6 ms·

Wifi 7 is going to be the more useful jump for most on Wifi 5 still I think. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11be https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802

Wifi 7 is going to be the more useful jump for most on Wifi 5 still I think. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11be https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11be The 6Gghz from Wifi 6E will be included but critically Wifi 7 devices can use difference frequencies at the same time alongside the 320Mhz channel widths and 4096 QAM. It will be a bigger jump than Wifi 6 and 6E and might finally start to see genuinely greater than 1gbps performance in practice.

geerlingguy 4y ago
6E can already deliver 1.5 Gbps or so per device with good signal at 160 MHz channel width. But most AP manufacturers have optimized for client density rather than raw single client performance.
- phkahler 4y ago
  Most APs don't have an upstream connection faster than that anyway. Clients generally don't need that speed anyway, and if they do its only for a few seconds anyway (large file transfer).
  - nixgeek 4y ago
    Most APs aimed at domestic situations are still on 1Gbps, but WiFi 6-series (not 6E/7) APs aimed at business/enterprise environments have had 2x5Gbps uplinks for years now - since September 2018, i.e. Aruba AP-555’s [1]. I happen to use these at home and they’re great with 100’s of concurrently connected clients (across 5+ APs and 15+ radios, usually ~70 clients per radio max) vs. Ubiquiti/Eero which always had lots of issues. Obviously though, YMMV! Definitely agree that it’s generally not needed (>1Gbps) but game updates these days run 100GiB+ in some cases (particularly for AAA titles) and it’s nice to have a little more speed sometimes. Individual clients are usually 80MHz 2x2 so best case will get ~1.2Gbps [2], but the radio can handle a couple clients doing things at once (MU-MIMO). For external connectivity, Comcast is now selling 1.2Gbps services in many US markets (they also overprovision the profile so speedtest.net will often see 1.4Gbps), and consequently cable modems have had 2.5GE ports for a couple years now. When combined with APs that have >1Gbps uplinks this can actually get used! Some markers can now get Comcast with 2000/200 (down/up) [3], which is a huge improvement over 1200/35 — the previous maximum. So, it’s nice to have APs with more uplink, and it’s nice to have >1Gbps Comcast, but I’d definitely not call it mainstream yet. [1] https://www.arubanetworks.com/assets/ds/DS_AP550Series.pdf https://www.arubanetworks.com/assets/ds/DS_AP550Series.pdf [2] https://mcsindex.com/ https://mcsindex.com/ [3] https://corporate.comcast.com/press/releases/comcast-increasing-internet-speeds-and-launches-new-2-gig-speed-across-northeast https://corporate.comcast.com/press/releases/comcast-increas...
    - azinman2 4y ago
      Sonic has 10GB symmetric fiber with no data caps in parts of the Bay Area. The best ISP!!!
      - sgtnoodle 4y ago
        I'm excited with the prospect of possibly getting upgraded from 46Mbps to 100Mbps this year. Meanwhile, my friend sent me this to presumably taunt me... https://www.speedtest.net/result/c/d33ffb1e-4bb8-4693-b174-d1be0ea996aa https://www.speedtest.net/result/c/d33ffb1e-4bb8-4693-b174-d...
      - gorbypark 4y ago
        I recently moved to Spain and got 1 gig symmetrical for 20 euros a month, and my ISP just sent an email saying 10 gig symmetrical is available in my building now for just 10 euros more. So tempting just to say I have 10 gig as I really have no use for it..
        mike97 4y ago
        Nice, in Romania it's about 8 euros for 1 gig, unfortunately 10 isn't available in my city yet. Edit: Just checked and for 10 G it would be about 10 euros and for 2.5 G - 9 euros, that's a very good upgrade, probably they assume that most users won't take advantage of the full bandwidth.
        gorbypark 4y ago
        My ISP is Digi, which if I'm not mistaken is Romanian! Occasionally IP geolocators think I'm in Romania, even though doing a traceroute shows none of my traffic actually goes through Romania. I'm guessing they re-assigned some blocks of IPs over to their Spanish subsidiary and the geolocation databases haven't caught up yet. I definitely don't have any way to take advantage of 10g, that's for sure. I guess WiFi 6 might be able to make some use of 2.5G. I'd upgrade for 1 euro more if I was you.
    - twoodfin 4y ago
- doublepg23 4y ago
  Yeah a friend has been pulling 1.2Gbps off a Ubiquiti U6 Pro - not sure how with the uplink being 1GbE but the numbers seem real.
  - wkat4242 4y ago
    I wish 10GbE switches and NICs would finally come down in price. I'm not interested in investing in 2.5GbE gear and then have to do the same again in a few years :(
    - nixgeek 4y ago
      One of the more affordable options nowadays is the Ubiquiti Flex XG [1] ($299) for a 5-port unit with 4 being 10GE. I’m using lots of their Switch XG 6 PoE [2] ($599) since it can drive 5GE ports on my APs and supports 802.3bt (which is required to power them up without limitations!). Lots of prebuilt PC systems are coming with 2.5GE NICs - “build your own” and it feels like most motherboards are now 2.5GE? Upgrading existing to 2.5GE is pretty cheap (~$30 USD), even via USB adapters [3]. To me, I think it’s fine with NBase-T that the switches be 10GE and the clients negotiate at 2.5GE or 5GE, although I’d note that both Mac Mini, iMac and Mac Studio can now be OEM specified with 10GE NIC for I think $100 additional. [1] https://dl.ubnt.com/ds/usw-flex-xg_ds https://dl.ubnt.com/ds/usw-flex-xg_ds [2] https://dl.ubnt.com/ds/us-xg-6poe_ds https://dl.ubnt.com/ds/us-xg-6poe_ds [3] Plugable 2.5G -https://a.co/d/hjV8LTd https://a.co/d/hjV8LTd
      - wkat4242 4y ago
        For me that's not affordable. I'm using 1GbE 8 port semi-managed switches from TP-Link that cost me €30 a piece 10 years ago (and are still the same price these days). Semi-managed because they only support some features but all I need is VLANs and port mirroring. €300 for 5 is a fortune for me :(
