this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2024
179 points (96.9% liked)

Technology

59598 readers
3395 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Faster than ever: Wi-Fi 7 standard arrives::How fast do you want your Wi-Fi to go? How does 5.8 Gigabits per second sound? Fast enough for you?

top 49 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 57 points 10 months ago (4 children)

Will it make my ISP give me more internets to push through that WiFi? No? Then it isn't going to change my world, sadly.

[–] brian 45 points 10 months ago (4 children)

While I think most agree with you, it's important to note there is more to networking than WAN access. Streaming 4k in your home network over WiFi sounds pretty awesome for security cameras and other self-hosted medias.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Who needs 4k security camera footage streaming in their own home?

The media center is far more relevant here, but again, current speeds are pretty adequate for the majority of people.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago

current speeds are pretty adequate for the majority of people.

For now

[–] [email protected] -4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (3 children)

People who think the cameras will stop people from breaking in and stealing their shit, or the ones that think cops will somehow catch the bad guy and get their stuff back because they had a camera.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

Cameras are for insurance

[–] wildbus8979 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

You forget the ones who want the cops to pay for the broken door.

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

The thing you need is just a box that looks like it could be a camera. The most you can expect is that it is a minor deterrent and the footage will basically do nothing for you, so just pretend.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Mostly I end up just using one to see at a glance if, say, my wife is home (car is in the driveway) or to check out if that possum came back again last night.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

But I can already do 4k streaming over my 5g wifi

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Sure, though in my world none of my networking needs exceed the capabilities provided by the current WiFi generation, thus it remains unchanged. Nor will I see any benefit from it unless I conduct a thorough review and replacement of all impacted devices in my world to also accommodate WiFi 7, which I will not be doing.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I already have Ethernet runs.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 10 months ago

As your ANAL Attorney, I advise you to take less Psyllium Fiber Optic Husk to prevent further Ethernet runs.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago

With the number of people renting on the rise due to house prices in many countries around the world, running cables isn't an option for everyone (and even when it is, not everyone wants to actually do it).

Having more options available for people to move large amounts of data around their home is never a bad thing.

[–] Lucidlethargy 17 points 10 months ago (1 children)

My upload speed is 10mbit/s. It's 2024, and this is ridiculous. I pay over $80 a month for this internet in one of the largest cities in the United States. I live in a very populated part of the city, too.

I fucking hate ISP's.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Which city. If you dont mind? Curious which is so bad.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Mine was that in Sacramento, CA 2 years ago

Now it's 120 for 100 both ways out in the rural parts of CA

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, it will help and it won't. If you're uploading through a typical cable internet connection, WiFi will almost never be the bottleneck. But if you're streaming 4k in a part of your house that doesn't have good coverage while other people use the same connection, it could make a difference.

I do a lot of streaming from my desktop to my TVs and I occasionally have bandwidth problems, so this could help that. And I have 300 up / 300 down fiber Internet, and in parts of my house I have problems getting anywhere close to that on WiFi. So WiFi 7 might help with those cases even if in the end your ISP is usually the bottleneck.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

If you are at the edge of your Wi-Fi range I suspect this won't help as much as you think

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

My ISP gives 1000mb down, currently no wifi 6 device can fully utilise that unless it's practically kissing the access point. So it will improve throughput over wifi 6. If your ISP doesn't deliver more than ~50mb, you might not notice

[–] [email protected] 42 points 10 months ago (1 children)

is the range measured in inches now?

[–] pastermil 11 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Soon, we'll be measuring it in stone throws

e.g.: I can get a moderate signal here three stone throws away from my router!

[–] Grass 1 points 10 months ago

We'll have to throw those stones really hard

[–] [email protected] 32 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I was excited for 802.11ac (now Wifi 5) when it first launched and I adopted it early but I've never been sold on the need for Wifi 6 let alone 7 now.

Unlike other folk in this thread I do thankfully have a Gigabit class internet connection but I now own my own home and so have been able to do some very basic Ethernet runs which totally replaces WiFi for 90% of my usage. My Wireless AP just talks to my phone, Steam Deck and a couple smart home gubbins really.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Latency for things like VR is seeming like one of the better improvements for 7.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I also hardwire my VR to my desktop which is hardwired to the internet.

Wireless can take a backseat

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago (1 children)

As much as I love being plugged into the internet, and definitely want to have the option to use a wire, I want to try wireless in VR - getting rid of the complications of being tethered by a cable seems likely to be worth the downsides.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 10 months ago (2 children)

While I'd love it, I don't think it has enough bandwidth to send a high quality image often enough to maintain a decent frame rate

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

Sure it does.

