What is Wifi 8?

[RMerlin]

Asus posted a fairly lengthy page on their website listing all the features introduced in Wifi 8. There are a lot more than I initially expected.

https://www.asus.com/ca-en/content/what-is-wifi8/

Now, how much of these features will actually end up in most consummer-grade devices remain to be seen. And also how many of these will actually work as expected...

 

[Kendo]

Interesting read, thanks for sharing.

 

[Untried3868]

Will one need a mortgage to purchase a Wi-Fi 8 router?

 

[Tech9]

Newer Wi-Fi generations are gold mine for false advertising. Expect more hard to verify working or not features actively used for marketing purposes and skipped after for cost saving measures just like in Wi-Fi 7 products. Marketing teams struggle to find words to describe the theoretical improvements. We had "seamless roaming" claims for years, now we are going to get "improved seamless roaming". Next time perhaps "vastly improved seamless roaming" is coming. Improved connectivity to old existing clients, of course, especially IoTs. Like... improved back to Wi-Fi 4 levels or smart speakers getting vertical takeoff feature with 2x flight time when connected to Wi-Fi 8 router? I like the new Beamforming picture where two "smart" routers shoot own targets. This is an improved picture over previous false advertising picture. I can hear clients screaming "Pick me!" already. Must be some AI involvement in advertising, mandatory key word. Looking forward for "uninterrupted AI experience", my favorite.

 

[RMerlin]

Newer Wi-Fi generations are gold mine for false advertising. Expect more hard to verify working or not features actively used for marketing purposes and skipped after for cost saving measures just like in Wi-Fi 7 products. Marketing teams struggle to find words to describe the theoretical improvements. We had "seamless roaming" claims for years, now we are going to get "improved seamless roaming". Next time perhaps "vastly improved seamless roaming" is coming. Improved connectivity to old existing clients, of course, especially IoTs. Like... improved back to Wi-Fi 4 levels or smart speakers getting vertical takeoff feature with 2x flight time when connected to Wi-Fi 8 router? I like the new Beamforming picture where two "smart" routers shoot own targets. This is an improved picture over previous false advertising picture. I can hear clients screaming "Pick me!" already. Must be some AI involvement in advertising, mandatory key word. Looking forward for "uninterrupted AI experience", my favorite.

When reading these "tech promos", you have to cut through the marketing BS to find the actual technical nuggets. For me is seeing how many new technologies are being added with Wifi 8. Whether they will provide the advertised enhancements remains to be seen. But the fact is, Wifi 8 seem to add a lot of new features, more than the last few Wifi releases did. And they all seem to target reliability rather than throughput, which is a good thing. I already can push Wifi 7 to the near limits of a 2.5 Gbps Ethernet (which isn't even fully common yet, a majority of LANs are still only Gigabits). Make it maintain a higher speed over a longer distance, or better schedule traffic when both a 2x2 320 MHz and a 1x1 80 MHz client try to access the same radio at the same time - that's where there is worthwile room for improvements possible.

 

[Tech9]

The consumer market allows a lot of false advertising with no big risk of negative consequences. Many users can't filter marketing BS and will pay for advertised non-working or no improvement features. Since Wi-Fi 7 generation it become almost guaranteed to happen.

 

[RMerlin]

The consumer market allows a lot of false advertising with no big risk of negative consequences. Many users can't filter marketing BS and will pay for advertised non-working or no improvement features. Since Wi-Fi 7 generation it become almost guaranteed to happen.

Since puffery is legal, the line is probably quite blurry.