The 6Gghz from Wifi 6E will be included but critically Wifi 7 devices can use difference frequencies at the same time alongside the 320Mhz channel widths and 4096 QAM. It will be a bigger jump than Wifi 6 and 6E and might finally start to see genuinely greater than 1gbps performance in practice.
6E can already deliver 1.5 Gbps or so per device with good signal at 160 MHz channel width. But most AP manufacturers have optimized for client density rather than raw single client performance.
I don't have many 6E devices, my M1 Macbook air can get 600Mbps from my 6E Access Point, where my old(ac) AP would get about 180Mbps. So, I should be able to close to max out the 2.5gb uplink with 4 devices (quad-channel)... I don't have anything that needs that at the moment. Aside from file xfer to/from my NAS.
Will say, as far as I'm concerned not seeing a need to upgrade any time soon for my own needs. Short of another project where I regularly have to xfer a couple hundred gigs of files, where my internet provider is 1gb down, 40mb up.
Most APs don't have an upstream connection faster than that anyway. Clients generally don't need that speed anyway, and if they do its only for a few seconds anyway (large file transfer).
Most APs aimed at domestic situations are still on 1Gbps, but WiFi 6-series (not 6E/7) APs aimed at business/enterprise environments have had 2x5Gbps uplinks for years now - since September 2018, i.e. Aruba AP-555’s [1]. I happen to use these at home and they’re great with 100’s of concurrently connected clients (across 5+ APs and 15+ radios, usually ~70 clients per radio max) vs. Ubiquiti/Eero which always had lots of issues. Obviously though, YMMV!
Definitely agree that it’s generally not needed (>1Gbps) but game updates these days run 100GiB+ in some cases (particularly for AAA titles) and it’s nice to have a little more speed sometimes. Individual clients are usually 80MHz 2x2 so best case will get ~1.2Gbps [2], but the radio can handle a couple clients doing things at once (MU-MIMO).
For external connectivity, Comcast is now selling 1.2Gbps services in many US markets (they also overprovision the profile so speedtest.net will often see 1.4Gbps), and consequently cable modems have had 2.5GE ports for a couple years now. When combined with APs that have >1Gbps uplinks this can actually get used! Some markers can now get Comcast with 2000/200 (down/up) [3], which is a huge improvement over 1200/35 — the previous maximum.
So, it’s nice to have APs with more uplink, and it’s nice to have >1Gbps Comcast, but I’d definitely not call it mainstream yet.
I recently moved to Spain and got 1 gig symmetrical for 20 euros a month, and my ISP just sent an email saying 10 gig symmetrical is available in my building now for just 10 euros more. So tempting just to say I have 10 gig as I really have no use for it..
Nice, in Romania it's about 8 euros for 1 gig, unfortunately 10 isn't available in my city yet.
Edit: Just checked and for 10 G it would be about 10 euros and for 2.5 G - 9 euros, that's a very good upgrade, probably they assume that most users won't take advantage of the full bandwidth.
My ISP is Digi, which if I'm not mistaken is Romanian! Occasionally IP geolocators think I'm in Romania, even though doing a traceroute shows none of my traffic actually goes through Romania. I'm guessing they re-assigned some blocks of IPs over to their Spanish subsidiary and the geolocation databases haven't caught up yet.
I definitely don't have any way to take advantage of 10g, that's for sure. I guess WiFi 6 might be able to make some use of 2.5G. I'd upgrade for 1 euro more if I was you.
CoD: Modern Warfare 2 for PC shipped an update in April '22 which was >100GiB. Somewhat more recently in November '22 the Xbox variant required a 40-50GiB update. This does annoy customers, but they still keep doing it:
I wish 10GbE switches and NICs would finally come down in price. I'm not interested in investing in 2.5GbE gear and then have to do the same again in a few years :(
I dropped moderate coin on a budget 10 GbE PoE+ switch to power some Ubiquiti U6-Enterprise APs (does 6E and > 1GbE). The trick for residential use is resistor hacking the fans to avoid a 1U jet engine in the closet.