        nixgeek 4y ago
        Only way I know to get $/port much cheaper than $50-75 is to pick up a used Arista on eBay, there are typically 48-port 10GE models going for ~$400-500. That's what I use to drive 10GE ports where I don't need 802.3bt. There are significant tradeoffs that you may not tolerate: (1) They are very noisy (vs. the Flex XG which is fanless) so if your "Tech" is anywhere near your living space, this may be unworkable; (2) They consume lots of power and also don't do 802.3{af,at,bt} for PoE either, you can solve PoE using an injector (for a few ports), a midspan (for more ports) but note that injectors/midspans usually don't support NBase-T and if you want the combination of 2.5/5/10GE and PoE you might be back to buying a specific switch which can do that; (3) Learning curve is steeper than unmanaged or most semi-managed switches and you likely need to be comfortable with serial consoles to get them configured. With all those and likely more tradeoffs considered, they are ~$10/port!
- tracker1 4y ago
  I don't have many 6E devices, my M1 Macbook air can get 600Mbps from my 6E Access Point, where my old(ac) AP would get about 180Mbps. So, I should be able to close to max out the 2.5gb uplink with 4 devices (quad-channel)... I don't have anything that needs that at the moment. Aside from file xfer to/from my NAS. Will say, as far as I'm concerned not seeing a need to upgrade any time soon for my own needs. Short of another project where I regularly have to xfer a couple hundred gigs of files, where my internet provider is 1gb down, 40mb up.
Blackthorn 4y ago
All this talk about bandwidth but what about jitter? That's often the thing that makes WiFi unusable for tasks.
- sgtnoodle 4y ago
  I currently have a wifi latency mystery. I have a WDS bridge between my garage and main house. If I ping my server in the garage (or the AP itself), I get 2-3ms round trip time with IPv4, but about 30ms round trip time with IPv6. There isn't any routing going on.
throw0101c 4y ago
> Wifi 7 is going to be the more useful jump for most on Wifi 5 still I think. If you can wait for 7, then it probably makes sense to just get the latest and greatest. But at $WORK we're moving into a new office in 2023, and given networking gear lead times, we have to order what's available now (6 and 6E) to make sure we get the stuff in time for move-in. Even with 'only' 6(E), you still get OFDMA, which AFAICT really helps with spectrum efficiency in high-density environments. 6GHz with 6E is also a good thing.
rr808 4y ago
can we get full duplex?
- zamadatix 4y ago
  The "different frequencies at the same time" feature is called Multi-Link Operation (MLO). MLO has multiple operating modes and one of these, Simultaneous Transmit and Receive (STR), allows for using 1 link (say 5 GHz) for upload and 1 link (say 6 GHz) for download as a valid combination effectively creating a "full duplex" connection in terms of the data transfer. I'm optimistic this will work and be supported "well enough" in a home scenario. Most Wi-Fi heads are more excited about the use of MLO for roaming improvements in enterprise networks though. The ability of the client to completely associate to another AP on another radio before officially roaming the traffic to it could be interesting. Overall MLO is going to be an interesting rollout. Just like many had fears of MU-MIMO sounding great on paper but being near useless in the real world on real devices with real drivers it's possible this ends up as more a "you can if you precisely set up ideal conditions and select the devices to see this work really well" for most of the modes of operation. I think the roaming one is relatively safe and the worst case is you just fall back to normal roaming. The more complicated ones where there are a lot of combos about how a client can associate to multiple APs and actively do things feels like a complicated coordination nightmare and that might take a really long time, if not forever, for client devices to get good at.
ksec 4y ago
>Wifi 7 is going to be the more useful jump for most on Wifi 5 still I think. I am going to disagree a bit and add a few things. WiFi 6 is basically the 4G version from IEEE with OFDMA. And OFDMA is the biggest reason why 802.11ax was delayed by 2+ years. As anyone jumping from 3G to 4G will immediately notice the difference, lower latency, high bandwidth all due to better frequency allocation and efficiency. Jumping from WiFi 5 to WiFi 6 will see the same immediate benefits. WiFi 7, or 802.11be is the 5G version, an evolution and improved version of 4G or Wifi 6. But the difference wont be as dramatic as WiFi 5 moving to WiFi 6, given most of the bottleneck we have today are total WiFI capacity constrain, not singular user use case. And while 320Mhz and 4096 QAM are mostly given. ( They are on some of the WiFi 6E equipment already if I remember correctly ). A lot of the WiFI 7 features, such as Multi Link Operation and Multi RU tends to go missing when they first launch. i.e While they are part of the 802.11be spec, they are not (yet) guarantee to be shipping it. And even if they do you are likely end up with something like the fist gen of OFDMA and MU-MIMO, which requires lots of tuning and fixing and even 2nd generation silicon. But a proper WiFi 7 is going to fill up the needs for 99% of consumer use case in the foreseeable futures. It sort of hit the end curve of Power law. One thing I do hope will happen because marketing will have a hard time explaining it ( or at least I will make enough noise on the internet to demand a marketing explanation ) will be WiFi is now faster than the Wired Ethernet. Which will hopefully force them to include at least 2.5Gbps port on their routers. I dont think 10Gbps Ethernet will ever be cheap enough for consumer market, but I hope may be at least 5Gbps / Nbase-T / 802.11bz? You only need CAT6 cable for 5Gbps. ( You could even do it with CAT5e in short distances )

