Wi-Fi 7 makes more efficient use of wireless spectrum to offer incredible speeds and better latency compared to even Wi-Fi 6E.
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So much of our lives take place on the internet that it’s no surprise that the companies behind our Wi-Fi have been racing towards the next generation of wireless connectivity with Wi-Fi 7. Wi-Fi 7 does more than just cram more speed into the same spectrum we’ve been using for years. Wi-Fi 7 makes better use of the 2.4GHz, 5GHz, and 6GHz spectrum to deliver higher top speeds, lower latency, and more efficient use of the available bandwidth.
While a few Wi-Fi 7 devices have started to show up on the scene from companies like OnePlus, it’s still far from widespread adoption. Wi-Fi 7 routers are set to be available in 2023 and will be critical to delivering multi-gigabit speeds to our devices. Internet providers are scrambling to upgrade their service with multi-gigabit options and Wi-Fi 7 will be key to making that speed actually usable.
What is Wi-Fi 7?
Wi-Fi 6E introduced the world to 6GHz Wi-Fi using Wi-Fi 6 technology and the results have been good with the vast reserves of spectrum helping users to avoid wireless congestion. Wi-Fi 7, or 802.11be, takes things a step forward with several key technology improvements. First and foremost, Wi-Fi 7 routers are able to use 320MHz wide channels at 6GHz compared to 160MHz with Wi-Fi 6E. As shown by Intel, Wi-Fi 7 routers will have up to 36Gbps of bandwidth at their disposal with up to 5.8Gbps deliverable to devices like PCs. That’s up from 9.6Gbps at the router and 2.4Gbps deliverable to the device with Wi-Fi 6E.
These speeds may seem like overkill, but our needs will continue to grow as the cloud continues to become more integrated into our workflows. It’s also worth remembering that while the 6GHz bands on the best Wi-Fi routers are largely vacant for the time being, they will gradually gain clients the way 5GHz Wi-Fi did. Fortunately, Wi-Fi 7 has a few tricks up its sleeve to deal with this increase in users starting with QAM, or Quadrature Amplitude Modulation.
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QAM increases the amount of data that can be squeezed into a band by modulating the signal. Wi-Fi 6 supports 1024-QAM compared to 256-QAM on Wi-Fi 5. Wi-Fi 7 takes this up to 4096-QAM, or 4K-QAM, making even more efficient use of the available spectrum. This didn’t come cheap and requires beamforming for it to work, but the work was worth it with much higher throughput using the same spectrum as Wi-Fi 6.
Multi-link operation allows the Wi-Fi client to connect to multiple bands at once, which can improve latency if one band becomes congested and can also improve speed. Instead of getting stuck using a single inefficient band, traffic can be sent over either band in a two-channel setup to keep traffic moving smoothly and quickly.
Multi Resource Units, or Multi-RU, is able to use unused portions of channels. Before, if any portion of a channel was in use, then the entire channel was unusable by another device. Multi-RU allows for the use of multiple partial channels together. If 40MHz of a 320MHz channel is being used, for example, Multi-RU Puncturing allows the remaining 280MHz could be used for something else.
All of this, and much more, come together to make Wi-Fi 7 faster than Wi-Fi 6E using the same spectrum. Wi-Fi 7 is largely about making the most efficient use of the available spectrum, so there’s as little waste as possible.
When will Wi-Fi 7 be available?
Wi-Fi 7 is already included with a few devices such as the latest OnePlus 11 and ROG Phone 7 Ultimate. Unfortunately, a phone, even a rather high-end phone, won’t be able to make full use of Wi-Fi 7. Laptops and desktops will allow us to really take advantage of the increased speeds with file transfers or low-latency streaming.
Routers are set to be available starting in June 2023 from TP-Link, with ASUS, Netgear, and others not far behind. These routers will be equipped with multi-gig wired WAN connections such as 10Gbps Ethernet or SFP+ so they can actually deliver the promised multi-gig network speeds.
TP-Link is launching with a tri-band BE19000 or 19Gbps of total capacity. TP-Link also has a higher-end quad-band model with BE24000 speeds and a lower-end BE9300 tri-band model. Naturally, these companies are also working on mesh router systems that can use the huge Wi-Fi 7 bands as a mesh backhaul.
It will be years before most people have upgraded to devices that can use Wi-Fi 7, but that also means that early adopters will have access to the nearly vacant 6GHz spectrum while most people are still sharing 5GHz. It also means that users can remove some traffic from 5GHz, potentially improving speeds for older Wi-Fi 6 devices that can’t be upgraded, like the PS5. If you’re ready to move to Wi-Fi 7, be on the lookout for routers starting in the summer of 2023 with more options coming later in the year.