We need reliable, real-world ~20mbit/s for our warehouse scanners, not 382722 theoretical Gbit/s 5cm from the access point. And roaming that works instead of stupid clients clinging to somewhere or being thrown into a reconnect loop when the AP tries to get them to roam.
I know this is theoretically possible today. But in the real world, I have inherited the setup, so AP locations are fixed for now, clients are some random old handhold motorola android devices and interference is high.<p>In comparison, DECT has been flawless in the same space. Set and forget, just works. I always wondered if we could have a kind of DECT proxy on the LAN, and have the ERP application talk to that proxy using DECT... I mean, it's a few EANs and stuff, DECT could handle this easily.
I was recently made aware of WiFi HaLow. Official standard, ranges into the hundreds of meters. Speed suffers at long ranges of course, but still respectable (50-100kbs).<p>Link: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11ah" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11ah</a>
I've had similar issues with clients (Blink camera sync modules) connecting to far-away APs instead of the much closer router. I could not force them to connect directly to the router no matter what.<p>Turns out the 2.4 GHz radio of my router had died (Fritzbox 7590, apparently a common issue), thus forcing 2.4 GHz-only clients to use those other APs.
In ubiquity gear you can “lock” devices to a specific endpoint. I suspect ultimately you would prefer to have failover available but at least for troubleshooting you can see how it connects to that specific AP. Similarly you could see the amount of clients connected to an AP on every frequency and WiFi version.
And actually debugging this unless you have a bunch of enterprise level kit, or know exactly what the failure you’re looking for is is absolutely impossible
LoRa is quite nice for this in the lower frequency bands, and the bandwidth should suffice for this sorta thing. And the tech is super cheap to build and maintain, both hardware and software is open source.
Sounds like your old, random clients might be a problem?
Ensure your network has no <WiFi6 devices.
Warehouses, factories, etc need private 5G, not Wi-Fi.
> or being thrown into a reconnect loop when the AP tries to get them to roam<p>The AP does not have visibility into what the client actually sees, and no, a coordinator that has knowledge what the APs see isn't that much better.<p>Imagine a situation with two APs and a client being in the middle of the two in a RF-impeded situation (i.e. your typical office building). AP1 may "hear" the client better (i.e. it gets a higher RSSI and SNR), but the client may reject it in favor of AP2 because the client sees a better signal coming from AP2 due to reflections, a powerful RF signal from a floor above interfering with the channel of AP1 or God knows what else.<p>RF is a weird world.
How much money do you have? Nokia's Centralized RAN basically solves this by not choosing between AP1 and AP2. The device yells out a packet, both radios hear it, and the signals are combined in baseband processing. Wifi 8 doesn't quite do this, maybe 9's gonna have it. Or the patents run out and the telecom networks cooperate and everything gets a cell modem.
DECT or DECT-NR+?<p>I do kind of want to play with this.
> with Wi-Fi 7 reaching a maximum theoretical throughput of 23Gbit per band<p>Note to tech reports: do not EVER quote this metric as it is the most useless piece of information.
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!)<p>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.<p>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.
In typical WiFi fashion, for all the WIFi 8 features to working perfectly and debugged we have to wait for WiFi 9 [1]. This was true with WiFi 5, WiFi 6 and WiFI 7.<p>Unfortunately IMO WiFi router brand selection is getting increasingly small. I have no issue or problem with using UniFI myself. But it is not something I could recommend to family and friends as they don't know how to set it up. Eero is not available to much of the world outside US. I just wish Apple revive its AirPort Express business.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.nokia.com/blog/advancing-connectivity-with-wi-fi-9/" rel="nofollow">https://www.nokia.com/blog/advancing-connectivity-with-wi-fi...</a>
It's the first because we finally caught up on speed. We have it better than I imagined possible.<p>Last year, I saw 1600 Mbit/s from the Internet at a normie's place with an ISP-provided router. Still have a cat 6 cable around the living room but haven't used it in the last 2 years. Not exactly wifi but I routinely get 600-800 Mbit on 5g networks in crowded areas.
