The next generation of wireless home internet, known as Wi-Fi 7, is now officially certified by the Wi-Fi Alliance. Wi-Fi 7 devices are guaranteed to work together with certification, and by 2024, new gadgets such as laptops, phones, and routers will be equipped with the standard, potentially offering significant speed and efficiency improvements over Wi-Fi 6E.
Wi-Fi 7 will outperform current standards for things like high-bandwidth streaming and low-latency wireless gaming, according to the alliance’s announcement. As virtual reality gains popularity and more people begin to use the internet like never before, people will need faster internet speeds to handle everyday tasks efficiently. Designed from the ground up, Wi-Fi 7 is the “first generation” for the 6GHz band, which is a quicker and broader band of wireless spectrum that was initially utilised by Wi-Fi 6E devices.
Indeed, there are currently Wi-Fi 7 routers available, as you might be inclined to point out. Companies like Netgear, TP-Link, and Eero have already introduced routers on the market; the first two did so a few months ago. The alliance’s certified product locator does not list Eero’s current Wi-Fi 6 routers, so they might or might not get certified. Although certification enables businesses to ensure that they will, however, it does not imply that they will not function well with Wi-Fi 7 devices down the road.
How Powerful is Wi-Fi 7?
Compared to the fastest devices on the Wi-Fi 5, 6, or 6E standards, Wi-Fi 7 still offers double the channel capacity (from 160 MHz to 320 MHz), which implies that wireless downloads at speeds of more than two gigabits per second are possible.
Additionally, it will introduce Multi-Link Operation (MLO), which is essentially bonded connections spread across two or three of the 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz, and 6 GHz bands. This will give you increased speed and stability because you won’t have to reconnect to access another band if you walk out of range of one.
Another feature of MLO is its latency. Typically, airtime—the amount of time it takes for the router to cycle through the packets that are queued up to be sent across the network—restricts device connections. With all three bands available at the same time, Robinson told The Verge, there’s “a very, very high probability of getting that packet out immediately.”
Opinion
Although Kevin Robinson, CEO of the Wi-Fi Alliance, noted that not all routers will necessarily enable connecting to all three bands at once, this may be a significant problem for you if your network is spotty. For example, a cheaper router could only be able to connect two bands simultaneously. Even though the best routers now only allow one connection per device, that’s still better than nothing, but you’ll have to pay more if you want to take advantage of all that the Wi-Fi 7 standard has to offer.
Conclusion
The alliance claims that additional features of the new standard will result in increased throughput, efficiency, and reliability. Additionally, Wi-Fi 7 devices will be backward compatible with earlier Wi-Fi versions. New features on a Wi-Fi 7 router won’t immediately benefit older devices, but new laptops and phones soon will. However, for the time being, it’s more beneficial to consider a new Wi-Fi 7 router as an improved infrastructure—a future strategy.
News Source: The Verge