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TP-Link conducts Wi-Fi 8 trials, promises better reliability and lower latency
- ChocolateGod 1y ago> While some draft specifications could be released in 2027, the official Wi-Fi 8 standard is projected to be finalized only in mid-2028. Commercial products that officially support the new standard are not expected to reach the market until late 2028 at the earliest. I bet companies will release WiFi 8 products even when it's still a draft, just as they did with WiFI 7. I upgraded my home setup to WiFi 7 a few weeks ago, and after being a WiFi hater for so long, was actually surprised at how much better it was over my previous experiences with WiFi. With MLO clients get 2-3ms latency with 2.5Gbit links, I'm all for WiFi 8 trying to reduce the latency further, I don't need more speed.
- hulitu 1y ago>I bet companies will release WiFi 8 products even when it's still a draft, just as they did with WiFI 7. No need to be left behind. They can already release WiFi 9 products. /s
- Neywiny 1y agoI have a computer with a 1G Ethernet phy designed before everything was ratified. Not great. I'll make sure to wait
- halapro 1y agoI don't need lower latency, I need better congestion management. WiFi in busy areas (like airports) sucks.
- IlikeKitties 1y agoI recently torrented a movie on a airport wifi while waiting for a plane and it worked so well, even when walking around the airport to the plane. I was impressed.
- 2III7 1y agoUse a remote server for such vile behavior.
- IlikeKitties 1y agoNah, that's too much work, public wifi is great for that.
- miyuru 1y agocan you explain why using torrents is vile behavior?
- CuriousRose 1y agoWithout a personal opinion one way or the other, I would assume the gripe is with congesting the public network as opposed to the choice of public domain documentaries you downloaded.
- cheschire 1y ago“Linux ISOs”
- IlikeKitties 1y agoOh to be clear I illegally downloaded copyrighted works of major movie studios while they had just hit the streaming sites.
- piva00 1y agoI haven't encountered issues with airports' WiFi in many years, at least not the ones I fly from in Europe. What airports have you seen issues lately? It's one thing I haven't thought about in a long time.
- throw0101a 1y ago> WiFi in busy areas (like airports) sucks. This is part of what opening up the 6 GHz was about. But there are also provisions in newer standards like Target Wake Time: the client can be told to sleep for a while, not using radio spectrum (and also saving battery). * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11ah#Target_Wake_Time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11ah#Target_Wake_Time OFDMA allows multiple clients to use the same frequency at the same time (using sub-channels): * https://airheads.hpe.com/blogs/antar1/2020/10/19/why-is-ofdma-a-magical-feature-in-80211ax-standard https://airheads.hpe.com/blogs/antar1/2020/10/19/why-is-ofdm... * https://community.tp-link.com/us/home/stories/detail/201 https://community.tp-link.com/us/home/stories/detail/201
- ChocolateGod 1y agoThey're not necessarily different things. Increased latency can happen as a result of congestion on the band.
- lazycatjumping 1y ago> I bet companies will release WiFi 8 products even when it's still a draft, just as they did with WiFI 7. They must. Otherwise it cannot be tested within the labs. And producing chips before a standard is finalized is usually no problem at all: there are gates within the standardization process where the will be no more changes that are relevant for the silicon. These 802.11n-draft APs were a singular fuckup regarding this.
- mikepurvis 1y agoSimilar transition for me. Basic dual AP setup that I took from first gen UAPs (wifi 4) to U7 Pro. I think I have only one client (a Lenovo laptop) that connects with wifi 7, but even the wifi 6 devices are screamers now; my phone can get 600mbps symmetric with line of sight or 200-300mbps from two floors away. Just bonkers.
- nerdsniper 1y agoI'm now curious if upgrading from two Unifi U6 LR's to U7 Pro's would offer significant benefits for Wifi 6 endpoints.
- mikepurvis 1y agoI very much doubt it wills make any difference right now, especially in a home environment where it’s only a handful of clients and minimal real congestion. I got the pros as a vanity move to be 6GHz ready but truthfully there’s zero reason for it.
- beAbU 1y ago> I bet companies will release WiFi 8 products even when it's still a draft, just as they did with WiFI 7. They've been doing this since the dawn of wifi pretty much. I distinctly remember seeing "802.11 draft n" being printed an all the hot new and faster wifi cards back in the day.
- tymonPartyLate 1y agoIf you want reliable Wifi at home, get yourself Ubiquity access points and throw away TP-Link. The issue is not the protocol. After many years of unplugging and plugging back in my TP-link router I know that they are cursed.
