Wi-Fi 7 (802.11be) theoretical maximum data rate is up to 46 Gbps
tomshardware.comThese theoretical data rates for WiFi are getting out of hand. The numbers have become completely useless to everyone, because they have no correlation to actual network speed.
It's like presenting the aggregated speed of all switch ports in an ethernet switch, without telling you how many ports there are or what the internal switching speed maximum is. "Here! Buy this 44gbit switch!" and then connect your equipment to find out the fastest link speed you'll get is 1gbps.
Theoretical limits always assume an unlimited budget for the antennas. Getting to within 2/3 of this figure is quite feasible for someone with a truly unlimited budget.
A better comparison would be the limits for a single strand of fiber optic cable.
Yes and even worse they now start to add the theoretical maximum of several streams together to get an even bigger number that makes even less sense.
For example Ubiquiti lists their Unifi U6+ at 1.2gbit and the U6 Pro at 4.8gbit. But the speed these two products will achieve in a home or small office is exactly the same. The Pro has some more range (bigger antennas), but both will get you about 700mbit in ideal reception no interference conditions because they're based on the same WiFi 6 standard.
Edit: And they know it, both products have a 1gbit physical port that is enough to serve "4.8 gbit wifi"
The reason the U6-Pro is listed as 4.8Gbit and the U6+ is listed as 1.2Gbit is because the 6+ only supports 2x2 MIMO on 5GHz, whereas the Pro supports 4x4 MIMO.
Most client devices won't go above 2x2 MIMO and many won't support above channel widths greater than 80MHz on 5GHz so your chance of saturating the 1Gbit uplink port is unlikely anyway.
Good throughput but it is only line of sight as that bw is in high frequency ranges.
2.4 ghz and 900 mhz are not "old" or "outdated." It's all rf spectrum. The lower frequencies are valuable for range/penetration.
We should weigh research on directed rf radiation higher. We can run a lot more devices with better UX if we can avoid blasting radiation in all directions.
In fact I'd like to see a wifi standard that utilizes the entire spectrum from 900 Mhz to 6 Ghz seamlessly without me noticing. If I'm in line of sight, switch me to 6 Ghz. As I move away, go to 5 Ghz then 2.4 Ghz progressively.
There are systems that try to do this today, but they are not seamless. The switchover is noticeable most of the times, and sometimes your device won't ever come back to the faster frequency. I suspect that is because the standard itself doesn't treat this behavior as a first class citizen. Manufacturers are building custom solutions.
What you described is exactly what WiFi 7 tries to do. We will see if it works well, if not WiFI 8 802.11bn will likely correct it. As with each WiFI iteration do.
Recently I got 400 megabit/second on my cheap cellphone through a friends WiFi out to the Internet. That's more than 100 times the speed of ArcNet[1], the first networking system I worked with.
Sure, the maximum numbers are based on almost ideal conditions but we'll get there soon enough. There will be further advances in technology, likely optical. I fully expect that a Terabyte/second will seem slow in a decade or two.
Great - that will certainly be beneficial for everyone with 47Gbps internet lines. Could we have some innovation in the direction of coping with congested RF, please.
47Gbps in wifi terms is like living to 200 but in dog years. The real speed will probably not be much more than 1gbit which is a common fiber connection speed.
WiFi 6 with a 2023 macbook does not practically deliver 1gbit, even with zero other networks nearby and the macbook 3ft from the access point you'll get something like 700mbit. One factor is that Apple devices so far don't support 160 channel width, only up to 80. But even with a 160 channel you wouldn't make the advertised "5gbit" because that's the aggregated speed across all frequencies and streams, which cannot be combined.
What do you think happens when everyone can transmit packets an order of magnitude faster, even if they're not transmitting at the line rate of the link? Average channel utilization drops precipitously and the transmit rates improve in aggregate for everyone.
Not to mention governments are opening up 1200MHz of spectrum on the 6GHz band (Wi-Fi 6E and 7) which is helping in heavily congested areas on its own.
> Not to mention governments are opening up 1200MHz of spectrum on the 6GHz band (Wi-Fi 6E and 7) which is helping in heavily congested areas on its own.
Just don't come with metallic objects nearby.
We have 2, 6, 8gbps internet lines widely available here in NZ. Current wifi was capped out long ago
How much of that is international bandwidth?
It’s fibre from the home to your provider. New Zealand's current international connectivity is provided by three under-sea fibre optic cables with a combined total throughput of 73 terabits per second.
While we're on the topic of nonsense numbers Wolfram Alpha estimates that to be 14 megabits per person
Or it could be gigabits available to any person. Since it would be 14 megabits per person per second right, assuming 100% utilisation?
I merely told it to divide 73 terabits by the population of New Zealand and to express that in megabits. So yeah no consideration of usage patterns: "nonsense numbers" just like the supposed 46G wifi this story is about.
I do agree that all these numbers are pretty meaningless . Somehow truth in advertising laws don't apply to many of these claims. Only seen the Australian regulator really crack down on it.
I guess Australia is international? So most? Depends on how much your ISP has provisioned of course. There are some very premium ones and ones that are less so. You get what you pay for as usual
No doubt the routers will still feature 1 gig eth at the back though lol
Recently got myself a 6E and reckon that’ll be enough for a while
Many come with SFP ports for this reason now
On consumer gear?
Well, its consumer level price https://www.amazon.com/MikroTik-Gigabit-Ethernet-Router-RB76...
No I mean router with wifi.
Consumer gear frequently says 4+ gbps on the box as aggregate wifi speeds...but its all GbE ports at the back. Not entirely a lie but pretty damn close.
The ones with 10GbE connectivity and 6E are all marketed as "gaming" and cost stupid amounts. Plus frankly are just ugly too e.g.
https://www.amazon.com/ASUS-Rapture-Gaming-Router-GT-AXE1600...
IEEE: "WiFi should be named in numbers because the letters are confusing"
...
IEEE: "Now introducing WiFi 6E!"
Lol
There were some articles about 5G and 10G in the same spirit.