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I recently upgraded from a WiFi 5 router to a WiFi 7 one, and my bandwidth increase was a grand 0% (that's ok though I was actually just sick of my old router's
by bjackman 1mo ago
I recently upgraded from a WiFi 5 router to a WiFi 7 one, and my bandwidth increase was a grand 0% (that's ok though I was actually just sick of my old router's shitty UI!)
There is about 10m and a brick wall between my AP and my desk so yeah, a fancy new MCS that can theoretically deliver 25Gbps was just never gonna be useful to me.
Also I've worked on (other non-WiFi) 802.11 products where our competitive edge was all about interference motivation. Our competitors at trade shows would see the demos and say "that's fake, you guys are cheating". So I have the feeling that in general there might be alpha in more resilient wireless links.
- eviks 1mo agoHow often do you see your router's UI to justify any change?
- maccard 1mo agoI have a multi AP setup for the same reasons as the parent - large thick internal walls (and a “long” home instead of evenly shaped), and frustratingly more than I want to is the answer…
- bjackman 1mo agoMy router is slightly loadbearing for my homelab so probably much more often than average!
- jofzar 1mo agoI had a TP-Link deco, which while great as mesh, you couldn't limit the speed of certain devices. Which was again fine, except when the PlayStation 5 in a room could literally saturate the whole 250mbs bandwidth of my internet and when it would do an update would make our whole houses internet unusable. It's seriously impressive how it wasnt possible to set per device speed limits or even QoS which has been a thing since like 2007
- wildzzz 1mo agoIs your Deco in AP mode or router mode? Mine says QoS is only available in router mode. I just use my ISP router with the AP turned off and my Decos in AP mode. My ISP router is pretty full-featured so I don't really care to deal with whatever simplified management the Deco would give me if it was the router and firewall instead.
- fmajid 1mo agoFor a while I had wireless mesh networking in my new house, until I finally got around to pulling fiber to get a proper 10Gbps backbone. Upgrading from my UniFi WiFi6E AP to a WiFi 7 doubled my effective throughput as measured by SpeedTest. This in a 1930s house with solid brick construction.
- PaulKeeble 1mo agoI saw a really good improvement through a floor for a device that has wifi 7 radio. Went from about 300mbps to 2000mbps. Going from 5Ghz 80Mhz channel to 6Ghz and 320Mhz was a big change. What has not worked with wifi 7 is MLO, openWRT doesn't really support it very well yet and neither did the original firmware but I have no one on 6ghz within range so its been stable and performant.
- bana-io 1mo ago> What has not worked with wifi 7 is MLO, openWRT doesn't really support it very well yet and neither did the original firmware I think this is spot on. On a Banana Pi Pro 4E, the vendor supplied image which carries custom patches supports MLD/MLO, yet when I try the latest upstream OpenWRT it doesn't work. I've not had too much time to investigate the reason(s) why.
- PaulKeeble 1mo agoIts not really implemented yet. The various router vendors are still working on fully implementing the chipset and there is trickle of patches still coming from Filogic development on the chipset making there way into the vendor firmwares and OpenWRT. There is also the issue few client devices implement at this point as well and certainly nothing that is mobile in nature on the sales pitch of "it costs power".
- namibj 1mo agoFor your brick wall home situation; polarization duplex combined with some amount of beam forming/spatial-multiplexing plus importantly directional antennas on both sides of the wall would give you substantial gains even without increasing EIRP. Without EIRP increases it's the receiving side that needs the antenna to improve speed.
- rr808 1mo agoPowerline networking is worth trying for this too.
- beAbU 1mo agoDo you have personal success using powerline ethernet? I tried it once and it was utter shit. A very expensive "up to 1000mbps" kit maxed out at ~200 when both devices were plugged into the same outlet. It just got worse with distance.
