What a weird title. They are completely 2 different, independent things. Just to be categorized with AI hype articles…
The missing context is that this article is part of their CES coverage. At the expo the huge theme was everyone putting AI in every fucking device they could. A subtler theme that didn’t get as much attention was a bunch of new devices launched with Wifi 7 for the first time. So the headline was what was happening at the expo.
I guess one reason why no one is paying attention to it is because is the Wi-Fi speed usually the limiting factor? In my case I’ve rarely ever maxed out my Wi-Fi 6 speeds. Typically the host or the network that I’m on that is the limiting factor.
Although I’m also in the US so I know where not know for having the fastest internet in the world. Maybe in other areas of the world WiFi 7 might be more useful.
Canada, one of our primary ISPs offers fibre to the home with speeds of 1Gbit and even higher. So many threads on their forums with users confused why they can’t get anywhere close to 1Gbit and it always turns out to be WiFi.
I can get very close to 1 Gbit on Ethernet but top out at maybe 400 Mbps on wifi.
Exactly, wifi 7 will probably get us to or close to practical 1Gbit wireless speed vs theoretical 1Gbit speeds.
This is very useful in places like big city where there are gazillion of devices fighting for airtime. Wifi 7 devices can dynamically switch channel, or even use multiple channels at once which should help a lot in congested environment.
I’m more excited about reducing congestion when more of my neighbors upgrade to 6, so that BSS coloring and other wifi 6/7 features can enable more efficient use of the spectrum. Before wifi 6 most of the upgrades were just increasing data rates, but really lacking in improvements to spectral use efficiency (like the resource unit allocation in OFDMA which splits channels into sub carriers and centrally plans assignment to multiple client devices for simultaneous use which results in much less wasted airtime compared to each device yelling and listening while waiting to see if they can have exclusive access to the whole channel which wastes time) and interference management (like preamble puncturing which allows partial use of a channel when only a portion has interference). In a crowded environment like an apartment building wifi 6 should help a lot in reducing channel utilization.
I have one WiFi 6 access point and unless I’m running a benchmark while right next to it, I can’t tell the difference between it and the WiFi 5 access points. I doubt WiFi 7 will make much difference unless you are running 320MHz channels. There’s only enough bandwidth for 3 of them, so good luck getting decent performance unless you live out in the country though.
High speeds are helpful for anyone that has network storage and doesn’t want to plug in an ethernet cable. It doesn’t have anything to do with how fast your internet is.
They’re is so much wrong here I don’t know where to start.
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get a better wifi 6ap. You should be getting about 2x the bandwidth. I get about 900mbps on my 5 year old cell phone sitting on the couch.
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Wi-Fi 7 smaller width channels to avoid interference. Pretty much everything you’ve said here is backwards/wrong and i encourage you to do some learning on your own.
I’m using a Unifi U6-Lite access point and an Intel AX210 WiFi card on an 80MHz channel. Iperf showed about 600mbps down on WiFi 6 and 550 on WiFi 5 from across the room last time I tested it. There’s no other WiFi networks anywhere near me to interfere with anything.
Smaller channels will avoid interference, but you get less bandwidth on them. The bitrate only increased 20% between WiFi 6 and 7. To get a large speed boost, you need the wider channels that WiFi 7 supports.
I guess one reason why no one is paying attention to it is because is the Wi-Fi speed usually the limiting factor?
On a LAN? Pretty easily if you have a gigabit or greater network. Wi-Fi 6 can do close to gigabit but not consistently and needs to be close to an AP, and it’s unlikely a bunch of devices using it at the same time will be able to do maintain that peak. Maybe 6E, although I don’t have any devices myself that support it.
And WAN speeds of gigabit and greater have become more common, too.
And this ignores the improvements in latency with Wi-Fi 7, which is definitely an issue with traditional Wi-Fi.
Ok, I know why we changed the version naming scheme: a, b, g, n, ac, ax… It was a nightmare, just awful.
But I’ll bet it does still have a IEEE designation, so how does 6 or 7 map to the previous scheme? Also, what’s new, what are the impressive current speeds and features?
Did it take off? How many people are rushing out right now to buy a gaming laptop so they can have the best wifi?
Hell, my ethernet networking doesn’t support the speeds wifi6 supposedly delivered.
Realistically, as long as it’s faster than your internet connection, you’re unlikely to give a fuck either way.
I only upgraded to gigabit ethernet for game streaming from my upstairs PC.
How many of your devices actually support this?
The article is about how new products are getting support for Wifi 7, so probably none of your current devices.
My comment was more a rebuke at the headline than the article
Why would we have eyes on something that won’t be reasonably useful for years?
The boosted speed is also beneficial for mesh networks, not just end devices.
That’s basically CES in a nutshell. Nearly everything shown off won’t be useful for years.
The headline seems to be targeted at dedicated Verge readers who know that AI is the current big buzzword at CES, they are likely a bit tired of it, and are interested in something that’s not AI.
The WiFi card in laptops tend to be modular so you may be able to upgrade it. I’ve never done it though so dunno
Used to be but it’s been part of the chipset for years now. You can add a USB dongle though
Yeah, I just upgraded to a new laptop 18 months ago, it does WiFi 6 I think, the one that’s popular for the Quest 2 headset anyway, and this is going to be my computer now for at least another 8 years, like the last one was.
Same with the router, which I upgraded to get that newer WiFi, and now it’s going to sit there doing it’s job for probably the next decade, because it does it well.
Maybe in 2032 I’ll upgrade to WiFi 7, but there’s no real need to do so until then, unless something really important that WiFi 6 can’t handle comes along.
What an absurd headline.
EDIT: And “AI” was only mentioned a single time in the article.
The biggest names in laptops showed up to CES this week with new designs, new chips, and usually some way to sneak in the term “AI.”
The biggest names in tech reporting apparently showed up to the internet this week with some way to sneak the term “AI” into their headlines. Fuck you, Wes Davis.