A 1GbE switch with 8 ports needs to be built with 8Gb throughput (Alice talks to Bob at 1GbE AND Bob talks to Alice at 1GbE, and all such combinations).
A 1GbE WiFi signal only needs to have 1GbE throughput.
What home users need is a 10GbE hub. 10GbE connections between devices but really only one at a time.
Switches are overbuilt for home user purposes. I don't think anyone will notice that Alice takes up the channel and that Bob has to wait his turn.
In fact, that's how WiFi works and most people don't even notice.
> A 1GbE switch with 8 ports needs to be built with 8Gb throughput
It needs 16 Gb switching capacity; it is duplex.
> What home users need is a 10GbE hub. 10GbE connections between devices but really only one at a time. Switches are overbuilt for home user purposes.
Not really. While it is true, that most users do not have active multiple devices at the same time, they would pay for this in energy usage. Ethernet, which is what most people would end up with, has pretty high consumption at 10 GbE, to the tune 3-5W per port (times 2, because you need two ends for each cable). It is better to keep them idle when possible; that means switching.
> It is better to keep them idle when possible; that means switching.
Perhaps so.
Still, how to switch? If the "switch internals" is just a token-ring + ARP table (IE: each port remembers the mac addresses its serving, and token-rings the data around), the switch will have ~10GbE for all-ports, but only a max bandwidth of 10GbE before it starts losing packets. (Ex: Alice <-> Bob <-> Charlie <-> Dave with only 10GbE each link. If Alice talks to Charlie and Bob talks to Dave, then the Bob -> Charlie needs 20GbE, so half the packets will get dropped)
This isn't a full switch classic.
Maybe a "Hub classic" isn't enough, since that keeps the ports needlessly active as you noted. But I don't think the full 80Gbps bidirectional is needed for an 8-port home-consumer (or even many prosumer) environments.
The full 10Gbps switches all get quite hot, probably due to drawing a ton of power. I'm thinking that some simplified architecture is needed to reduce power (by trading off and reducing bandwidth)
> It needs 16 Gb switching capacity; it is duplex.
I don't think this is the correct terminology. "Switching capacity", as far as I can tell, is the simple addition of the speeds of all the ports. So 16 Gbps switching capacity isn't something it needs, it's something it has simply from the nature of having those 8x 1 GbE full-duplex ports.
What we're talking about here that we'd need to not bottleneck, would be called either "non-blocking throughput" or "backplane bandwidth".
And even on higher end switches, the switching capacity and backplane bandwidth are usually not equal. I'd be surprised if the same wasn't true for consumer switches (though maybe it is since there's far fewer ports on consumer switches than enterprise switches).
(There's also a packets per second metric that determines how much the switch can handle, but I'm assuming that's only going to be a bottleneck if your packet sizes are too low)
In the home environment its typically going to be a couple of local devices having a high speed communication (NAS and client) and everything else is trickle bandwidth in comparison to a 10G connection. There is definitely a market for a switch with 8 10G ports but can only switch 20gbps total, maybe even just 10 gbps would be enough since almost all home users its one way or the other and not both. The flexibility however is that multiple clients can utilise that bandwidth.
One of the more affordable options nowadays is the Ubiquiti Flex XG [1] ($299) for a 5-port unit with 4 being 10GE. I’m using lots of their Switch XG 6 PoE [2] ($599) since it can drive 5GE ports on my APs and supports 802.3bt (which is required to power them up without limitations!).
Lots of prebuilt PC systems are coming with 2.5GE NICs - “build your own” and it feels like most motherboards are now 2.5GE? Upgrading existing to 2.5GE is pretty cheap (~$30 USD), even via USB adapters [3].
To me, I think it’s fine with NBase-T that the switches be 10GE and the clients negotiate at 2.5GE or 5GE, although I’d note that both Mac Mini, iMac and Mac Studio can now be OEM specified with 10GE NIC for I think $100 additional.
For me that's not affordable. I'm using 1GbE 8 port semi-managed switches from TP-Link that cost me €30 a piece 10 years ago (and are still the same price these days). Semi-managed because they only support some features but all I need is VLANs and port mirroring.
