Networking Products Prepare for Wi-Fi 7

Wi-Fi 7 will soon be introduced into the world, hopefully sometime in 2024. But already, big companies, like TP-Link and Qualcomm are about to release technology to support this next phase of the Wi-Fi evolution. This new router standard promises better responsiveness, faster speeds, and fewer connection resets.

Wi-Fi 7 Brings Big Changes to Home Networks

As an example of what we can expect with this big improvement, Qualcomm Technologies has just announced its Wi-Fi 7 Immersive Home Platform. This new Wi-Fi network technology for the home will support the latest high-speed broadband connections. Their new mesh system promises to deliver more than 20Gbps of total system capacity, bringing 80% higher capacity compared to Wi-Fi 6, while also offering an expanded 5 GHz spectrum performance. 

What Does Wi-Fi 7 Do Differently?

How does Wi-Fi 7 do deliver such a huge upgrade from Wi-Fi 6? First, Wi-Fi 7 handles channels that are up to 320 MHz wide, compared to Wi-Fi 6, which can only support up to 160 MHz. Wider the channels mean more data can be transmitted. Secondly, Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM), which is a method by which radio frequencies are transmitted, has also been improved. With Wi-Fi 7 now supporting 4K-QAM, performance will improve by 20% compared to the 1024-QAM supported by Wi-Fi 6. Lastly, thanks to a technology called Multi-Link Operation (MLO), a number of frequencies across bands can now be combined into a single connection. To put it more simply, a Wi-Fi 7 router can bypass interference or congestion by finding an optimal channel that will provide low latency and stable connection.

What Will Wi-Fi 7 Mean For Audiophiles?

The implications that Wi-Fi 7 technology has on the world of wireless music streaming and downloads is pretty exciting. And it still remains to be seen how this significant Wi-Fi upgrade will effect the ways in which audiophiles will choose to listen to their music. What thrills us the most for now is that downloading a s*^t ton of high-res music files from streaming services onto a DAP will hopefully become a lot faster.