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Qualcomm moves from Wi-Fi 6E to Wi-Fi 7 for higher throughput and lower latency
The global semiconductor shortage really wants to get in the way of any technology it touches, including routers. Wi-Fi 6 is the current standard that most people would consider, and considering the many products coming out in mid-2021, we should really be in the era of Wi-Fi 6E by now.Unfortunately, the shortage has severely impacted the adoption of this new standard technology. Will be replaced by Wi-Fi 7 before it really has a chance.
There are signs that for those looking to upgrade, it’s better to skip Wi-Fi 6E register Qualcomm has dropped Wi-Fi 7 support, the report said. This strong tilt towards the new Wi-Fi 7 standard is primarily driven by the need for greater throughput for things like VR, AR, and potentially the Metaverse, while still meeting the latency requirements of participating games like this.
“That creates a challenge, you have to deliver extremely high throughput — that’s the IEEE’s tagline for Wi-Fi 7 — but you have to deliver extremely high throughput with consistently low latency. So something like VR Applications obviously need throughput, but you have to really hit latency goals to make it work,” Andy Davidson, senior director of technology planning at Qualcomm, told The Register.
Wi-Fi 7 is also set to allow multi-link operation to help with congestion. This means that devices can potentially connect to multiple channels, choose the least crowded one, and possibly even use multiple channels.
“Before Wi-Fi 7, a client would only have to connect to one of the channels and use the one that best suits the needs. But with multilink, a client can connect to an AP through multiple channels. It can use that to avoid congestion. So if there is traffic on one of the channels, you can use the other channel, so you can get lower latency,” Davidson explained.
This sounds like really cool technology, very helpful for those who have high requirements for the network, but again it is assumed that people can master them. The supply of Wi-Fi 7 routers is expected to suffer from chip shortages like everything else, but hopefully that will calm down when they reach retail supply.
The question remains whether you can use them. Some countries still have very limited access to the 6GHz spectrum used by Wi-Fi 6E, so these routers are currently no better than regular Wi-Fi 6. Wi-Fi 7 will have the same problems if the infrastructure (and legislation) doesn’t catch up.