As of this writing, Wi-Fi 6E is not supported by any Apple product. However, this is likely to change very soon, since in addition, the Wi-Fi 7 concept is already starting to resonate.
Why should you care about the new standard? Well, everyone likes more bandwidth and lower latency, two key goals of the new standard. But the biggest benefit might be how it’s intelligently designed to overcome congestion and instability, delivering more stable networks that perform better in harsh conditions.
Known in IEEE standards as 802.11be, the final Wi-Fi 7 specification is still a few years away. But the manufacturers of Material they rarely wait for this to happen: they build the first products based on the draft specification and update their firmware over time to meet the final specification.
As expected the first routers With Wi-Fi 7 coming out in late 2022, it’s worth exploring what the new technology has to offer and whether you need to upgrade your gear.
Here’s a simple guide to what’s new in Wi-Fi 7 and predictions for when we might see its compatibility with Apple devices.
Wi-Fi 7: more speed, less latency
Each new Wi-Fi standard seems to offer faster speeds and lower latency, and Wi-Fi 7 is no different. The actual maximum theoretical bandwidth is 46 gigabits per second. That’s over 5 gigabytes per second, four times faster than Wi-Fi 6E and even faster than Thunderbolt 4. But you can’t get anything like that in the real world.
Qualcomm says its first Wi-Fi 7 product will achieve true speeds of 5.8 gigabits per second, which is 60% faster than any Wi-Fi 6E solution offered by the company. In a tech demo, MediaTek said it expects up to 2.4 times more bandwidth than Wi-Fi 6.
One of Wi-Fi 7’s coolest tricks is that it divides different channels into “resource units” that transmit smaller chunks of data to multiple clients simultaneously, which should help reduce latency.
Wi-Fi 7: Smarter use of frequencies, less congestion
More “bits per second” is great to brag about out of the box, but what people really want is a Wi-Fi network that connects dozens of devices – laptops, phones, game consoles games, smart TVs, smart home appliances and other IoT objects. both without any problem.
Network congestion and contention around different frequencies is a growing problem, and that’s exactly the kind of thing Wi-Fi 7 is supposed to solve.
Current Wi-Fi 6 or 6E routers may promise “dual-band” or “tri-band” operation, claiming that they can use 2.4 GHz, 5 GHz, and 6 GHz frequencies at the same time.
And that’s technically true, but each connection from a device to the access point/router sticks to one frequency. If the 5 GHz channels are full or the signal is weak, your phone may connect to the 2 GHz band and then it gets stuck there until you disconnect and reconnect.
Wi-Fi 7 is designed to aggregate all three frequency bands and all available channels and send packets to any Wi-Fi 7 client device on the best frequency and channel at the time.
And that can change dynamically over time. So when the channels are congested because a big download starts on your game console, other devices can start receiving their data on other frequencies without missing a beat.
This ability to dynamically utilize all available frequencies and channels for each customer at the same time is a huge step forward. It should significantly reduce the effects of network interference and congestion, make connections more reliable, and reduce latency.
Wi-Fi 7: when are the routers coming?
Of course, you won’t get the benefits of Wi-Fi 7 unless you update both your router/access point and your client (phone, tablet, game console, whatever). Naturally, Wi-Fi 7 items will be backwards compatible. You can connect Wi-Fi 6, 5, or even 4 things to a Wi-Fi 7 router with no problem, and vice versa. But you’ll only get all these new benefits if you have Wi-Fi 7 on both ends.
The IEEE isn’t expected to have a final 802.11be specification until 2024. But companies won’t wait until then. Just as they did with Wi-Fi 5, 6, and 6E, companies making Wi-Fi gear are moving forward with products based on the draft specification, which will be improved over time with updates from Software to keep them in line with new versions of the specification. It might seem like a bad decision, but after more than a decade without major issues, it’s not worth worrying about.
One of the first Wi-Fi 7 products to hit the market will be Qualcomm’s FastConnect 7800, intended for everything from routers to laptops to VR headsets.
The first routers with this chip (or any other Wi-Fi 7 wireless chip) could hit the market in late 2022, but are more likely in early 2023. They will be expensive. And they almost certainly won’t be worth it for most people.
If you really need to upgrade your router and are desperate to be ready for the future, the first Wi-Fi 7 routers might be worth it. But since you need Wi-Fi 7 products that connect to it to really see the benefits, and those are still a long way off, there’s no need to rush to pay hands and shoulders for it.
Wi-Fi 7: when will it arrive on Apple devices?
Apple is often not far behind when it comes to Wi-Fi technology; we are surprised that new Macs produced in 2022 do not support Wi-Fi 6E. No one knows when Apple’s first Wi-Fi 7 devices will be available, but we suspect we won’t see them until 2024.
Wi-Fi 6E is expected to hit new products in the fall of 2022, with Apple possibly rolling it out as early as 2023. By the second half of 2024, Apple could even use its own Wi-Fi, cellular, and Bluetooth chips. instead of those from companies like Broadcom, Skyworks and Qualcomm.
Since the biggest advantage of Wi-Fi 7 is its ability to send and receive data from a single client on multiple frequencies and channels at once, the biggest advantage will only become apparent once you have several Wi-Fi compatible products. – Fi 7 at home. It could be 2025, 2026 or later, depending on how often new things are bought.
So while Wi-Fi 7 is a big deal, a big deal, it won’t change your online world for a few years. If Apple jumps on the bandwagon sooner than expected, it will be more about protecting the devices its users will keep for years to come than providing any real practical advantage in the present.
Original article published in English on our sister site igamesnews.com.
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