At the core of every Linux-based device and operating system is the Linux kernel, which provides a foundational set of integrated capabilities.

On Sunday, Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux, released the latest milestone with the Linux 6.2 kernel. A big part of the new Linux kernel is a long list of networking-related updates that will serve as a foundation for the next generation of networking and telco equipment.

Linux-based operating systems are commonly found inside networking equipment for both enterprise and telco use cases, as well as being widely used in the cloud. The Linux kernel itself is a component that fits into a larger Linux operating system, with multiple vendors including IBM's Red Hat, SUSE, Canonical and others providing commercially supported distributions.

Among the key networking features in Linux 6.2 is initial support for 800 Gbps wired networking as well as support for the emerging WiFi 7 wireless standard. The Linux 6.2 kernel also introduces a protective load-balancing feature that could potentially have a significant impact on reducing networking traffic congestion.

The 800 Gbps networking standard is still in its early days, but networking vendors are already rushing to make sure it is supported in Linux. Work on the 800 Gbps Ethernet standard is being done in the IEEE 802.3df task force, which published a set of baseline specifications in October.

Among the vendors working on 800 Gbps is Nvidia, which has been active in the networking space after it acquired Mellanox for $6.9 billion in 2019. Multiple Nvidia engineers contributed code to the Linux 6.2 kernel to enable support for different attributes of future 800 Gbps enabled devices.  Support was added to allow link aggregation, using the IEEE 802.3ad Ethernet standard.

Nvidia engineer Amit Cohen commented in his initial commit message to the Linux kernel that the next Nvidia Spectrum ASIC silicon is set to support 800 Gbps speed. The code that has been included in the Linux 6.2 kernel includes support for 800Gbps over 8 lanes at 100 Gbps/lane. Cohen noted that the plan is to add support in the future for 800 Gbps over 4 data lanes at 200 Gbps per lane.

While enterprise networks are still ramping up to deploy WiFi 6 and 6E based wireless networks, work has been ongoing in the standards community for the next level up, with WiFi 7.

WiFi 7, also known as IEEE P802.11be, introduces new 320 MHz wireless channels that can provide a significant speed increase, with lower latency than what is currently available with WiFi 6 and its 160 MHz channels. Max throughput of 30Gbps might be possible with WiFi 7, which is three times faster than what is available with WiFi 6.

Linux 6.2 introduces more support for WiFi 7, including initial support for MediaTek WiFi 7 802.11be devices. The new kernel also benefits from support for Intel's iwlwifi drivers for Linux, which will support the new 320 MHz channels that WiF7 provides.

Rounding out the big networking additions to the Linux 6.2 kernel is support for what is known as Protective Load Balancing (PLB).

"PLB is a host-based mechanism for load balancing across switch links," Google Software Engineer Mubashir Adnan Qureshi wrote in his commit message to the Linux kernel. "It leverages congestion signals from the transport layer to randomly change the path of the connection experiencing congestion."