WiFi 7™ - are you using it?

[adrynalyne]

On 21/06/2024 at 08:10, tsupersonic said:

I pay $40 for 500 / 20. This is promotional pricing, so it will be $70 unless I call them and complain. If they give me any grief, there's a fiber provider offering 500 / 500 for $50

I am paying 65 flat for 1000/1000.

[Phemo]

We've got it pretty good in the UK for Internet connectivity in some areas.  Symmetric gigabit fibre is costing me £33 a month which is about $42 US.  One of few things in this country that is reasonably priced - if you live in the right areas.  Unlike my parents who are paying quite a bit more than me for only 50Mbit VDSL because it's all they can get which is ridiculous when the next road along, not even 20 metres away, can get gigabit.

[+mram Subscriber²]

On 19/06/2024 at 10:05, Martog said:

The MLO is one of the largest advantages with Wifi 7.  Having both 6Ghz + 5Ghz would saturate a 2.5Gbs ethernet connection and probably go further than that.  I had Wifi 6 and my handhelds with 6E so figured might as well go with Wifi 7 instead of just going from 6 to 6E.

I understand this from a technical perspective, but ignorant of the practical benefits... help me out here.

So right now I have a single wifi access point.  I figure if I'm going to upgrade at all, I need to go mesh, since the 5/6ghz channels will not travel through walls well.  But ultimately one of the mesh nodes would have to be in my room or very close, and it would backhaul the data using the 2.4 channel which has power for range.  But that slows the traffic.  True or no?

If I were in one room with a wifi7 access point I'd love it, but in practical sense that's not something I can enjoy.  I've got several walls between me and the access point.  

It really seems that the new wifi 6E and 7 are utilizing a lot of speed benefits that are only realized in open-air scenarios, not dense walled areas.  

 

[Martog]

On 21/06/2024 at 12:26, mram said:

I understand this from a technical perspective, but ignorant of the practical benefits... help me out here.

So right now I have a single wifi access point.  I figure if I'm going to upgrade at all, I need to go mesh, since the 5/6ghz channels will not travel through walls well.  But ultimately one of the mesh nodes would have to be in my room or very close, and it would backhaul the data using the 2.4 channel which has power for range.  But that slows the traffic.  True or no?

If I were in one room with a wifi7 access point I'd love it, but in practical sense that's not something I can enjoy.  I've got several walls between me and the access point.  

It really seems that the new wifi 6E and 7 are utilizing a lot of speed benefits that are only realized in open-air scenarios, not dense walled areas.  

 

You don't want to backhaul on the 2.4Ghz, it will be very slow and is more suspectable to interference than the other two bands.  Plus unless the unit has a dedicated backhaul radio you are potentially slicing down what bandwidth the mesh node will have.  Some will mesh all the bands individually, some have dedicated backhaul or will use like the 5Ghz band to backhaul.  You would want to if at all possible in this situation backhaul with ethernet.

The higher the frequency, the shorter the range and ability to go through objects but carries a higher bandwidth.  They are going for more AP deployments doing this route.  If we were only on 2.4Ghz still I could possibly just get away with one AP for all my coverage needs.  I have seen a recent screenshot of 2.4Ghz reaching over 200Mbps, but I've seen 5Ghz go beyond 1Gbps and 6Gbps pushing much further.  I've seen my own 5Ghz pull down at near gigabit from the internet.

[+mram Subscriber²]

On 21/06/2024 at 10:28, Martog said:

You don't want to backhaul on the 2.4Ghz, it will be very slow and is more suspectable to interference than the other two bands.  Plus unless the unit has a dedicated backhaul radio you are potentially slicing down what bandwidth the mesh node will have.  Some will mesh all the bands individually, some have dedicated backhaul or will use like the 5Ghz band to backhaul.  You would want to if at all possible in this situation backhaul with ethernet.

The higher the frequency, the shorter the range and ability to go through objects but carries a higher bandwidth.  They are going for more AP deployments doing this route.  If we were only on 2.4Ghz still I could possibly just get away with one AP for all my coverage needs.  I have seen a recent screenshot of 2.4Ghz reaching over 200Mbps, but I've seen 5Ghz go beyond 1Gbps and 6Gbps pushing much further.  I've seen my own 5Ghz pull down at near gigabit from the internet.

Ok thats pretty much what I expected, thank you for that.  I don't have ethernet as an option and I can't backhaul at 5ghz because of walls.  

I'll go back to my reiterated statement that 6E and to a greater extent, Wifi7 really only benefit from either open-air systems with no signal block, or backhauled mesh systems with dedicated and viable backhaul channels.  I'd still buy Wifi7 devices (nothing against the tech) but most people aren't going to realize the full benefits because of situations like mine.

Wifi7 really doesn't work well in a mutli-room multi-story house, in a nutshell unless it's ethernet or the walls are made of paper, allowing 5ghz.

I do have powerline networking but that speed is limited -- wifi7 is so ridiculously fast that this wouldn't work as a backhaul either.

[Martog]

On 21/06/2024 at 13:34, mram said:

Ok thats pretty much what I expected, thank you for that.  I don't have ethernet as an option and I can't backhaul at 5ghz because of walls.  

I'll go back to my reiterated statement that 6E and to a greater extent, Wifi7 really only benefit from either open-air systems with no signal block, or backhauled mesh systems with dedicated and viable backhaul channels.  I'd still buy Wifi7 devices (nothing against the tech) but most people aren't going to realize the full benefits because of situations like mine.

Wifi7 really doesn't work well in a mutli-room multi-story house, in a nutshell unless it's ethernet or the walls are made of paper, allowing 5ghz.

I do have powerline networking but that speed is limited -- wifi7 is so ridiculously fast that this wouldn't work as a backhaul either.

Depending on how fast you can get over powerline it's probably still better than 2.4ghz backhauls.  I know it depends on the rated powerline adapter and how the phases are setup in the circuit breakers and what might be running on the breakers.

Well, it works well with ethernet backhaul, but if you cannot do that then meshing is the next best thing, may have to have more than one jump and using ones with dedicated radios would be best in that scenario.  Lot of houses in Europe and UK aren't great for running cable either due to the interior construction of their walls.

 

There's just limitations with the lower frequencies and pushing the speeds out unfortunately and within the transmit power limits allowed.

[Abercrombe]

On 19/06/2024 at 13:34, thexfile said:

TP-Link  Archer BE9600 Router & MSI HERALD-BE NCM865 Adapter

On an AMD system running Windows 11 (Canary  24H2)

I just install 24H2 Release Preview after reading your post, same adapter, nice.

[heyitsheather]

I am still using WiFi6. I have an older Netgear Orbi RBK50 kit that has been working well. My connection to the outside world is 500mbs fibre so going faster isn't a benefit at the moment. My desktop, and homelab stack are all connected directly into a 2.5gbs switch and it is among those machines that I do the most transfers. That switch is connected to one of the 1gbs ports on the Orbi router for any external access.

[Batfink]

I'm in the UK on Virgin Media too.  At the moment I bridge the modem to my Synology RT6600ax (only using the 1Gbs Port) and have a 2.5Gbs wired network for all of the ManCave devices.   Weirdly the Synology seems to have some issues with 2.4Ghz range so I also have... 2 of the last ever airport extremes which a number of my IoT devices and ring cameras connect to.

I'm eyeing up an UniFi Cloud Gateway Max and some AP's to replace the whole setup later this year.

[WITHOUT-ME]

yes