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Posted by taubek 15 hours ago

Wi-Fi 8 is the first wireless upgrade in years that isn't chasing speed(www.xda-developers.com)
263 points | 202 commentspage 2
ThrowawayR2 7 hours ago|
> "Wi-Fi 8 is expected to be finalized in 2028"

So we should see mainstream consumer device adaption by 2030 (not much point in having a wi-fi access point that implements pre-finalized Wi-Fi 8 if none of the client devices do) and prices become reasonable maybe by 2032? The tech is cool but it's hard to care about something that far in the future.

cogman10 5 hours ago|
Wifi is a weird one, consumer devices arrive very quickly (often times before the standard is finalized). You can expect devices as early as next year.
swiftcoder 15 hours ago||
Makes sense. Last router upgrade I reached the point where my wifi speeds (at least near the router) were indistinguishable from plugging into gigabit ethernet - that's fast enough for any home task, and the same speed as my fibre uplink. I can't see chasing speed further, outside of very specialised setups.
Reason077 15 hours ago||
Oh no. I haven't even upgraded to WiFi 7 yet!
BlackRabbit1 15 hours ago||
You are not missing too much.

One of the core features (MLO) is currently mostly scam. APs/Clients negotiate the protocol (and it shows up in the status) but doesn't it to either increase robustness or bandwidth (by combining/switching between two frequency bands).

Also the driver quality is a huge mess.

(We tested it using the latest generation Cisco Enterprise gear but also with Prosumer stuff like Ubiquiti or TP-Link)

But honestly: we need WiFi-8. It finally brings infrastructure-controlled roaming which is super important for any VoIP service.

mohamedkoubaa 5 hours ago|||
The only reason to get a wifi 7 router is that it supports wifi 6 better than a wifi 6 router
LoganDark 14 hours ago||||
It sounds like you're talking about throughput aggregation, which indeed no device currently supports. Not even Apple's most recent devices have any sign of it, except that M5 Pro/Max MacBook Pro models are tested for simultaneous transmission on 2.4+5GHz and 2.4+6GHz: https://mrncciew.com/2026/03/17/macbook-pro-m5-wi-fi-7-missi...
SweetSoftPillow 13 hours ago|||
> which indeed no device currently supports

Aren't devices with Intel Wi-Fi 7 BE200/BE202 are supporting that?

As well as latest Samsung phones?

BlackRabbit1 12 hours ago|||
AFAIR: the BE200/B202 only have one radio. So no parallel streams on two frequencies.

But they are the best cards around if you want to play with Wifi-7 on Linux. But always go for the latest wireless-next kernel + firmware blobs. Also they are not compatible with AMD mainboards (go for Qualcomm then).

LoganDark 5 hours ago|||
Being connected to multiple frequencies simultaneously is one thing. Actually using multiple of the links in parallel to increase speeds has not really been seen in practice yet. That is called STR (Simultaneous Transmit/Receive; what I called "throughput aggregation" above), which requires MLMR (Multi-Link Multi-Radio), which almost nothing that supports MLO has right now. Maybe some bleeding-edge mesh networks are doing it, and Ubiquiti has one or two products that does it, but you basically won't see it anywhere else and especially not in client devices yet. Intel BE200/BE202 does not actually perform throughput aggregation, it connects to multiple frequencies and then uses only the best of them (eMLSR, or "Enhanced Multi-Link Single Radio").
gpt5 14 hours ago||||
UniFi UDB-Switch has throughput aggregation for 5GHz + 6GHz.
gib444 14 hours ago|||
5GHz? Surely you mean 5000000kHz ;P
greenavocado 14 hours ago|||
> infrastructure-controlled roaming

802.11 r/k/v exists

BlackRabbit1 13 hours ago|||
That's not controlled, seamless hand-over as we know it from GSM/3G/LTE/5G for 30 years now.

We basically miss all data (received stations/signal levels from both sides, Bit Rate errors, etc.) for making roaming decisions and then to softly connect them to an AP you want them to be on.

