Wi-Fi 7 quietly took off while everyone was looking at AI

What a weird title. They are completely 2 different, independent things. Just to be categorized with AI hype articles...

The missing context is that this article is part of their CES coverage. At the expo the huge theme was everyone putting AI in every fucking device they could. A subtler theme that didn't get as much attention was a bunch of new devices launched with Wifi 7 for the first time. So the headline was what was happening at the expo.
Also, one of these is a mere update hugging the tech plateau, the other is a disruptive hockey stick.
All news are for investors nowadays. Microinvestment runs the 2020s world.

I guess one reason why no one is paying attention to it is because is the Wi-Fi speed usually the limiting factor? In my case I've rarely ever maxed out my Wi-Fi 6 speeds. Typically the host or the network that I'm on that is the limiting factor.

Although I'm also in the US so I know where not know for having the fastest internet in the world. Maybe in other areas of the world WiFi 7 might be more useful.

Canada, one of our primary ISPs offers fibre to the home with speeds of 1Gbit and even higher. So many threads on their forums with users confused why they can't get anywhere close to 1Gbit and it always turns out to be WiFi.
- I can get very close to 1 Gbit on Ethernet but top out at maybe 400 Mbps on wifi.
This is very useful in places like big city where there are gazillion of devices fighting for airtime. Wifi 7 devices can dynamically switch channel, or even use multiple channels at once which should help a lot in congested environment.
I'm more excited about reducing congestion when more of my neighbors upgrade to 6, so that BSS coloring and other wifi 6/7 features can enable more efficient use of the spectrum. Before wifi 6 most of the upgrades were just increasing data rates, but really lacking in improvements to spectral use efficiency (like the resource unit allocation in OFDMA which splits channels into sub carriers and centrally plans assignment to multiple client devices for simultaneous use which results in much less wasted airtime compared to each device yelling and listening while waiting to see if they can have exclusive access to the whole channel which wastes time) and interference management (like preamble puncturing which allows partial use of a channel when only a portion has interference). In a crowded environment like an apartment building wifi 6 should help a lot in reducing channel utilization.
I have one WiFi 6 access point and unless I'm running a benchmark while right next to it, I can't tell the difference between it and the WiFi 5 access points. I doubt WiFi 7 will make much difference unless you are running 320MHz channels. There's only enough bandwidth for 3 of them, so good luck getting decent performance unless you live out in the country though.
High speeds are helpful for anyone that has network storage and doesn't want to plug in an ethernet cable. It doesn't have anything to do with how fast your internet is.
- They're is so much wrong here I don't know where to start.
  get a better wifi 6ap. You should be getting about 2x the bandwidth. I get about 900mbps on my 5 year old cell phone sitting on the couch.
  Wi-Fi 7 smaller width channels to avoid interference. Pretty much everything you've said here is backwards/wrong and i encourage you to do some learning on your own.
I guess one reason why no one is paying attention to it is because is the Wi-Fi speed usually the limiting factor?
On a LAN? Pretty easily if you have a gigabit or greater network. Wi-Fi 6 can do close to gigabit but not consistently and needs to be close to an AP, and it's unlikely a bunch of devices using it at the same time will be able to do maintain that peak. Maybe 6E, although I don't have any devices myself that support it.
And WAN speeds of gigabit and greater have become more common, too.
And this ignores the improvements in latency with Wi-Fi 7, which is definitely an issue with traditional Wi-Fi.
Also the fact that the faster the wifi, the easier it is to block.
These new standards aren't really targeting residential use so just people shouldn't care.
Ok, I know why we changed the version naming scheme: a, b, g, n, ac, ax... It was a nightmare, just awful.
But I'll bet it does still have a IEEE designation, so how does 6 or 7 map to the previous scheme? Also, what's new, what are the impressive current speeds and features?
- WiFi 7 = 802.11be, FYI
- 5 is AC, 6 is AX

Did it take off? How many people are rushing out right now to buy a gaming laptop so they can have the best wifi?

No one, because their router probably doesn't support it.
- Their router probably doesn't support 6, and neither does their devices.
I hope not much some are decent and have swappable wifi modules. But not sure how common that is.

How many of your devices actually support this?