Ethernet isn't just about speed, it's about reliability. Before I wired my office, I regularly experienced latency spikes and hangs on video calls. After upgrading, I essentially never do.
It's 2026 and I'm running more cat-6 in my home to all my static devices. My theory is using wires lowers wireless contention, leaving more WiFi for the mobile devices.
I put in 2 CAT6 wires to every room in the house (4 in my office, 4 in garage), with one big PoE switch in the garage.<p>Everything with an Ethernet port is wired, wifi is for phones and tablets only (a few UniFi WiFi 6 APS).<p>Works great!<p>Internet has never dropped for me while working, family loves the always working NAS streaming via wired Apple TV.
Oh no. I haven't even upgraded to WiFi 7 yet!
You are not missing too much.<p>One of the core features (MLO) is currently mostly scam. APs/Clients negotiate the protocol (and it shows up in the status) but doesn't it to either increase robustness or bandwidth (by combining/switching between two frequency bands).<p>Also the driver quality is a huge mess.<p>(We tested it using the latest generation Cisco Enterprise gear but also with Prosumer stuff like Ubiquiti or TP-Link)<p>But honestly: we need WiFi-8. It finally brings infrastructure-controlled roaming which is super important for any VoIP service.
> infrastructure-controlled roaming<p>802.11 r/k/v exists
That's not controlled, seamless hand-over as we know it from GSM/3G/LTE/5G for 30 years now.<p>We basically miss all data (received stations/signal levels from both sides, Bit Rate errors, etc.) for making roaming decisions and then to softly connect them to an AP you want them to be on.<p>Enterprise WiFi is currently mostly "This is a list of APs you maybe can connect to.. have fun.. if you can connect we pre-seeded the AP with some crypto data, so it doesn't take ages to negotiate. Here's your (more or less friendly) disassoc. Fuck off bye."<p>It does somehow work for stationary setups - but as soon as you have mobile traffic (like walking around or machines moving) with multiple APs the quality hits the shitter brutally.<p>Currently this gap is being filled by industrial 5G with dedicated frequencies. It's crazy expensive.
On paper, yes. In the real world, that random Android client is clinging to an AP that can barely hear it while a better one would be available.
It sounds like you're talking about throughput aggregation, which indeed no device currently supports. Not even Apple's most recent devices have any sign of it, except that M5 Pro/Max MacBook Pro models are tested for simultaneous transmission on 2.4+5GHz and 2.4+6GHz: <a href="https://mrncciew.com/2026/03/17/macbook-pro-m5-wi-fi-7-missing-4096-qam-320-mhz/#comment-90720" rel="nofollow">https://mrncciew.com/2026/03/17/macbook-pro-m5-wi-fi-7-missi...</a>
> which indeed no device currently supports<p>Aren't devices with Intel Wi-Fi 7 BE200/BE202 are supporting that?<p>As well as latest Samsung phones?
UniFi UDB-Switch has throughput aggregation for 5GHz + 6GHz.
5GHz? Surely you mean 5000000kHz ;P
Not missing much. I feel like it's in many ways misguided. 6ghz ftw because 5ghz penetrates too much and causes noisy neighbor problems. Well, from my experience, 6ghz doesn't penetrate at -all-. So unless you live in a barndo or studio apartment, it's mostly an exercise in frustration.
The upgrade to 6E was a big jump in my network (Wifi7 Unifi Wall AP). On the same spot, the M3 MacBook (6E) has basically zero lag over VNC, while the M1 MacBook (6) has a noticeable lag. It’s a bit mind blowing how big the difference is.
That is likely because of AWDL and your WiFi card doing channel hopping to listen between packets.<p>Set your channels to 6/149/37 and the lag will probably vanish. Exactly because of this, I only run those channels, even across multiple APs.<p>In Europe, you may need to use 44 instead of 149.<p>There is currently no good way to keep AWDL off other than a script that just turns it off every 200ms, because of course Apple. Also, not always an option with work issued Macs.
