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Comment by tuckerpo | Hacker News Reader

IEEE attempted to fix reliability, range and latency issues in WiFi 6 and 6E. Unfortunately, since the 802.11 spec's conception in the late 90s, the push has been to get throughput numbers (meaning, the marketing number for more sales for vendors) up. I believe WiFi 7 is something like 11 Gbps max theoretical throughput which is a solution in search of a problem. Absolutely nobody needs 11 Gbps, but everyone needs reliability.

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Wifi is a shared spectrum resource; that 11 gbps is not only for you, but everyone on the same frequency; including other SSIDs.

Sure, but MU-MIMO, OFDMA, GI modulation etc... is all much more useful for time-sharing of spectrum than 4096 QAM.

> MU-MIMO, OFDMA, GI modulation

All things that are already in the spec. So what's next?

wifi7 has MLO, which will contribute to devices getting satisfied with their data sooner and not asking for more timeslots. 4096 QAM will also, however marginally, contribute to this effect.

In crowded spaces speed == reliability since a ton of the unreliability is due to crowded channels. More speed == clients shut up faster == more clients are able to actually communicate reliably.

Sure, you might not need 11Gbps on your own. But you + all your neighbors might need a total of 11Gbps. The air is just one big shared wire.

From the ONT sure, but from a single wireless access point?

> In crowded spaces

I'm not talking about a single wireless access point.

Eh... OFDMA and guard interval modulation would probably serve better for crowded channels than higher throughput. Also, something like 40% of WiFi airtime is used by... beacons. Another opportunity for optimization.

OFDMA and adjustable guard interval modulation are already features of WiFi since WiFi 6. So its not like they're just ignoring those things, they're already there.

Yes, but my original point was the IEEE came up with these things (OFDMA, MU-MIMO, fronthaul MIMO, GI modulation) when they were given the opportunity to focus on optimization instead of speed. I am saying it would be nice if they would continue to do this instead of QAM++.

The higher 6GHz band penetrates walls less than 2.4GHz and 5GHz, which means you will need more APs but each AP will have less interference from neighbors.

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