Wi-Fi 7 is the latest evolution in the 802.11 IEEE standard of wireless networking, and it’s the direct sequel to Wi-Fi6 ans Wi-Fi6E.There aren’t many Wi-Fi 7 devices or routers available just yet, but a soft launch has already begun in China, and that rollout will gather sped in the coming years. To get you ready for the next generation of Wi-Fi technology, here’s everything you need to know about Wi-Fi 7. It’s faster, offers improved support for a greater number of simultaneous connections, and will be more adaptable, to better maintain low-latency connections. Wi-Fi 7 will be more than four times faster than Wi-Fi 6 , which can hit maximum data rates of 9.6Gbps, and close to six times faster than Wi-Fi 5.
Basics of Wi-Fi 7, Explained
When wi-fi 6 launched before two years ago, it expanded in several new wireless technologies designed to improve overall performance, including Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiple Access (OFDMA); Multi-User, Multiple-Input, Multiple-Output (MU-MIMO); and Target Wake Time (TWT). These will still be present in Wi-Fi 7 with some slight tweaks, so it’s worth explaining how they work in the current Wi-Fi 6 standard.
In a nutshell, OFDMA divides channels into resource units (RUs), allowing for smaller data packets that can be transmitted to multiple users simultaneously. This helps reduce latency and makes for a more efficient use of network resources.
It can support all three typical frequency bands — 2.4Ghz, 5GHz, and 6GHz — and has much more bandwidth on them, opening up the potential for much greater speeds for connected and supporting devices. It should be more stable too, since channels and bands can be shared or split as needed, providing additional bandwidth to Wi-Fi 7 devices at a lower latency than was previously possible.
With MU-MIMO, wireless routers use different spatial streams to allow simultaneous data transmissions, offering increased performance for applications such as video streaming and online gaming. And TWT helps conserve battery life in client devices by allowing them to remain in a sleep state until they need to access the network. The Wi-Fi 7 standard will build on these (and other) existing Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E technologies, as well as bring a few new technologies into the fold.
Wi-Fi 7 will also offer support for WPA4 security, though that standard has yet to be ratified.
Which Bands Will Wi-Fi 7 Operate On?
As with Wi-Fi 6E, Wi-Fi 7 routers and clients will operate on the 2.4GHz, 5GHz, and 6GHz radio bands. The new standard will offer enhanced OFDMA operations that use Multiple Resource Units (MRUs) designed to further reduce latency and interference. The big advance is a doubling of the MU-MIMO streams, to 16. This is a key driver behind the industry’s ability to tout such massive overall throughput gains compared with Wi-Fi 6.
Additionally, Wi-Fi 7 will introduce Multi-Link Operation (MLO) technology, which allows devices to simultaneously send and receive data over multiple radio bands to create a single aggregated connection. This will not only provide faster throughput performance, but will also help reduce latency and allow data to flow unimpeded by network traffic or interference.
Wi-Fi 7 is also expected to offer a Restricted Target Wake Time feature that allows the router to reserve bandwidth for certain types of data transmissions. The benefits here are to conserve client battery life while optimizing network resources.
How Fast Will Wi-Fi 7 Be?
Wi-Fi advances have increased the number of bands available for communication between routers and all of your devices. Is the original 2.4GHz band too crowded in your house? You can switch to the 5GHz band, or even the 6GHz band if you have Wi-Fi 6E-enabled devices.Wi-Fi 7 will double that again and offer 320MHz channel bandwidth across the 2.4GHz, 5GHz, and 6GHz radio bands. Wi-Fi 7 may also include a concept called “puncturing,” which prevents interference on a portion of a channel from rendering the rest of the channel unusable.
Wi-Fi 7 will support 4096 Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM), up from 1024 QAM in Wi-Fi 6. The increased signal modulation can deliver a 20% increase in throughput over Wi-Fi 6.
When Will Wi-Fi 7 Be Available?
The first few months of 2023 should see initial releases by TP-Link, and likely others.
What’s the difference between Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 7?
Wi-Fi 7 is an evolution of existing standards, rather than a revolutionary new idea. Still, it makes several important advances that position Wi-Fi 7 as an exciting technology once it becomes more readily available.
The most notable change with Wi-Fi 7 is its speed improvements. Where Wi-Fi 6 has a maximum theoretical speed of 9.6 Gbps, Wi-Fi 6E has the same maximum speed, but has introduced the 6GHz frequency band to better free up busy 5GHz bands. Wi-Fi 7, on the other hand, can hit a maximum speed of 36 Gbps. It achieves this through a combination of improved data density on channels, greater channel width, and simultaneous use of multiple bands and channels.
Where Wi-Fi 6 only supported channels up to 160MHz wide, Wi-Fi 7 supports up to 320MHz channels. It also introduces Multi-Link Operation (MLO) which makes it possible for devices to send and receive data at the same time across different frequency bands and channels, making the most of whatever is available. Wi-Fi 6 and 6E can only use a single band or channel at a time, even though it does grant access to all the same bands.
Wi-Fi 7 can deliver its incredible bandwidth across all frequency bands, including 2.4GHz, 5GHz, and 6GHz, because it shares. In comparison, Wi-Fi 6E can only deliver its maximum performance when utilizing the 6GHz spectrum, making Wi-Fi 7 connections much more likely to enjoy the greater performance available, no matter how close you are to your router, or how busy your frequency bands are.
What’s the best Wi-Fi 7 router?
The TP-Link Archer BE9000 is a mesh-capable Wi-Fi 7 router that will offer 10 Gbps WAN/LAN, and will have an additional four 2.5 Gbps Ethernet ports too. It has TP-Link’s HomeShield to protect your network from attack, and features 12 internal antennas to give it impressive coverage