geerlingguy 4y ago

6E can already deliver 1.5 Gbps or so per device with good signal at 160 MHz channel width. But most AP manufacturers have optimized for client density rather than raw single client performance.

phkahler 4y ago
Most APs don't have an upstream connection faster than that anyway. Clients generally don't need that speed anyway, and if they do its only for a few seconds anyway (large file transfer).
- nixgeek 4y ago
  Most APs aimed at domestic situations are still on 1Gbps, but WiFi 6-series (not 6E/7) APs aimed at business/enterprise environments have had 2x5Gbps uplinks for years now - since September 2018, i.e. Aruba AP-555’s [1]. I happen to use these at home and they’re great with 100’s of concurrently connected clients (across 5+ APs and 15+ radios, usually ~70 clients per radio max) vs. Ubiquiti/Eero which always had lots of issues. Obviously though, YMMV! Definitely agree that it’s generally not needed (>1Gbps) but game updates these days run 100GiB+ in some cases (particularly for AAA titles) and it’s nice to have a little more speed sometimes. Individual clients are usually 80MHz 2x2 so best case will get ~1.2Gbps [2], but the radio can handle a couple clients doing things at once (MU-MIMO). For external connectivity, Comcast is now selling 1.2Gbps services in many US markets (they also overprovision the profile so speedtest.net will often see 1.4Gbps), and consequently cable modems have had 2.5GE ports for a couple years now. When combined with APs that have >1Gbps uplinks this can actually get used! Some markers can now get Comcast with 2000/200 (down/up) [3], which is a huge improvement over 1200/35 — the previous maximum. So, it’s nice to have APs with more uplink, and it’s nice to have >1Gbps Comcast, but I’d definitely not call it mainstream yet. [1] https://www.arubanetworks.com/assets/ds/DS_AP550Series.pdf https://www.arubanetworks.com/assets/ds/DS_AP550Series.pdf [2] https://mcsindex.com/ https://mcsindex.com/ [3] https://corporate.comcast.com/press/releases/comcast-increasing-internet-speeds-and-launches-new-2-gig-speed-across-northeast https://corporate.comcast.com/press/releases/comcast-increas...
  - azinman2 4y ago
    Sonic has 10GB symmetric fiber with no data caps in parts of the Bay Area. The best ISP!!!
    - sgtnoodle 4y ago
      I'm excited with the prospect of possibly getting upgraded from 46Mbps to 100Mbps this year. Meanwhile, my friend sent me this to presumably taunt me... https://www.speedtest.net/result/c/d33ffb1e-4bb8-4693-b174-d1be0ea996aa https://www.speedtest.net/result/c/d33ffb1e-4bb8-4693-b174-d...
    - gorbypark 4y ago
      I recently moved to Spain and got 1 gig symmetrical for 20 euros a month, and my ISP just sent an email saying 10 gig symmetrical is available in my building now for just 10 euros more. So tempting just to say I have 10 gig as I really have no use for it..
      - mike97 4y ago
        Nice, in Romania it's about 8 euros for 1 gig, unfortunately 10 isn't available in my city yet. Edit: Just checked and for 10 G it would be about 10 euros and for 2.5 G - 9 euros, that's a very good upgrade, probably they assume that most users won't take advantage of the full bandwidth.
        gorbypark 4y ago
        My ISP is Digi, which if I'm not mistaken is Romanian! Occasionally IP geolocators think I'm in Romania, even though doing a traceroute shows none of my traffic actually goes through Romania. I'm guessing they re-assigned some blocks of IPs over to their Spanish subsidiary and the geolocation databases haven't caught up yet. I definitely don't have any way to take advantage of 10g, that's for sure. I guess WiFi 6 might be able to make some use of 2.5G. I'd upgrade for 1 euro more if I was you.