Only way I know to get $/port much cheaper than $50-75 is to pick up a used Arista on eBay, there are typically 48-port 10GE models going for ~$400-500. That's what I use to drive 10GE ports where I don't need 802.3bt.
There are significant tradeoffs that you may not tolerate:
(1) They are very noisy (vs. the Flex XG which is fanless) so if your "Tech" is anywhere near your living space, this may be unworkable;
(2) They consume lots of power and also don't do 802.3{af,at,bt} for PoE either, you can solve PoE using an injector (for a few ports), a midspan (for more ports) but note that injectors/midspans usually don't support NBase-T and if you want the combination of 2.5/5/10GE and PoE you might be back to buying a specific switch which can do that;
(3) Learning curve is steeper than unmanaged or most semi-managed switches and you likely need to be comfortable with serial consoles to get them configured.
With all those and likely more tradeoffs considered, they are ~$10/port!
About half way through wiring my home... UV+Shielded Cat 6E (2 runs are outside). I bought a single 8-port 10g switch, which will cover most of the runs, I'm also using a 2.5g switch. My NAS and my desktop are really the only two devices that support 10gb currently, so not a big deal either way.
There's a Mikrotik switch with 4 SFP+ 10G ports for ~120 EUR. It would work well with DAC cables in a rack. For use with copper you would need SFP+ modules which are like 50 EUR more each.
Yeah, I have 4x CRS326-24G-2S+IN (which is 2SFP+ ports and 24 gigabit ethernet ports) that I'm quite pleased with.
If you're not going to get direct-attach cables, then check out the stuff that 10gtek sells. In the 6->8+ months that I've been using them, I've not had any trouble with their short-range multi-mode SFP+ modules. Also, you can buy them for a little more than 10USD per module if you buy them in 2->10-packs from Newegg.
(And yeah, 10gtek is totally one of those "Direct from Shenzhen" companies that one might worry about buying from. I figured that 10gbit transceivers have been around for quite a while now, so there's no reason they should cost 80USD per, rolled the dice on two separate cheapo 10g transceiver manufacturers, and got lucky when the second (10gtek) turned out to ship a solid product that, like, actually worked and seems to work well.)
Yeah I get that from my U6 Pro APs, the signal doesn't go as far as you'd hope but the speed when you're in the same room is good. Unifi's software leaves a lot to be desired though.
Well I remember the U6-LR being run by some people in 2.5G for giggles (requires driver replacement, so not stock firmware), so I wouldn't be surprised if the U6 Pro was capable too.
>Wifi 7 is going to be the more useful jump for most on Wifi 5 still I think.
I am going to disagree a bit and add a few things.
WiFi 6 is basically the 4G version from IEEE with OFDMA. And OFDMA is the biggest reason why 802.11ax was delayed by 2+ years. As anyone jumping from 3G to 4G will immediately notice the difference, lower latency, high bandwidth all due to better frequency allocation and efficiency. Jumping from WiFi 5 to WiFi 6 will see the same immediate benefits.
WiFi 7, or 802.11be is the 5G version, an evolution and improved version of 4G or Wifi 6. But the difference wont be as dramatic as WiFi 5 moving to WiFi 6, given most of the bottleneck we have today are total WiFI capacity constrain, not singular user use case.
And while 320Mhz and 4096 QAM are mostly given. ( They are on some of the WiFi 6E equipment already if I remember correctly ). A lot of the WiFI 7 features, such as Multi Link Operation and Multi RU tends to go missing when they first launch. i.e While they are part of the 802.11be spec, they are not (yet) guarantee to be shipping it. And even if they do you are likely end up with something like the fist gen of OFDMA and MU-MIMO, which requires lots of tuning and fixing and even 2nd generation silicon.
But a proper WiFi 7 is going to fill up the needs for 99% of consumer use case in the foreseeable futures. It sort of hit the end curve of Power law.