[–] ricecake 3 points 10 months ago

Well, ~5 gbps is certainly enough for pretty high quality at high frame rates. The big issue is latency, but there have been various efforts to try and handle that through other, more complicated means.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 10 months ago (1 children)

People don’t seem to understand that this isn’t really aimed at casual web browsing. It’s basically a wireless alternative to thunderbolt.

So take all of those crazy film cameras and data storage systems that rely on thunderbolt for decent performance… now get rid of the cable.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Get rid of the cable and add heat

The problem with adding high bandwidth wifi is that it adds quite a bit of heat to a device. That's why high bandwidth wifi 6e devices and 10 gigabit Ethernet devices get quite warm. Many cameras already have a lot of heat problems because video sensors and processing already generates quite a bit of heat. Wireless always generates more heat than wired due to much higher amplification, transmit power, and demodulation requirements.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Yes, now it does with the current tech. I'm sure you'll agree we can make more efficient devices in the future and they will support the same standard as your router

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Have it as a little pack detached from the camera?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

And the external wireless data transfer pack can be connected to the camera by a long thin piece of metal. Maybe we could call it a "cord". And why stop there, it could be disconnected from the camera when you're not transferring data.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Having a pack in your pocket is far better than being tethered to an object with a cord that you can trip on and obstruct your movement. Come on dude, do I really need to explain this? I think you're being purposefully obtuse for some reason. Do you want to have discussions here or make bluntly snarky remarks that don't really make sense? Is that really the culture you want to propagate on lemmy?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

From the article:

The bad news is that the 6 GHz wireless spectrum uses shorter wavelengths. Short wavelengths are great for fast data transfers at close range, So, they're great for connecting to your Wi-Fi 7-enabled HDTV a few feet away from your router

With a range that short, you're not going to be doing much roaming around. It obviously has some use cases, but unless you need to be streaming data it doesn't make a lot of sense.

The example we are discussing in this thread is transferring data off of a high res/high performance camera. For many situations this can be done after filming is completed, in which case a cord still makes a lot more sense. Hence my joke.

For live broadcasting it could be useful, but the range still seems quite limiting.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 10 months ago

People are also missing that this extra bandwidth will help with mesh systems.

Not everyone is savvy enough, or has the ability to run Ethernet to every access point. The additional bandwidth here will help people who need better Wi-Fi, but are only going to buy an easy off the shelf solution

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Eh. Even streaming media from a local server isn't really going to improve with this over current standards, at least not for me. I'm honestly not sure there's much need for it.

Really, I think we need to make better use of what we already have first, it feels like the more capacity and speed we get, the sloppier we get with anything resembling efficiency for any component. We're not getting better results for it, if anything it seems to be a net negative, everything seemed to run faster and better ten years ago with a fraction of the capabilities

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

This will be great for wireless PCVR, where bandwidth is a significant limiting factor even with WiFi 6

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I mean, I'm not saying it doesn't have its uses, just... I dunno, for most use cases it just feels like solving a bloat issue by raising the capacity, which just leads to more bloat.

I'm not sure PCVR has enough useless or unoptimized overhead for my complaint to apply to it, but for most things, I think it's past time to stop throwing more resources at it and address the underlying problem.

Agile development.

(I'm kidding, but only a little bit honestly)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

we definitely need to rethink agile and bring back good QA and requirements documentation. But yes with VR specifically, at the resolutions and framerates it requires, video signals must undergo costly and lossy compression to be transmitted wirelessly between PC and HMD, even with wifi 6 (though wifi 6 is much better than previous generations)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

This is intended to be a wireless alternative to Thunderbolt. You’re probably not going to care about this unless you’re moving 4K RAW projects around on the reg.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago

Unfortunately routers with wan speeds above gigabit remain expensive. I would assume that will be the case until faster than gigabit internet reaches mainstream worldwide which will be a very long wait...

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Can I get proper Linux drivers and kernel support for the Wi-Fi 7 card that came with my motherboard, please? Pretty please? I would really like to have Bluetooth and Wi-Fi would be a bonus. Stupid ath12k.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I can see companies trying to make wireless screens a thing again

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Is it reliable enough for that? I suppose if you're streaming something, it's not a big deal because the display can buffer the video to avoid dropping frames when there's dropped packets. But interactive tasks would suffer from the latency involved in buffering. Bandwidth would need to be high enough to be able to compensate for dropped packets. Though I believe that as bandwidth increases, so do dropped wireless packets.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

If it's one frame dropped per hour you won't notice. If it's one per minute it's going to be pretty annoying.

I pinged my router for an hour, I had only a few late packets and it's in another room behind a wall. If you ping the router in the same room, there should be no packet later than single milliseconds even with WiFi 5. You just don't have the bandwidth to support a high refresh rate uncompressed... yet