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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

#21

Post by warpech »

avhception wrote: post #13
LoganDark wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a Wi-Fi 7 AP and this confused some members of my family that didn't even know it went higher than 6. I thought it was pretty funny

My family doesn't know that the WiFi AP is not the DECT base. They understand when I tell them, but that's gone after a week. They use the words WiFi (or, as we say in Germany, WLAN) and "Internet" almost interchangeably. At work, too. "Internet kaputt" can mean anything from "my device is broken" to "our ERP app is not doing the right thing / responding too slow".

That is true everywhere. I think operating systems could do a better job at informing about the health of the internet connection in words the user understands. What seems to be the current bottleneck:

Your router does not respond. Turn it off and on.

This comes close: https://www.getapp.com/all-software/a/breakdown/

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

#22

Post by Grombobulous »

Reason077 wrote: post #20
LoganDark wrote: post #2

Makes sense since a lot of networks don't have access to speed. The highest speeds in my area are around 150MBps, so 5-6GBps or whatever is a perfectly fine upper bound for me. Range and congestion however has been an issue.

It's nice to have the fastest Wi-Fi possible even if your upstream internet is slower. Sometimes you want to transfer files locally between devices, or run backups etc. Faster Wi-Fi here can make a huge difference to those tasks.

I have found that higher tier WiFi aids local game streaming significantly, but most of that benefit seems to be the 6Ghz band that you get with WiFi 6E.

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

#23

Post by avhception »

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 random old handhold motorola android devices and interference is high.

In comparison, DECT has been flawless in the same space. Set and forget, just works. I always wondered if we could have a kind of DECT proxy on the LAN, and have the ERP application talk to that proxy using DECT... I mean, it's a few EANs and stuff, DECT could handle this easily.

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

#24

Post by itopaloglu83 »

tveyben wrote: post #17
LoganDark wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did not use the wrong units, I converted them. The speeds available in my area currently max out at 1.2Gbps which is 150MBps.

But IIRC the de facto unit for network transmission speeds are bits - not bytes - pr second, and when it’s more the rule than the exception than people write ‘B’ in stead of ‘b’ then the confusion gets even higher.. I would expect this crowd here to not make these mistakes as ofte. :-) B is defacto for storage…

Then we calculate the Bytes to see how fast we can download a file.

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

#26

Post by itopaloglu83 »

LogTrim wrote: post #3

The peak-speed arms race stopped being interesting to me a while ago. I don't need 20+ Gbit/s theoretical Wi-Fi. I need the connection to stay boring when I'm at the edge of coverage or the neighbours are hammering the same spectrum. The 95th-percentile latency and packet-loss targets here seem much more meaningful than another 2x headline speed increase. My only scepticism is how much of this survives real consumer…

My neighbor thinks that they can increase their 100Mbps ISP speed by having 5 or 6 access points at 2.4GHz in their 1400sq ft (~140m2) apartment.

There’s so much interference that the package dropout rate is around 40% at 2.4GHz usually.

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

#27

Post by InvaderFizz »

manmal wrote: post #8
Reason077 wrote: post #4

Oh no. I haven't even upgraded to WiFi 7 yet!

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. Also, not always an option with work issued Macs.

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

#28

Post by MrGilbert »

avhception wrote: post #13
LoganDark wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a Wi-Fi 7 AP and this confused some members of my family that didn't even know it went higher than 6. I thought it was pretty funny

My family doesn't know that the WiFi AP is not the DECT base. They understand when I tell them, but that's gone after a week. They use the words WiFi (or, as we say in Germany, WLAN) and "Internet" almost interchangeably. At work, too. "Internet kaputt" can mean anything from "my device is broken" to "our ERP app is not doing the right thing / responding too slow".

You can’t blame them, though. I live in the industry for over 25 years now, and when 5 Ghz wifi got introduced, and started to live alongside 2.4 Ghz with all the different protocols, I was like: "Nah. Screw it." I honestly have no idea what the current hot stuff in terms of wifi is.^^

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

#29

Post by riobard »

PhilipRoman wrote: post #19
riobard wrote: post #15

> with Wi-Fi 7 reaching a maximum theoretical throughput of 23Gbit per band Note to tech reports: do not EVER quote this metric as it is the most useless piece of information.

"per band" is also hilarious, as if you could get that kind of data rate in 2.4GHz

It's slightly better than the aggregate number :p

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

#30

Post by Gigachad »

itopaloglu83 wrote: post #26
LogTrim wrote: post #3

The peak-speed arms race stopped being interesting to me a while ago. I don't need 20+ Gbit/s theoretical Wi-Fi. I need the connection to stay boring when I'm at the edge of coverage or the neighbours are hammering the same spectrum. The 95th-percentile latency and packet-loss targets here seem much more meaningful than another 2x headline speed increase. My only scepticism is how much of this survives real consumer…

My neighbor thinks that they can increase their 100Mbps ISP speed by having 5 or 6 access points at 2.4GHz in their 1400sq ft (~140m2) apartment. There’s so much interference that the package dropout rate is around 40% at 2.4GHz usually.

2.4ghz is pretty bad but the 5 and 6ghz bands don’t really travel far. I’m in a dense area and 5ghz works great while 6 has basically no detectable traffic.
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