The article is about how new products are getting support for Wifi 7, so probably none of your current devices.
- My comment was more a rebuke at the headline than the article
  Why would we have eyes on something that won't be reasonably useful for years?
My laptop only supports 2.4 GHz lol
Yeah, I just upgraded to a new laptop 18 months ago, it does WiFi 6 I think, the one that's popular for the Quest 2 headset anyway, and this is going to be my computer now for at least another 8 years, like the last one was.
Same with the router, which I upgraded to get that newer WiFi, and now it's going to sit there doing it's job for probably the next decade, because it does it well.
Maybe in 2032 I'll upgrade to WiFi 7, but there's no real need to do so until then, unless something really important that WiFi 6 can't handle comes along.

What an absurd headline.

EDIT: And "AI" was only mentioned a single time in the article.

The biggest names in laptops showed up to CES this week with new designs, new chips, and usually some way to sneak in the term “AI.”

The biggest names in tech reporting apparently showed up to the internet this week with some way to sneak the term "AI" into their headlines. Fuck you, Wes Davis.

Also how exactly was it quiet when several major YouTubers covered it? Fucking hate these bogus clickbait headlines

PowerShell 7 quietly took off while I was struggling with my IBS.

Get-Money | Buy-SomethingUseful | ?{$_.item -ne "WiFi 7"}

See ya in 5 years when ISPs will start providing WiFi 7 enabled routers

Why would you use your ISPs router? Mine is set to modem mode an do have my own router which is far better quality and also totally under my control security wise.
- Because most of the time they don’t let you, or make it super difficult to set up
  Additionally, most end users aren’t tech savvy and just use whatever was given by the ISP
Why would you use your isps WiFi router?
- I'm surprisingly super happy with my current one. I got ATT fiber and was planning on swapping out their router and adding an access point but it's actually great and covered my entire house including the garage and back yard, and they don't charge a monthly fee for it.
- Sometimes it comes with your condos homeowners fees, regardless of what you want.
Yeah, no one's talking about wifi 7 because it's not even close to taking off yet.
Google fiber and any other ISP that offers 1gbit or greater speeds are already giving with 6 routers, and 7 is soon to follow. Wifi 7 is already planned for Google Fiber and I know others have it on the way. Basically any ISP offering >1gbit speeds is going to have a wifi 7 router soon.
https://fiber.google.com/blog/2023/10/gfiber-labs-announces-first-project-20.html

And when did decent mesh systems start costing $1K+?!?!

I used to scoff at people who would say “just get an access point”, but after looking at too many mesh systems last years with their ridiculous prices, I went with couple of access point and I do not regret it.
Stares at my home networking stack.
- Oh I know… I get leftovers from work for my home lab. But enterprise WiFi will never be a thing you’d need in a DC. 48 port 10GbE Cisco switches is another story 🙂
  Of course they sound like a jet engine …
When they can transmit over 10gbps
- I wish I had 10g into my house. Well maybe not, it would probably be VERY expensive

It feels like the rollout of client modules and APs/routers was better synchronized this time. Back with wifi 6 I ordered the Intel modules within a week of them being available on AliExpress and then waited for what felt like months for APs to be available (it looks like unifi's wifi 6 ap finally came out in November 2021 based on when I bought it). Unifi's U7 pro dropped a few days ago so I nabbed one as soon as I saw the email and that arrived today so that's already set up, and the wifi 7 modules have already been out for a bit, i just didn't order them since I was anticipating a wait for APs. So now I just gotta wait a bit for shipping and I'll have all my laptops upgraded too.

as a poor pc gamer runnin a 6700k i will see yall soon because this thing is getting crusty
- My gaming PC doesn't even have wifi, I just ran a cable. I wire everything I can, even my Chromecast using USB otg adapters. The less stuff that's on the WiFi, the less crappy of an experience the stuff that's left will have. Also I'm just about there with you, my non-work laptop is an almost 6 year old XPS 15 with a 7700k, but I swapped the wifi chip for an ax200ngw wifi 6 one for $15.

can the wifi teams finally allow bluetooth to copy their homework? 😂 they're still at 2mb/s roundabouts

Bluetooth has completely different design and goals. When it came out it wanted to do notifications. Nowadays it's been shoehorned into lots of things it wasn't originally supposed to do, like media streaming, controllers, file transfer etc. That's a limit to how far the spec can be twisted.
- I think you're confusing BLE and Classic Bluetooth here. Classic Bluetooth was design for streaming data (serial-port emulation and voice audio) from the very first spec.