Enterprise WiFi is currently mostly "This is a list of APs you maybe can connect to.. have fun.. if you can connect we pre-seeded the AP with some crypto data, so it doesn't take ages to negotiate. Here's your (more or less friendly) disassoc. Fuck off bye."

It does somehow work for stationary setups - but as soon as you have mobile traffic (like walking around or machines moving) with multiple APs the quality hits the shitter brutally.

Currently this gap is being filled by industrial 5G with dedicated frequencies. It's crazy expensive.

greenavocado 7 hours ago||
So SCTP (multi homing)?
avhception 14 hours ago|||
On paper, yes. In the real world, that random Android client is clinging to an AP that can barely hear it while a better one would be available.
manmal 15 hours ago|||
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.
InvaderFizz 14 hours ago||
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.

silisili 13 hours ago|||
Not missing much. I feel like it's in many ways misguided. 6ghz ftw because 5ghz penetrates too much and causes noisy neighbor problems. Well, from my experience, 6ghz doesn't penetrate at -all-. So unless you live in a barndo or studio apartment, it's mostly an exercise in frustration.
LoganDark 15 hours ago||
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
avhception 14 hours ago||
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".
warpech 14 hours ago|||
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/

MrGilbert 14 hours ago|||
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.^^
avhception 14 hours ago||
Yeah, I guess I draw the line at the workplace. Some of these "Internet kaputt" cases turned out to be a rejected login to our bespoke ERP website.
tetrisgm 13 hours ago||
Less latency is excellent news. This is the main reason why gamers still prefer Ethernet.
Zambyte 4 hours ago|
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.
maxglute 13 hours ago||
Time for new steamlink.
jiehong 14 hours ago||
> (…) while further increments have been smaller in percentage, speeds have always increased very significantly.

Off topic, but that sounds sort of contradictory, or misleading at the very least.

Leherenn 12 hours ago|
Well, if the first increment is 100%, you only need 50% the next time to get the same absolute increase as the first time. And then 33%, and so on.

That's how I read it at least.

thomastjeffery 2 hours ago||
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..

CrzyLngPwd 9 hours ago||
I'd just like something that can manage 250m and a few large oak trees in between.
lo0dot0 7 hours ago||
A drone carrying a fiber cable across the tree line. Battle tested.
quickthrowman 6 hours ago||
Pre-terminated direct burial fiber, a trencher, and two media converters.
ckocagil 3 hours ago||
>The stated goals of Wi-Fi 8 include a 25% increase in throughput at different signal-to-interference-and-noise ratio (SINR) levels, reduce latency by 25% for the 95th percentile scenarios with latency

So it is getting faster (in both senses) and doing so in scenarios that actually matter.

LoganDark 15 hours ago|
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.
Reason077 14 hours ago||
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.
Grombobulous 14 hours ago||
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.
Reason077 13 hours ago||
Yeah. I ran ethernet from my router specifically to improve games streaming (GeForce NOW). It was a huge improvement over standard 5 Ghz WiFi.
Grombobulous 13 hours ago||
Oh yeah, to be clear, my host PC is always wired.
Gigachad 14 hours ago|||
You can still make use of more. Local video streaming from your PC to tv, file transfers between nearby devices etc.

Modern wifi is fast enough that using cables is often not required.

trvz 15 hours ago||
You used the wrong units there. Should be Mbps and Gbps.
LoganDark 15 hours ago||
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.
riobard 14 hours ago|||
When talking about network bandwidth, it is custom to measure in bit-per-second therefore the "bps" notation. If you convert to bytes, it is highly recommended to use "b/s" notation instead, i.e 150MB/s, to avoid confusion.
LoganDark 5 hours ago||
Thanks, I'll make sure to use B/s in the future.
tveyben 14 hours ago||||
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…

itopaloglu83 14 hours ago||
Then we calculate the Bytes to see how fast we can download a file.
gib444 15 hours ago|||
The widely-accepted convention is to use bits when discussing line speeds (as the article does).
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