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Posted by taubek 16 hours ago

Wi-Fi 8 is the first wireless upgrade in years that isn't chasing speed(www.xda-developers.com)
271 points | 213 commentspage 3
ckocagil 4 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 16 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 15 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 15 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 14 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 14 hours ago||
Oh yeah, to be clear, my host PC is always wired.
Gigachad 15 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 16 hours ago||
You used the wrong units there. Should be Mbps and Gbps.
LoganDark 16 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 15 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 6 hours ago||
Thanks, I'll make sure to use B/s in the future.
tveyben 15 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 15 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).
Razengan 11 hours ago||
Are we not yet at a point where we could have a truly global network that uses multiple technologies and mediums to keep a user always connected?

Like seamlessly switching between Wi-Fi, nG, Bluetooth, satellite, pigeons, cans-and-wire.. and still having a stable global address? (that you could change later of course)

smashed 5 hours ago|
It's possible using overlay networks but other than that there has been no progress on that front. The routing table updates would overwhelm the system. Ipv6 does nothing to address device roaming. There is multipath TCP but I have never encountered anything using it.

Most improvements on that front has been happening on the application layer, where the app attempts to retain functionality even though the underlying network conditions are changing, to various degrees of success (mostly not that great).

toast0 54 minutes ago|||
> There is multipath TCP but I have never encountered anything using it.

IIRC siri uses it and iOS (maybe macOS too?) exposes it to app developers.

Razengan 4 hours ago|||
There's a great hyper-sci-fi RPG setting called Numenera, set a billion years in the future, that has this cool little concept of a "datasphere", as in analogous to atmosphere, an omnipresent permanent connectivity network..

Shouldn't that be our end goal with all this tech?

sandworm101 12 hours ago||
>> But with Wi-Fi 7 reaching a maximum theoretical throughput of 23Gbit per band

No. Just no. That speed is only possible when standing at a Nevada test range, in late spring, on a ladder, holding the router above your head, with a black cat sitting on your left shoulder. Any minor change from those parameters and your speeds will be 30% the theoretical maximum ... maybe 50% if you can only find a grey cat.

yxhuvud 3 hours ago|
With real devices I get something like 1.8GBit/s with less than 2 meters between the stuff. Which is far from maximum but who cares, it is still great.
hnarn 11 hours ago||
Sacrificing bandwidth for range and reliability would be a welcome change, but I’ve far passed the point where all news about Wifi just strikes me as marketing bullshit.
LogTrim 16 hours ago|
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 hardware. Wi-Fi 6 had things like OFDMA that sounded great on paper, but support/implementation was pretty uneven.

WhyNotHugo 15 hours ago||
Agree completely. Higher speeds are a bit pointless for most users. Unless you have an extremely fast NAS, where you need to copy (not stream) data over Wi-Fi, you're unlikely to be anywhere near the current limits.

I'm using 802.11ac and see no need for higher speeds.

mschuster91 14 hours ago||
> Higher speeds are a bit pointless for most users.

Higher speeds automatically means less latency and that does matter, especially if you are into stuff like games where every millisecond matters.

izacus 13 hours ago|||
That's not really how latency works though.
Hendrikto 14 hours ago||||
I think the point is that these numbers are theoretical, and only reachable in a lab. So in practice you do not really benefit.
PunchyHamster 4 hours ago|||
old wifi already have sub 1ms latency, it doesn't matter to be any faster than that
itopaloglu83 15 hours ago||
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.

spockz 14 hours ago|||
Having a AP in every room can be as significant boost if the walls impede the signal a lot. In fact we have one wall which is especially bad. Stand in front of it or next to it and reception from the front of the house is decent. Take one step back behind the wall and signal drops to less than 10%.

So having the 5-6 AP is not the problem, then shouting at max power is the problem. Especially “gaming” routers tend to do this.

Gigachad 15 hours ago|||
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.