Bee the best WiFi you can 802.11be - Wi-Fi 7 hardware demos herald next-gen wireless networking

[Lightwreather]

Summary

Today, MediaTek said it is conducting the first live demos of Wi-Fi 7. Its customers and "industry collaborators" are checking out the pair of demonstrations through MediaTek’s Wi-Fi 7 Filogic connectivity portfolio, which includes Wi-Fi chips. Wi-Fi 7 represents the next generation of the wireless network protocol, and today marks the first time someone has claimed to make the technology work.

 

Quotes

Quote

Wi-Fi 7 isn't available yet, since the Wi-Fi Alliance is still creating the standard. Also known as the IEEE 802.11be standard, Wi-Fi 7 is expected to provide a max throughput of "at least 30GBps," according to the Wi-FI Alliance, which is quite a bump from Wi-Fi 6's 9.6GBps claim and an even bigger jump from WiFi 5's 3.5GBps. Keep in mind, however, that all three speeds are theoretical. Don't expect to hit these numbers while surfing the web at home.

The next Wi-Fi standard aims to manage the growing networking needs of evolving technologies, like 4K and 8K streaming, virtual and augmented reality, and cloud gaming and computing, by reducing latency and jitter through improvements to the physical (PHY) layer and medium access control (MAC).

Wi-Fi 7 should also be backward compatible with products using the 2.4, 5, and 6 GHz spectrum bands, but there's still a lot to learn about the upcoming technology. News of Wi-Fi 7 being demoed, however, means more people are starting to see the protocol in action.

 

Today, MediaTek said it is conducting the first live demos of Wi-Fi 7. Its customers and "industry collaborators" are checking out the pair of demonstrations through MediaTek’s Wi-Fi 7 Filogic connectivity portfolio, which includes Wi-Fi chips.

"Wi-Fi 7's advances in channel width, QAM [quadrature amplitude modulation], and new features, such as multi-link operation (MLO), will make Wi-Fi 7 very attractive for devices including flagship smartphones, PCs, consumer devices, and vertical industries, like retail and industrial; as service providers begin to deploy a wider spectrum of hotspots across these market segments," Mario Morales, group vice president of semiconductors at IDC, said in a statement accompanying MediaTek's announcement.

MediaTek pointed to Wi-Fi 7 using the same numbers of antennas as Wi-Fi 6 and 320 MHz channels, compared to up to 160 MHz with Wi-Fi 6.

 

Without the protocol even finalized yet, it's hard to know when we'll see routers and other products carrying the Wi-Fi 7 label. However, MediaTek, which has been helping to develop the standard, claimed that devices are expected to become available in 2023.

When asked by Ars Technica, the Wi-Fi Alliance didn’t provide a specific timeframe but said that the Wi-Fi Certified stamp is an “essential ingredient" and that the Wi-Fi Alliance "will communicate expectations on the timing of Wi-Fi Certified 7 as work progresses.”

 

My thoughts

Welcome back to the land of sane naming WiFi? Looks like the next iteration of WiFi will be 7 instead of whatever conundrum they introed at CES. But well, at the moment, this is just Mediatek demoing a device that can run on whatever the current interation of the Spec is (it isn't finalised yet) but it's a big thing for Mediatek as means it's likelt that every other company would have to work with Mediatek's interpretation of the spec. What is spec, so far? Well, it seems that in perfect ideal circumstances, WiFi 7 devices can reach about 30GB/s, but keep in mind that's under the most ideal circumstances and I'm expecting about half that (keeping my expectations low, so that whenever it comes and does better than half, well, I won't be disappointed). So, when can expect these? Mediatek says next year, while the WiFi Alliance is hedging its bets by essentially saying, "It will come when it comes".

 

Sources

ArsTechnica

[Salv8 (sam)]

15 hours ago, J-from-Nucleon said:

Today, MediaTek said it is conducting the first live demos of Wi-Fi 7

15 hours ago, J-from-Nucleon said:

Wi-Fi 7 isn't available yet, since the Wi-Fi Alliance is still creating the standard.

so either mediatek is pulling this outta their ass or they invented time travel.

goddammit the fucking standard hasn't even been finished and yet they say they gotten it to work?

absolute bullshit, more bullshit than actual bullshit.

[cmndr]

16 hours ago, J-from-Nucleon said:

Well, it seems that in perfect ideal circumstances, WiFi 7 devices can reach about 30GB/s, but keep in mind that's under the most ideal circumstances and I'm expecting about half that (keeping my expectations low, so that whenever it comes and does better than half, well, I won't be disappointed).

Expect LESS than half of that if you're not in pretty pristine conditions (low RF interference, strong signal, good clients AND APs, no device movement, etc.).

This WILL help longer term if you want to get more out of a 5 or 10Gbe connection on a NAS but it'll only go so far.

I'm still excited to see the gains though. 320MHz of spectrum on the 6GHz band should help a TON. I think I'm using something like 160Mhz 4x4 on 5GHz DFS channels right now with Wi-Fi 6 (and only Wi-Fi 5 clients). It's fast enough as long as I'm not trying to game stream. Everything that can be wired is wired.

[LAwLz]

lol at 320MHz channels. 

I am willing to bet that such large channels will be pretty much useless and only exists to get a higher number on paper.

 

You can only fit like 4 overlapping cells in the 6GHz band (and like 2 in the 5GHz band) if you run it at 320MHz channel width. If you live alone in the middle of the woods, or in a bunker made of lead then sure it might be useful, but that's about it. 

 

I'm skeptical of even running 160MHz channels, even when 6E comes out. 

 

It will be interesting to see how Wi-Fi 7 turns out though. I am way more interested in the new features rather than "we made the channels wider and modulation more granular". 

[StDragon]

Oh, I'm sure there's a draft of WiFi 7.2 Gen 2 in the works someplace.

At this point, might as well make WiFi chips from FPGAs so they're not already hardware obsolete.

[Arika]

It biggest problem with wifi isn't speed....it's connection stability. How about they really focus on that more instead of it being just a side note.