What is Wi-Fi 7
As part of today’s knowledge sharing, I just want to share my understanding of Wi-Fi 7 with you who are reading this. I don’t know if you’re interested, but Wi-Fi 7 does bring us a lot of surprises.
Nowadays, when we see advertisements promoting network performance parameters, they mentioned Wi-Fi 6. As the latest WiFi protocol, the new WiFi 6 (802.11 ax) is 40% faster than the current mainstream WiFi 5 (802.11 ac) wireless transmission protocol. Power consumption is also significantly reduced, and routers using the WiFi 6 protocol can also allow more devices to connect at the same time without being stuck, and it supports the latest WP3 security protocol, which is more difficult to crack.
The Wi-Fi 6-inch speed is unquestionable. Some vendors even claim that the Wi-Fi 6-inch speed is faster than 5G. I have no comment on which is faster or slower, because today we’re talking about WiFi 7.
You might wonder, how can you start researching Wi-Fi 7 before Wi-Fi 6 has become popular? That’s not surprising, because today Wi-Fi 7 is still in the standard-setting phase, and it may be five years before it’s commercially available. The Wi-Fi 7 standard, called 802.11be, features faster speeds than Wi-Fi 6 and very sensitive signal detection. What is most likely to become Wi-Fi 7 is the IEEE 802.11be standard in development, which is a direct relative of Wi-Fi 6, or 802.11ax.
I think Wi-Fi 7’s biggest breakthrough is the first development of 6 GHz radio waves.
Today’s Wi-Fi uses two radio bands: 2.4 GHz and 5GHz, that’s what a lot of friends on the forum are concerned about. In the Access Network forum, I see a lot of friends asking about 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi or 5 GHz Wi-Fi, which is better? And how to enable 5 GHz Wi-Fi. The answers to these questions are available in the Access Network section. I only raise these questions to highlight the groundbreaking 6 GHz Wi-Fi.
In the Wi-Fi 7 standard, a 6 GHz frequency band is added to expand network transmission bandwidth. Wi-Fi 7 can work on three frequency bands: 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz, and 6 GHz. With the CMU-MIMO technology, Wi-Fi 7 can theoretically reach a maximum network transmission speed of 30 Gbit/s. WiFi 6 has a maximum network transfer speed of only 9.6Gbps.
However, Wi-Fi 7 is not perfect. For example, the 320 MHz ultra-high bandwidth of Wi-Fi 7 can only be achieved by using the new 6 GHz wireless frequency band. This means that 802.11be does not provide maximum speed on Wi-Fi 6 – compatible bands. However, the 802.11be technology is not backward compatible with previous WiFi standards on the wireless frequency band that is really full speed.
And if you want to really enjoy the 30 Gbit/s network bandwidth that the technology claims, you need a super wireless card with 16 antennas, and then you need to buy a wireless router with 16 antennas. The reason for requiring such high-specification devices is that 802.11be doubles the maximum number of concurrent data streams (MIMO) from 8 to 16 in this generation. 802.11be adds the CMU-MIMO function.
Huawei’s latest ONTs, such as the OptiXstar W626E, which supports Wi-Fi 6, require continuous upgrades.
Of course, these advantages and disadvantages are the expected features of Wi-Fi 7. Currently, Wi-Fi 6 has not reached the popularization stage. We only need to have a good imagination for Wi-Fi 7.
