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Should You Wait for Wi-Fi 7 or get Wi-Fi 6 Today?

August 12, 2020

Decisions, decisions. We are just beginning to see Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) for sale and generally available to the public. Wi-Fi 6 promises to greatly improve range and speed of our wireless networks. Personally, I'm looking for more choices with a Wi-Fi 6 router that also supports WPA3. To add to the confusion, the Wi-Fi 7 (802.11be) specification is already in development and should be released in May of 2021. A report by The Register goes over the proposed specifications for Wi-Fi 7. Wi-Fi 6 supports speeds of around 10 Gbps, but Wi-Fi 7 will triple that to around 30 Gbps. Speed is just one improvement for the Wi-Fi 7 spec, but should you wait or go with Wi-Fi 6 equipment?

From a practical perspective, we probably won't see any actual Wi-Fi 7 devices supporting the first release version until the end of 2021. There are several other Wi-Fi 7 versions scheduled over the next few years with the final version anticipated in 2024. For my money, I would go for a Wi-Fi 6 router and then wait for the final release of W-Fi 7 in 2024.

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