Since 2020, most devices have been using Wi-Fi 6 or 6E to summon the internet to your fingertips. That’s set to change now that Wi-Fi 7 will launch later this year. The IEEE 802.11be standard promises even faster speeds, a drastic reduction in latency, and trendy upgrades like MLO and MIMO protocols.
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Why We Need Better Wi-Fi
If you have good internet service, you may be asking why Wi-Fi standards need to be upgraded every few years. While it’s possible to get great internet speeds today, improvements are necessary to keep pace with other technologies. Upgrades like Wi-Fi 7 or the upcoming 6G are futureproofed, so they’ll support advanced smart appliances or larger file sizes as software becomes more complex.
The result is faster, more expansive service in a world that’s increasingly relying on online networks. Today, on-demand streaming is one of the primary ways we watch shows or movies, while individual websites host a lot of videos too. Some industries, like iGaming, use live streaming to support interactive services that can be accessed from home. When people want to play casino games online, they can get onto a live stream of online roulette at Paddy Power managed by a real human dealer, for something similar to the casino floor experience. Streaming, and especially live streaming, relies on the ability to send and process data quickly. As filming techniques, graphical quality, and other things within these services improve and progress, the amount of data being sent skyrockets.
So, we need better Wi-Fi standards to transmit data efficiently. Among Wi-Fi 7’s improvements are integrated time-sensitive networking (TSN) extensions. TSN allows networks to prioritize data streams, first developed for industrial settings where a particular message or urgent alert needs to be delivered promptly. Some of its features, namely audio video bridging (AVB) and the Precision Time Protocol (PTP), are vital for delivering quality audiovisual content from the server side.
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Wi-Fi 7’s Features
Besides enhanced support for Ethernet improvements like TSN, Wi-Fi 7 will come with a few special features of its own. Most people won’t get to experience them until they make the leap from Wi-Fi 6/6E, which will still be in use for many years to come.
As stated, faster speeds are a guarantee at approximately four times faster than current 6E speeds. While we don’t have real-world speed testing yet, it promises a hefty 46 gigabytes per second maximum data rate against Wi-Fi 6’s 10 gigabytes. While that’s Wi-Fi 7 at its best, it means the average user will also get a noticeable speed boost.
It also stamps latency to almost nonexistent levels, predicted to be 1% of the latency that you’d get with the 6 standard. Its aggressive reduction of latency comes from its focus on Internet of Things (IoT) applications. To learn all about the Internet of Things and why it’s such a big industry focus, consider IBM’s detailed explanation of the technology.
Wi-Fi 7’s IoT focus is also why it boasts the aforementioned MLO and MIMO features. MLO, or Multi-Link Operation, boosts network capacity by sending and receiving data at the same time, across multiple frequency channels. This boost in capacity partly enables Wi-Fi 7’s low latency. Then there’s the Multiple Input Multiple Output protocol enhancements which provide 16 data streams within compatible frequency channels, essentially doing what MLO does but for a single access point.
Its enhanced speed and capacity make it a noticeable improvement to the last standard. Semiconductor manufacturers like Qualcomm have been working since 2022 to create chips that support over 200 devices that will be Wi-Fi 7 ready when the new standard drops, assuming no delays before its mid to late 2024 finalization. While mobile standards like 5G struggle to find adoption per Forbes, Wi-Fi 7 looks good to go.