MLO: What exactly is Smart Connect's role?

[Sweden]

From the article you linked to. Yes, in theory, it might be possible and we might get it in the future, but so far, MLO doesn't appear to be implemented as a one band down, another band up, but rather, let's bunch more bands together for faster downloads or uploads.

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I guess i read it to fast. Feels stupid if they dont implement it properly. I want "basic" Full duplex, rather than windows show 4Gbps, 2Gbps is fine enough.

 

[TheLostSwede]

I guess i read it to fast. Feels stupid if they dont implement it properly. I want "basic" Full duplex, rather than windows show 4Gbps, 2Gbps is fine enough.

Well, that's kind of what wired Ethernet is for.

It's hard to do proper duplex networking wirelessly on many levels, but it might be possible to do on the 6 GHz band, as there's enough available bandwidth there. However, it would require more complex radios and that would add cost.
It might happen one day, but not right now.

 

[Sweden]

Well, that's kind of what wired Ethernet is for.

It's hard to do proper duplex networking wirelessly on many levels, but it might be possible to do on the 6 GHz band, as there's enough available bandwidth there. However, it would require more complex radios and that would add cost.
It might happen one day, but not right now.

OK. Thanks mate for explaining. Its a bit strange, we can have OLED in laptops, superfast SSD, a good graphics card but no network port (hindering full duplex). I am much more sceptic to Wi-Fi7 now :/

 

[TheLostSwede]

OK. Thanks mate for explaining. Its a bit strange, we can have OLED in laptops, superfast SSD, a good graphics card but no network port (hindering full duplex). I am much more sceptic to Wi-Fi7 now :/

You could just pick up a fairly affordable USB to the Ethernet dongle. I'm not quite sure what the holdup is, but Realtek was showing 5 Gbps solutions at Computex last year and some motherboards have already shipped with the PCIe equivalent chip. Maybe there will be announcements at Computex next week. Regardless, 2.5 Gbps options are aplenty and $30-40 at most.
That's assuming you can use something wired instead of wireless.

 

[Sweden]

I did buy an Gigabit adapter with broadcom chipset inside. It said it would support 1 Gbps.
However when i connected it to my Vivobook Pro, i never seemed to achive more then 250Mbps tops (USB 3.x)
I downloaded all the latest drivers. Next time, when its time to upgrade i am gonna put OLED+LAN port
as mandatory. ps latency also seemed higher on dongle in comparison to WiFi6

By the way i read this yesterday:
WiFi 7 MLO mainly includes two modes: STR Mode and NSTR Mode. STR Mode refers to simultaneous transceiver mode or asynchronous mode. That is, two or more links work completely independently, and they don't interfere with each other. NSTR Mode refers to non-simultaneous transceiver mode or synchronous mode.

I hope Merlin adds STR Mode if ASUS is lazy

 

[RMerlin]

hope Merlin adds STR Mode if ASUS is lazy

Anything related to wifi is outside of my control.

 

[TheLostSwede]

I did buy an Gigabit adapter with broadcom chipset inside. It said it would support 1 Gbps.
However when i connected it to my Vivobook Pro, i never seemed to achive more then 250Mbps tops (USB 3.x)
I downloaded all the latest drivers. Next time, when its time to upgrade i am gonna put OLED+LAN port
as mandatory. ps latency also seemed higher on dongle in comparison to WiFi6

Maybe try one of the new 2.5 Gbps adapters, they get close at around 2.2-2.3 Gbps.

 

[jzchen]

USB 3.0 makes noise in the 2.4 GHz spectrum, which can be a problem as speed on it gets high. (From people sharing on the ASUS ROG forum 1 Gbps ISP speeds are fine but if someone has 2 Gbps, or 2.5 Gbps ISP speed, the USB to Ethernet adapter doesn't achieve those speeds). Google USB 3.0 noise and you can find the Intel article on this noise. Not sure about Thunderbolt but that is what I use to provide 10 Gbps Ethernet to my son's MacBook Pro.

Incidentally his 6E MacBook does some form of MLO, where it can connect to two simultaneously. I see it on the ASUS app/wrt.

I have only a single WiFi 7 OnePlus Open phone. It gets faster speed connected to the Deco BE95 MLO than the BE95 Pro MLO, but it's on the order of magnitude slower than Samsung devices have achieved...

 

[TheLostSwede]

USB 3.0 makes noise in the 2.4 GHz spectrum, which can be a problem as speed on it gets high. (From people sharing on the ASUS ROG forum 1 Gbps ISP speeds are fine but if someone has 2 Gbps, or 2.5 Gbps ISP speed, the USB to Ethernet adapter doesn't achieve those speeds). Google USB 3.0 noise and you can find the Intel article on this noise. Not sure about Thunderbolt but that is what I use to provide 10 Gbps Ethernet to my son's MacBook Pro.

Yeah, that's not how it works. It's not USB 3.0 that's causing noise, but rather, if you use devices with poorly/cheaply made cables with insufficient shielding, you can get interference, but only when data is being transferred. In general, this isn't an issue any more and it would require the USB 3.0 transfer to happen near the wireless transmitter, as the interference has a very short range.
How do I know? Because we ran into this exact issue when I was working for a router manufacturer and data transferred over USB 3.0 to a WD drive knocked out the ZigBee signal (the router had some IoT features).
What it doesn't do, is knock out the 2.4 GHz WiFi signal, but it can weaken it.
Also, that Intel article is now over a decade old and most decent companies have learned to design products that mitigates said interference.

How a 2.5 Gbps Ethernet to USB adapter would have any affect on WiFi, I don't quite understand though.

As Thunderbolt works at much higher frequencies/speeds, it can not interfere with WiFi.