5Ghz chip is just too much to ask.

Cost certainly is the primary factor in the decision, but you definitely want those low-bandwidth but long-range devices OFF your precious 5GHz band.

Unless you want the same crappy experience of 2.4GHz band in 5GHz.

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

#255

Post by duskwuff »

eigen wrote: post #213
ponector wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can get an additional phone with a screen, 5g radio, ram and everything for $150. An additional radio should not raise the price for another 300.

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.

In many phones, some of the radio hardware is integrated into the SoC. Adding a second, independent radio is a larger engineering task.

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

#256

Post by flowerthoughts »

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.

Thinking of installing cameras and need power, so at least PoE seems like a proper reason to run Cat 6 in 2026. Otherwise, I'd just invent a 12/24/48V power protocol and still having to do per-device WiFi setup.

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

#257

Post by fithisux »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #116

Stop chasing everything. Stop and give me true open source repos for the Wi-Fi chips and drivers so the already well-established community can care for my router for the next 20 years. Force this into the spec. https://wireless.docs.kernel.org/en/latest/en/users/drivers....

WiFi should be like Bluetooth. One stack with generic drivers.

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

#258

Post by mastermage »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #210
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.

The EU's ISM limits are trash. Really there should be a world wide 900-1000MHz ISM band.

Good luck trying to get the 200 ish countries governments on agreeing.

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

#259

Post by avhception »

burner420042 wrote: post #245
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 steppi…

I have already limited the "warehouse" SSID to 2.4GHz, 20MHz channel size and made an optimized channel plan that keeps the neighboring APs on channels manually chosen for minimum overlap. Anything else? Speed stepping? Reducing the wifi standard looses features like roaming hints and stuff like that, no?

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

#260

Post by avhception »

teleforce wrote: post #109
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…

Perhaps you can try DECT NR+ the new reincarnation of DECT and also backward compatible with the original DECT [1]. It can also do roaming. It's under 5G standard but for non-cellular connectivity that means you can use it without base-station like Wi-Fi direct. It's geared toward IoT but its data rates are from 1 Mbps up to 1.3 Gbps depending on the operating frequency and the type of modulation being used [2]. [1]…

That sounds really interesting! Any concrete products for end users? Seems mostly chips and specs so far
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