One thing I do hope will happen because marketing will have a hard time explaining it ( or at least I will make enough noise on the internet to demand a marketing explanation ) will be WiFi is now faster than the Wired Ethernet. Which will hopefully force them to include at least 2.5Gbps port on their routers. I dont think 10Gbps Ethernet will ever be cheap enough for consumer market, but I hope may be at least 5Gbps / Nbase-T / 802.11bz? You only need CAT6 cable for 5Gbps. ( You could even do it with CAT5e in short distances )
> Wifi 7 is going to be the more useful jump for most on Wifi 5 still I think.
If you can wait for 7, then it probably makes sense to just get the latest and greatest.
But at $WORK we're moving into a new office in 2023, and given networking gear lead times, we have to order what's available now (6 and 6E) to make sure we get the stuff in time for move-in.
Even with 'only' 6(E), you still get OFDMA, which AFAICT really helps with spectrum efficiency in high-density environments. 6GHz with 6E is also a good thing.
I currently have a wifi latency mystery. I have a WDS bridge between my garage and main house. If I ping my server in the garage (or the AP itself), I get 2-3ms round trip time with IPv4, but about 30ms round trip time with IPv6. There isn't any routing going on.
The "different frequencies at the same time" feature is called Multi-Link Operation (MLO). MLO has multiple operating modes and one of these, Simultaneous Transmit and Receive (STR), allows for using 1 link (say 5 GHz) for upload and 1 link (say 6 GHz) for download as a valid combination effectively creating a "full duplex" connection in terms of the data transfer. I'm optimistic this will work and be supported "well enough" in a home scenario.
Most Wi-Fi heads are more excited about the use of MLO for roaming improvements in enterprise networks though. The ability of the client to completely associate to another AP on another radio before officially roaming the traffic to it could be interesting.
Overall MLO is going to be an interesting rollout. Just like many had fears of MU-MIMO sounding great on paper but being near useless in the real world on real devices with real drivers it's possible this ends up as more a "you can if you precisely set up ideal conditions and select the devices to see this work really well" for most of the modes of operation. I think the roaming one is relatively safe and the worst case is you just fall back to normal roaming. The more complicated ones where there are a lot of combos about how a client can associate to multiple APs and actively do things feels like a complicated coordination nightmare and that might take a really long time, if not forever, for client devices to get good at.
There's also WiFi 6E and WiFi 7, which introduce the 6GHz bands for more congestion-free spectrum. Btw, if anyone is looking for a solution to congestion without going to 6GHz, I found great performance on the 5GHz DFS bands (with my fully DFS-compliant access point).
Stability of connection might be a more preferable metric, particularly in noisy urban environments. A theory I agree with for that is to choose the non DFS band(s) (depending on desired channel width and included device compatibility) to prevent the network from hopping around at the cost of slowing down when the noise floor (other broadcasters) increase.
Yes. Testing it. :) How else would you find out? It depends on so many factors. Nearby radars, placement inside the home, sensitivity etc.
The only thing you can do in advance is check for radar transmitters in the 5-6Ghz range nearby. Be aware that these are usually in a pretty specific frequency, affecting only a few channels.
How do you check for it? I have UniFi equipment- is there something built in that can monitor it for me? How long a test do you need? Can/will it change over time?
If you're using a DFS frequency and the device notices it needs to change frequency because a primary user transmits the Unifi console will log DFS events in the notification area. It won't emit any notifications if you're not using a DFS channel.
If anyone wants to get into some of the weeds of Wifi, the Wireless LAN Professionals organization has a good Youtube channel where they put the presentations from their biannual conferences up:
> Since 2010 several dozen models have been launched, and the number of users of our brand has exceeded seven million. Keenetic understands that business is done between people and that it is as important to listen as to preach, so Keenetic has built complex customer and distributor support infrastructures that allow prompt complaint resolution and clear product development guidance. A great selling point of our offerings is their continuous suitability for current market customer needs and the modular architecture that allows Keenetic products to grow with the clients’ needs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11be
The 6Gghz from Wifi 6E will be included but critically Wifi 7 devices can use difference frequencies at the same time alongside the 320Mhz channel widths and 4096 QAM. It will be a bigger jump than Wifi 6 and 6E and might finally start to see genuinely greater than 1gbps performance in practice.