  - twoodfin 4y ago
doublepg23 4y ago
Yeah a friend has been pulling 1.2Gbps off a Ubiquiti U6 Pro - not sure how with the uplink being 1GbE but the numbers seem real.
- wkat4242 4y ago
  I wish 10GbE switches and NICs would finally come down in price. I'm not interested in investing in 2.5GbE gear and then have to do the same again in a few years :(
  - nixgeek 4y ago
    One of the more affordable options nowadays is the Ubiquiti Flex XG [1] ($299) for a 5-port unit with 4 being 10GE. I’m using lots of their Switch XG 6 PoE [2] ($599) since it can drive 5GE ports on my APs and supports 802.3bt (which is required to power them up without limitations!). Lots of prebuilt PC systems are coming with 2.5GE NICs - “build your own” and it feels like most motherboards are now 2.5GE? Upgrading existing to 2.5GE is pretty cheap (~$30 USD), even via USB adapters [3]. To me, I think it’s fine with NBase-T that the switches be 10GE and the clients negotiate at 2.5GE or 5GE, although I’d note that both Mac Mini, iMac and Mac Studio can now be OEM specified with 10GE NIC for I think $100 additional. [1] https://dl.ubnt.com/ds/usw-flex-xg_ds https://dl.ubnt.com/ds/usw-flex-xg_ds [2] https://dl.ubnt.com/ds/us-xg-6poe_ds https://dl.ubnt.com/ds/us-xg-6poe_ds [3] Plugable 2.5G -https://a.co/d/hjV8LTd https://a.co/d/hjV8LTd
    - wkat4242 4y ago
      For me that's not affordable. I'm using 1GbE 8 port semi-managed switches from TP-Link that cost me €30 a piece 10 years ago (and are still the same price these days). Semi-managed because they only support some features but all I need is VLANs and port mirroring. €300 for 5 is a fortune for me :(
      - nixgeek 4y ago
        Only way I know to get $/port much cheaper than $50-75 is to pick up a used Arista on eBay, there are typically 48-port 10GE models going for ~$400-500. That's what I use to drive 10GE ports where I don't need 802.3bt. There are significant tradeoffs that you may not tolerate: (1) They are very noisy (vs. the Flex XG which is fanless) so if your "Tech" is anywhere near your living space, this may be unworkable; (2) They consume lots of power and also don't do 802.3{af,at,bt} for PoE either, you can solve PoE using an injector (for a few ports), a midspan (for more ports) but note that injectors/midspans usually don't support NBase-T and if you want the combination of 2.5/5/10GE and PoE you might be back to buying a specific switch which can do that; (3) Learning curve is steeper than unmanaged or most semi-managed switches and you likely need to be comfortable with serial consoles to get them configured. With all those and likely more tradeoffs considered, they are ~$10/port!
tracker1 4y ago
I don't have many 6E devices, my M1 Macbook air can get 600Mbps from my 6E Access Point, where my old(ac) AP would get about 180Mbps. So, I should be able to close to max out the 2.5gb uplink with 4 devices (quad-channel)... I don't have anything that needs that at the moment. Aside from file xfer to/from my NAS. Will say, as far as I'm concerned not seeing a need to upgrade any time soon for my own needs. Short of another project where I regularly have to xfer a couple hundred gigs of files, where my internet provider is 1gb down, 40mb up.