- theshrike79 1mo agoI tried this once too and instead bought a big-ass SRS bit and went through a concrete wall instead. Rock solid and reliable networking =)
- bjackman 1mo ago(Repeating myself coz I saw this after writing my sibling comment..) It's highly variable in my experience. I've had it work pretty well in some situations and barely at all in others. I have certainly never got 1000mbps. I think I have got 300 at best. In my office I can only get about 50 even though it works pretty well in other parts of the same small apartment. ... Which is kinda annoying coz they aren't really all that cheap for something you have to just buy and then find out later if it actually works!
- Neywiny 1mo agoJust a bit of side opinion working rf and some electrical, and fully understand if that was the best you could get, but some outlets are wired on different circuits. Also, some rf devices get overloaded if you're too close and that can degrade performance. Not saying that's definitively what happened, but you could have been either too close or further than you thought
- rr808 1mo agoFor me it is good but I'm in an apartment with 300mbps internet so not really pushing it.
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- bordercontrol 1mo agoTry OpenWRT if you want a good OS for routers. No need to change hardware.
- bjackman 1mo agoYeah I was considering this actually, but then I realised that I really want a working LAN 100.0% of the time, so I'd only go tinker mode if I had a backup. So I was gonna be buying a router regardless. Now I have a Ubiquiti one, it's antithetical to my DIY instincts but I think I'm OK with my router being one of the proprietary appliances in my life. Plus now the wired section of my LAN is really fast.
- bordercontrol 1mo agoHonestly, you got me on this one. I probably break my OpenWRT setup every three months or so on average. I recently decided to stop running anything too fancy on it and keep the router itself simple: just secure, robust networking. All the tinkering has moved to chained network VMs in QubesOS instead. It was definitely nice having different LAN ports behave differently, multiple VPNs, policy-based routing, filtering, monitoring, and all that. But yeah, every extra thing I add is another chance to break the whole network. All that said, I could never imagine going back from OpenWRT. The answer to basically any networking idea is always “yes.” There are pretty much no limits. I especially like that it doesn’t try to hide networking terminology or abstract everything away. You really get to understand what you’re actually doing and can choose the exact configuration you need, down to the smallest detail. Everything is exposed.
- mook 1mo agoInteresting, I don't really have downtime with my OpenWRT setup. Probably because I don't really touch the setup once it's there, other than occasionally doing the firmware updates.
- _joel 1mo agoI've just upgraded to an 8Gbit package (50 quid a month, rude not to). I'm having to use the provided router as my old one only has a 2.5Gbit port (still provides wifi however). I'd be keen to know of any fairly decent openwrt compatible routers with 10Gbit/wifi 7 at a reasonable price.
- martinald 1mo agoWhat kind of WiFi 7? (There are a lot that don't have 6GHz support). You should get far better performance on 6GHz, though there are harsh power limits in most countries with various ways to enable it which may complicate things. But if you can get full power on 6GHz it should reach 10m no issues at all, and with 320MHz should be at least twice as fast. If you can also get MLO working (which is not simple) you'd be able to bond another band with it.
- snovv_crash 1mo agoThe brick wall will prevent any and all 6GHz penetration.
- martinald 1mo agoNot at higher power output, which that router doesn't support.
- mort96 1mo agoWhy would 6GHz make such a difference compared to 5GHz?
- martinald 1mo agoBecause it supports (on WiFi 7) 320MHz channels. So there is double the bandwidth. 5GHz only supports 160MHz channels.
- mort96 1mo agoWouldn't it make more sense then to ask about high bandwidth channel support rather than frequency support? It's not the frequency that's important here.
- dragontamer 1mo agoHigher frequencies support higher bandwidths though. I don't think the 2.4GHz band even has 160MHz free, for example. Literally impossible to support because 2.4GHz to 2.5GHz is all you get (100MHz or so). 5GHz isn't much larger than 160MHz. Like it can fit but some number of channels is better for everyone. 6GHz band is like 5.9GHz to 7GHz or something stupidly wide. Because of the new wider band, you can effectively have larger channels with fewer problems.
- ButlerianJihad 1mo ago> interference motivation I am not sure what that term means, but perhaps you meant "mitigation"?
- bjackman 1mo agoCorrect, it was a typo that I only spotted after I lost the ability to edit.