Wi-Fi 7 certification is now underway for new routers and devices

theverge.com

30 points·isaacfrond··5 comments

What's always strange about WiFi certification is that to get a certification you have to drop old protocols.

After they deprecated WEP and TKIP you couldn't earn certification if you supported them, which left a whole generation of equipment SOL. I think we just enabled WEP and TKIP anyway, because bad security > no security.

Just like every door doesn't need an ANSI grade 1 lock, not all communications need super secure encryption.

I haven't seen any news articles saying that Wi-Fi 7 has been ratified as a standard yet so it seems surprising to hear that devices are being certified for it.

You can see the 802.11be working group status on this page: https://www.ieee802.org/11/Reports/802.11_Timelines.htm. Right now it's still in draft status with draft 5.

That said, waiting for the standard to be fully ratified before beginning certifications would lead to months of delay with certification. With the draft so solidified at this point what would delaying the start of certifications gain? It's not like they are going to scrap the entire standard to start from scratch in draft 6.

You appear to be right, as far as I can tell the standard itself has not been ratified

https://www.ieee802.org/11/Reports/tgbe_update.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11be

> Development of the 802.11be amendment is ongoing, with an initial draft in March 2021, and a final version expected by early 2024

> Wi-Fi 7 certification is now underway for new routers and devices

I'm waiting for WiFi8. I am sure that it will be better. /s

When will people stop playing stupid games and do a thing right ? (see 5G, Wifi 6 etc.) (i.e. You can call it WiFi25, if it is not always better than its predecesor (hello 4G, 5G), it is still crap).

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