Where has it taken off ? Only a handful of routers are out for it and they are stupidly expensive. Are there even devices that can utilize wifi 7 ?

Maybe a flagship here and there and a high gaming computer

It won’t be worth it for a hot minute. There are only a few routers on the market and they range from several hundred to a couple thousand.
And there are even fewer devices that support it. There are a couple laptops that support it, but they’re a few thousand dollars.
- Sounds like the usual introduction for a new wifi protocol. It's a niche market until enough devices become compatible. Then a rapid adoption as things reach their normal end-of-life and are replaced.
  So wifi 7 will be widely adopted in 5-7 years if it proves stable.
- I wish I knew how long a hot minute was.
- You can upgrade any laptop with socketed m.2 wireless to wifi 7 for ~$20
Haha, you and me both. At least it probably won't matter for a few years.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

One of the biggest benefits of Wi-Fi 7 is that it allows for one device to connect to your router on multiple bands — a feature called Multi-Link Operation — which gives your laptop options when it comes to where to funnel its packets.

But some of the earliest are, at least for now, very expensive: the 16-inch Razer Blade 16 starts at $3,000, and the 18-inch MSI Titan 18 HX A14V costs at least $5,000.

If you’re not in the mood to dump your life savings into a laptop, some more affordable gaming models with Wi-Fi 7 were announced, too.

The one big exception at the show to the unspoken Wi-Fi 7 gaming laptop rule appeared to be Asus.

None of the laptops that the company announced in its ROG lineup, including the Zephyrus line, have Wi-Fi 7 listed in their specs.

If you’re looking to upgrade your gaming laptop and you’re not the type to insist on a wired connection, now is a fine time to start looking at Wi-Fi 7 routers.

The original article contains 552 words, the summary contains 174 words. Saved 68%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Isn't wifi good enough for everyone already? I mean, it's great to have upgrades but pretty much nobody needs it

But this one is one better.
- Agreed. What tipped me off was the number 7, which is 1 higher than the number 6. I can't believe people can't see how much better it is!
Most don't need faster internet than 50mbits/s either, doesn't mean you won't like having it. A more reliable and faster wi-fi is always welcome.
- That's what I said
The biggest benefit to wifi 7 that I'm excited about is streaming wireless VR headsets without extra equipment to a PC.
- Could you elaborate on this? I think you mean wireless PCVR over wifi, but that's achievable lag free on wifi 5
Sure, it’s already good enough for everything I use it for. However, I hope and expect to be doing cool new shit with way better wifi in 20 years. So, in the chicken and egg problem of technical capability vs cool applications, I am fine with increasing specs way in advance of killer apps.
No. It's not good enough yet. I'd like to have wifi that doesn't instantly drop speeds if I'm not less than 2ft away from the router. Still waiting on that technology. Wifi will never be "good enough" until it's as good as ethernet.
- And Wifi will never be as good as Ethernet assuming both standards continue to evolve.
- That's why I said "pretty much everybody", because I knew there was you
- WiFi 7 isn’t gonna make the range issue better. IIRC it makes a mesh network even more necessary.
- That's probably fixed by getting a better quality router or adding access points if the issue is the building blocking signals. That's not a problem with the standard, and the new standards are for even higher speeds which actually have lower range at those bandwidths.

We are at the 7 the iteration. A no half a mile range for my home modem?

More bandwidth/speed requires higher frequencies, which means ever worse range as it can't go through stuff like walls.
It does exist, its called 801.11ah or wifi HaLow
That standard is mainly designed for things like IOT and wireless security cameras, but nothing stops you from getting an HaLow access point and network adapter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qF0BHnmi9j8
- Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
  https://www.piped.video/watch?v=qF0BHnmi9j8
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
- But it can't be very useful if my smartphone doesn't support it. I think it was designed for a different kind of use.