- andreashaerter 1y agoBut: the Omada gear is awesome. I threw away all of Ubiquity stuff and can operate without cloud.
- ThatPlayer 1y agoYeah I was gonna say, I upgraded from my older Unifi stuff to TP-Link Omada and have had no issues.
- bdunks 1y agoAgreed. I have 4 Omada APs in my house — 3 wired PoE and 1 mesh. I haven’t thought about it since I set it up, three years ago. 100% reliability, seamless handoff between APs.
- viraptor 1y agoIt's tough. On one hand side, TP-Link has some weird issues. On the other, I spent a while debugging an issue with their engineers and they seem to actually care to improve things. Maybe the lower price is worth it sometimes.
- The_President 1y agoBought their new long range bluetooth dongle, works better for longer than any other on the market I have tried. Competitively priced.
- gambiting 1y agoAnecdote time - I've had their BE550 Wifi 7 router for over a year now and it's been rock solid. Easily does 2Gbps over wifi, never had to reset it once despite having 40+ devices connected to it all the time, the 4x 2.5Gbps ports are super useful.....it is one of their more expensive devices so maybe that's why, but generally it's been very very solid.
- randomtoast 1y agoI don't even have Wi-Fi 7 yet.
- navigate8310 1y agoDon't worry, by the time we get cheap mass produced Wi-Fi 7 4x4 MIMO routers, we'll have Wi-Fi 9 ready to be drafted.
- calcifer 1y ago> Wi-Fi 7 4x4 MIMO routers Are there any such routers? And even if there are, are there any clients? The last 4x4 MIMO Wi-Fi client I can remember was the Asus PCE-AC88, a Wi-Fi 5 NIC from 2016.
- uyzstvqs 1y agoI'm still waiting for 6 GHz APs to be the same price as 5 GHz. Can't find a basic AP under €100 yet.
- skavi 1y ago> Not expected to arrive until 2028
- lazycatjumping 1y agoWifi-8 will be great. Finally we get seamless controlled handovers between accesspoints that can be controlled from infrastucture side. With MAP 2.4GHz can serve as long range network that can be filled with High-Rate 5GHz / 6GHz cells. And all of them can be utilized in parallel. 802.11be (Wifi-7) still lacks this.
- uyzstvqs 1y agoYou can already make a MAP network, and any modern client will automatically hop between APs pretty fast, based on which one has the strongest signal. There's a common misconception that devices will cling to one AP while better ones are available, which hasn't been true in many years now from my experience. Infrastructure side handovers are great for load balancing though, for enterprise networks with very high client density.
- hanikesn 1y agoIn my experience Apple clients have been incredibly clingy to 6ghz bands, while much better 5ghz was available.
- lazycatjumping 1y ago> based on which one has the strongest signal. That's not what you want to have in an enterprise environment. A roaming decision must be based on the signal level readings from both sides from the infrastructure side. Everything else is gambling.
- SkyPuncher 1y agoIn fact, I don’t even want it at my house. I have a lot of low bandwidth devices that love to connect to a router further away and congest it. Makes the devices I actually care around run much slower. The only solution is restarting my network one-by-one so they have a better chance of getting the right device.
- throw0101a 1y agoPerhaps worth noting that 802.11bn is dubbed "Ultra High Reliability (UHR)": * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11bn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11bn So they're explicitly look at more than just adding more bits per second.
- skavi 1y agoI wonder how consumer Wi-Fi 8 products will be marketed. “Now More Reliable!” in a spiky red circle alongside the unchanged highly theoretical bandwidth numbers?
- PaulKeeble 1y agoSeems to me its mostly a version focussed on the enterprise, just like wifi 6 was. I suspect many consumers will just skip it like they did wifi 6 as it brings very little for them. Wifi 7 is a big jump from wifi 5 (and 6) in performance but its still not complete, way too many devices that only support dual band and not supporting the various forms of MLO properly. Still no open source firmwares supporting it either.
- zenethian 1y agoAs an aside, what happened to the rumors about TP-Link stuff being compromised and used for botnetting by China? Was it true or unfounded?
- timschmidt 1y agoThey seem to suffer from all the same issues of out-of-date unsupported software releases that all the other consumer AP manufacturers have. But I haven't read anything which suggests more deliberate backdoors. Perhaps another HNer has. Personally, I've always installed OpenWRT for the superior support and updated packages, and TP-Link devices have been reliable platforms for that.