this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2024
162 points (97.1% liked)

Technology

58143 readers
5570 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 43 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] ChaoticEntropy@feddit.uk 51 points 8 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@sh.itjust.works 42 points 8 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.

[–] deweydecibel@lemmy.world 3 points 8 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.

[–] jbk@discuss.tchncs.de 0 points 8 months ago

current speeds are pretty adequate for the majority of people.

For now

[–] Fiivemacs@lemmy.ca -4 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 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.

[–] Astarii_Tyler@lemmy.world 4 points 8 months ago

Cameras are for insurance

[–] wildbus8979@sh.itjust.works 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)
[–] PipedLinkBot@feddit.rocks 2 points 8 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.

[–] ChaoticEntropy@feddit.uk -2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 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.

[–] ripcord@lemmy.world 2 points 8 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.

[–] ripcord@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago

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

[–] ChaoticEntropy@feddit.uk 1 points 8 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.

[–] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world -1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I already have Ethernet runs.

[–] Drusenija@lemmy.world 7 points 8 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@sh.itjust.works 14 points 8 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.

[–] ripcord@lemmy.world 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 8 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

[–] Tehhund@lemmy.world 5 points 8 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.

[–] Rootiest@lemmy.world 4 points 8 months ago

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

[–] ryannathans@aussie.zone 1 points 8 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

[–] originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com 39 points 8 months ago

is the range measured in inches now?

[–] JK_Flip_Flop@lemmy.world 29 points 8 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.

[–] willya@lemmyf.uk 17 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

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

[–] Fiivemacs@lemmy.ca 7 points 8 months ago (1 children)

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

Wireless can take a backseat

[–] kuberoot@discuss.tchncs.de 10 points 8 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.

[–] Cort@lemmy.world -5 points 8 months ago (1 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

[–] ripcord@lemmy.world 5 points 8 months ago

Sure it does.

[–] Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world 20 points 8 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.

[–] JustEnoughDucks@feddit.nl 19 points 8 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.

[–] iopq@lemmy.world 4 points 8 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

[–] fidodo@lemmy.world 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Have it as a little pack detached from the camera?

[–] effward@lemmy.world 9 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 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.

[–] fidodo@lemmy.world 1 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

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?

[–] laurelraven@lemmy.blahaj.zone 13 points 8 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

[–] Strawberry@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] laurelraven@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 8 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)

[–] Strawberry@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 8 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)

[–] Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world 2 points 8 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.

[–] schizoidman@lemmy.ml 7 points 8 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...

[–] jadedwench@lemmy.world 3 points 8 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.

[–] iopq@lemmy.world 1 points 8 months ago (1 children)

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

[–] Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 2 points 8 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.

[–] iopq@lemmy.world 2 points 8 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