Wi-Fi 6 vs Wi-Fi 7

6 - 7   ?!?!?!

I love it when my kiddos' cool speak can be applied in my adult world!   As far as I understand it, saying “6, 7” with your hands moving up and down in an alternating motion is basically international language now for “I don’t know” or "what's the difference?"  It’s only a matter of stars aligning that network managers are looking at WiFi-6 and WiFi-7 with the same sentiment. Wi-Fi 7 is faster, smarter, and a significant improvement over Wi-Fi 6, but are the benefits and features of Wi-Fi 7 worth the extra cost for your wireless network environment? 6, 7, right?

When evaluating a wireless upgrade, the question shouldn't be only "which is newer?"  The better question is "which best aligns with my wireless workload and environment?"

Wi-Fi 6 introduced OFDMA and MU-MIMO improvements, which allowed access points (APs) to communicate with multiple clients much more efficiently.

The ideal workloads for Wi-Fi 6 are:

• VoIP and video conferencing

• Microsoft Teams, Zoom, etc.
• Basic internet traffic
• Any cloud-based fetch/retrieve application, ERP, CRM, etc.
• Web-based productivity tools

So what about Wi-Fi 7?

The primary benefit of Wi-Fi 7 is improved performance and reduced latency.  Both improvements are significant IF your environment can benefit.  Here is a quick chart comparing Wi-Fi 5, Wi-Fi 6, Wi-Fi 6e, and Wi-Fi 7.

Give Me SPEED!!!

The Throughput increase of Wi-Fi 7 is significant offering support up to 48 Gbps 😲 compared to Wi-Fi 6 at just 9.6 Gbps.  How?

Multi-Link Operation (MLO) - The most significant upgrade and architectural improvement is the introduction of Multi-Link Operation (MLO). While WiFi-6 can use only one band at a time (2.4, 5, 6 GHz), WiFi-7 can use multiple bands simultaneously, even dynamically failing over between bands! This means a new level of reliability and lower latency, as much as -5 ms in optimal environments.

Increased Channel Bandwidth - WiFi-7 doubles channel width from 160 MHz to 320 MHz.  This doubles the capacity for high-bandwidth use cases and improves performance in a clean 6 GHz spectrum.

Quadrupled Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM)- say it four times fast(er)!  QAM is how data is packed into radio signals allowing higher peak speeds, but only at short range.

The improvements are clear, but I have one question - Can the rest of your infrastructure support 48 Gbps from your APs?  Wi-Fi 7 moves from a "nice to have" to "strategically significant" for mainly 2 types of environments right now:

• Stadiums and Arenas
• Convention Centers
• Large Healthcare Campuses

Immersive & Low-Latency Workloads (no

• VR training environments
• Robotics and industrial automation

For high-density spaces like stadiums, auditoriums, etc., WiFi-7 is a major improvement, but for basic office productivity and low-density environments, WiFi-6 is very capable and roughly half the cost of WiFi-7.

Wi-Fi 6 for/when:

• standard office environments
• standard SaaS workloads
• budget discipline matters
• VoIP and Video conferencing

Wi-Fi 7 when you need:

• deterministic low-latency performance
• to support high-density environments such as public venues, stadiums, etc.
• extreme concurrency
• industrial real-time systems
• Immersive collaboration spaces

If you're looking to upgrade your APs, is Wi-Fi 7 buying a Ferrari to run in a school zone?

Thank you for reading!