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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

#151

Post by gpt5 »

cogman10 wrote: post #145
smashed wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait till you see the number of actual chip vendors. There is about 3.. Broadcom, Qualcomm and MediaTek. Together they control I believe 100% of wifi chips used in routers and APs. Often it's sold as a package / system on chip so it's also the main cpu. On the client side there is a little bit more competition but not much.

Client side don't you just add Realtek and Intel? I don't think almost anyone else does wifi chips.

Apple makes their own connectivity chips. It was a big blow for Qualcomm.

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

#152

Post by Zambyte »

tetrisgm wrote: post #68

Less latency is excellent news. This is the main reason why gamers still prefer Ethernet.

Consistent latency is generally more important for gaming than low latency. If I had to pick between a baseline of 8ms but with enough spikes to > 200ms to bring the average to 30ms, or a consistent 90ms with no spikes or dips, I would certainly choose the latter.

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

#153

Post by martinald »

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…

What kind of WiFi 7? (There are a lot that don't have 6GHz support).

You should get far better performance on 6GHz, though there are harsh power limits in most countries with various ways to enable it which may complicate things. But if you can get full power on 6GHz it should reach 10m no issues at all, and with 320MHz should be at least twice as fast.

If you can also get MLO working (which is not simple) you'd be able to bond another band with it.

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

#154

Post by cogman10 »

smashed wrote: post #149
cogman10 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Client side don't you just add Realtek and Intel? I don't think almost anyone else does wifi chips.

Yup. I might have forgotten Marvell in the list but yes, that is pretty much it. I am also not sure of their exact market shares but I would suspect one or two are probably steering the majority of the "standards". I'd suspect Broadcom and Qualcomm to have the most influence.

I believe Intel is also a pretty prominent member in the standards committee. Mostly for historic reasons as I don't think they have too much market share outside of PC/laptop wifi modules.

But I agree, Broadcom and Qualcomm are the heavy hitters.

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

#155

Post by BatteryMountain »

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....

Even Intel is doing a poor job with firmwares. Its been such a pain lately to deal with them (WIFI, LAN, CAMERA). Its no longer just plug and play.

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

#156

Post by michaelt »

fragmede wrote: post #89
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.

I wired up my office, and thr speed test after was slower than on wifi. haven't had a chance to debug it yet, but it's something to consider.

If wired Ethernet shows less than 1Gbps, something is wrong. This stuff is super reliable.

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

#157

Post by UltraSane »

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…

Voice is normally done using VoLTE now.

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

#158

Post by abtinf »

Dumb question: why not drop/deprecate the WiFi standards and adopt 5G/6G across the board (operating on different spectrum depending on configuration)?

Naively, I would assume that would save money on the BOM and make devices more flexible.

Again, naively, why not build and sell consumer-grade 5G access points/routers?

This new WiFi standard is far enough out (2028) that it seems reasonable to fold it into the 6G standard (early 2030s per the article)?

It would be nice if all laptops were suddenly equally capable to WiFi and cellular connections.

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

#159

Post by mscdex »

_joel wrote: post #144
bordercontrol wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I've just upgraded to an 8Gbit package (50 quid a month, rude not to). I'm having to use the provided router as my old one only has a 2.5Gbit port (still provides wifi however). I'd be keen to know of any fairly decent openwrt compatible routers with 10Gbit/wifi 7 at a reasonable price.

For what it's worth there are now mini PCs on AliExpress with SFP+ ports. I have one running OpenWrt along with some inexpensive SFP+ modules that's been working great. Although with my setup, I opted to have an external wifi AP connected to it instead of relying on an internal wifi card.

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

#160

Post by Petelex »

abtinf wrote: post #158

Dumb question: why not drop/deprecate the WiFi standards and adopt 5G/6G across the board (operating on different spectrum depending on configuration)? Naively, I would assume that would save money on the BOM and make devices more flexible. Again, naively, why not build and sell consumer-grade 5G access points/routers? This new WiFi standard is far enough out (2028) that it seems reasonable to fold it into the 6G sta…

5g-NRU allows what you are speaking of, but imo still needs quite developments for actually being deployed in bands with interferance (i.e. WiFi).
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