Blackthorn 4y ago

All this talk about bandwidth but what about jitter? That's often the thing that makes WiFi unusable for tasks.

sgtnoodle 4y ago
I currently have a wifi latency mystery. I have a WDS bridge between my garage and main house. If I ping my server in the garage (or the AP itself), I get 2-3ms round trip time with IPv4, but about 30ms round trip time with IPv6. There isn't any routing going on.

throw0101c 4y ago

> Wifi 7 is going to be the more useful jump for most on Wifi 5 still I think. If you can wait for 7, then it probably makes sense to just get the latest and greatest. But at $WORK we're moving into a new office in 2023, and given networking gear lead times, we have to order what's available now (6 and 6E) to make sure we get the stuff in time for move-in. Even with 'only' 6(E), you still get OFDMA, which AFAICT really helps with spectrum efficiency in high-density environments. 6GHz with 6E is also a good thing.

rr808 4y ago

can we get full duplex?

zamadatix 4y ago
The "different frequencies at the same time" feature is called Multi-Link Operation (MLO). MLO has multiple operating modes and one of these, Simultaneous Transmit and Receive (STR), allows for using 1 link (say 5 GHz) for upload and 1 link (say 6 GHz) for download as a valid combination effectively creating a "full duplex" connection in terms of the data transfer. I'm optimistic this will work and be supported "well enough" in a home scenario. Most Wi-Fi heads are more excited about the use of MLO for roaming improvements in enterprise networks though. The ability of the client to completely associate to another AP on another radio before officially roaming the traffic to it could be interesting. Overall MLO is going to be an interesting rollout. Just like many had fears of MU-MIMO sounding great on paper but being near useless in the real world on real devices with real drivers it's possible this ends up as more a "you can if you precisely set up ideal conditions and select the devices to see this work really well" for most of the modes of operation. I think the roaming one is relatively safe and the worst case is you just fall back to normal roaming. The more complicated ones where there are a lot of combos about how a client can associate to multiple APs and actively do things feels like a complicated coordination nightmare and that might take a really long time, if not forever, for client devices to get good at.

ksec 4y ago

>Wifi 7 is going to be the more useful jump for most on Wifi 5 still I think. I am going to disagree a bit and add a few things. WiFi 6 is basically the 4G version from IEEE with OFDMA. And OFDMA is the biggest reason why 802.11ax was delayed by 2+ years. As anyone jumping from 3G to 4G will immediately notice the difference, lower latency, high bandwidth all due to better frequency allocation and efficiency. Jumping from WiFi 5 to WiFi 6 will see the same immediate benefits. WiFi 7, or 802.11be is the 5G version, an evolution and improved version of 4G or Wifi 6. But the difference wont be as dramatic as WiFi 5 moving to WiFi 6, given most of the bottleneck we have today are total WiFI capacity constrain, not singular user use case. And while 320Mhz and 4096 QAM are mostly given. ( They are on some of the WiFi 6E equipment already if I remember correctly ). A lot of the WiFI 7 features, such as Multi Link Operation and Multi RU tends to go missing when they first launch. i.e While they are part of the 802.11be spec, they are not (yet) guarantee to be shipping it. And even if they do you are likely end up with something like the fist gen of OFDMA and MU-MIMO, which requires lots of tuning and fixing and even 2nd generation silicon. But a proper WiFi 7 is going to fill up the needs for 99% of consumer use case in the foreseeable futures. It sort of hit the end curve of Power law. One thing I do hope will happen because marketing will have a hard time explaining it ( or at least I will make enough noise on the internet to demand a marketing explanation ) will be WiFi is now faster than the Wired Ethernet. Which will hopefully force them to include at least 2.5Gbps port on their routers. I dont think 10Gbps Ethernet will ever be cheap enough for consumer market, but I hope may be at least 5Gbps / Nbase-T / 802.11bz? You only need CAT6 cable for 5Gbps. ( You could even do it with CAT5e in short distances )