I have a Wi-Fi 7 AP and this confused some members of my family that didn't even know it went higher than 6. I thought it was pretty funny
My family doesn't know that the WiFi AP is not the DECT base. They understand when I tell them, but that's gone after a week. They use the words WiFi (or, as we say in Germany, WLAN) and "Internet" almost interchangeably. At work, too. "Internet kaputt" can mean anything from "my device is broken" to "our ERP app is not doing the right thing / responding too slow".
You can’t blame them, though. I live in the industry for over 25 years now, and when 5 Ghz wifi got introduced, and started to live alongside 2.4 Ghz with all the different protocols, I was like: "Nah. Screw it." I honestly have no idea what the current hot stuff in terms of wifi is.^^
That is true everywhere. I think operating systems could do a better job at informing about the health of the internet connection in words the user understands. What seems to be the current bottleneck:<p>Your router does not respond. Turn it off and on.<p>This comes close: <a href="https://www.getapp.com/all-software/a/breakdown/" rel="nofollow">https://www.getapp.com/all-software/a/breakdown/</a>
Less latency is excellent news. This is the main reason why gamers still prefer Ethernet.
Makes sense. Last router upgrade I reached the point where my wifi speeds (at least near the router) were indistinguishable from plugging into gigabit ethernet - that's fast enough for any home task, and the same speed as my fibre uplink. I can't see chasing speed further, outside of very specialised setups.
> (…) while further increments have been smaller in percentage, speeds have always increased very significantly.<p>Off topic, but that sounds sort of contradictory, or misleading at the very least.
Time for new steamlink.
Makes sense since a lot of networks don't have access to speed. The highest speeds in my area are around 150MBps, so 5-6GBps or whatever is a perfectly fine upper bound for me. Range and congestion however has been an issue.
It's nice to have the fastest Wi-Fi possible even if your upstream internet is slower. Sometimes you want to transfer files locally between devices, or run backups etc. Faster Wi-Fi here can make a huge difference to those tasks.
You can still make use of more. Local video streaming from your PC to tv, file transfers between nearby devices etc.<p>Modern wifi is fast enough that using cables is often not required.
You used the wrong units there. Should be Mbps and Gbps.
The peak-speed arms race stopped being interesting to me a while ago. I don't need 20+ Gbit/s theoretical Wi-Fi. I need the connection to stay boring when I'm at the edge of coverage or the neighbours are hammering the same spectrum.<p>The 95th-percentile latency and packet-loss targets here seem much more meaningful than another 2x headline speed increase.<p>My only scepticism is how much of this survives real consumer hardware. Wi-Fi 6 had things like OFDMA that sounded great on paper, but support/implementation was pretty uneven.
My neighbor thinks that they can increase their 100Mbps ISP speed by having 5 or 6 access points at 2.4GHz in their 1400sq ft (~140m2) apartment.<p>There’s so much interference that the package dropout rate is around 40% at 2.4GHz usually.
Having a AP in every room can be as significant boost if the walls impede the signal a lot. In fact we have one wall which is especially bad. Stand in front of it or next to it and reception from the front of the house is decent. Take one step back behind the wall and signal drops to less than 10%.<p>So having the 5-6 AP is not the problem, then shouting at max power <i>is the</i> problem. Especially “gaming” routers tend to do this.
2.4ghz is pretty bad but the 5 and 6ghz bands don’t really travel far. I’m in a dense area and 5ghz works great while 6 has basically no detectable traffic.
Agree completely. Higher speeds are a bit pointless for most users. Unless you have an extremely fast NAS, where you need to copy (not stream) data over Wi-Fi, you're unlikely to be anywhere near the current limits.<p>I'm using 802.11ac and see no need for higher speeds.