It's been four years since Wi-Fi 6 was released to general use, and the time now has arrived for the inevitable latest version of the all-important networking implement. Cisco recently announced Wi-Fi 7 access points (APs) for its customers, opening to the mainstream the new era of Wi-Fi with what it calls “a flexible foundation to future-proof workspaces.”

But Cisco isn't the first to provide Wi-Fi 7 APs. In fact, it has already been deployed in several use cases. One example is London-based Boldyn Networks' installation of Wi-Fi 7 indoor access points in selected areas of Camping World Stadium in Orlando, Florida. Others include Charter Spectrum's Wi-Fi 7 router deployment – in which the company claims to be the first major broadband provider to introduce a Wi-Fi 7 solution exclusively designed for both residential and business customers – and Swisscom's new service in Europe.

While Wi-Fi 6 is already powerful, Wi-Fi 7 takes it to the next level, offering the usual-suspect goodies: significantly faster speeds, lower latency, greater capacity, and improved range and coverage. As Wi-Fi 7 devices and routers become more widely available, they certainly will upgrade the way we connect to the internet.

Here's how: By doubling the channel bandwidth to 320 megahertz and employing advanced modulation, Wi-Fi 7 enables significantly faster data transfer rates, pushing theoretical speeds to an impressive 46 Gb/s. This translates to smoother, more responsive experiences for demanding applications such as online gaming and video conferencing.

Beyond raw speed, Wi-Fi 7 prioritizes efficiency and capacity. Its advanced technologies enable more efficient utilization of the wireless spectrum, reducing latency and accommodating a larger number of devices simultaneously. This makes Wi-Fi 7 ideal for crowded networks in homes, offices, and public spaces.

Additionally, Wi-Fi 7 extends its reach with enhanced signal strength, providing better range and coverage, especially in larger areas. Moreover, it incorporates features such as multilink operation, which enables devices to use multiple frequency bands simultaneously, further boosting reliability and performance. With advanced security protocols, Wi-Fi 7 offers more insurance that a network remains protected from potential cybersecurity threats.

As enterprise networking leaders consider whether they should jump onto the Wi-Fi 7 train, SDxCentral talked with a network automation expert to explain his perspective about facts his peers should consider in making the best decision for their companies.

Q&A with Roger Sands, CEO and co-founder of Wyebot Eight-year-old Wyebot, based in Marlborough, Massachusetts, has developed a Wi-Fi automation platform that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to identify and solve network problems. It offers features such as proactive issue alerts, synthetic end user testing, and remote troubleshooting. It eliminates intermittent Wi-Fi performance issues and safeguards business continuity with real-time issue alerts that automatically identify root causes and provide actionable resolutions.

SDxCentral: Describe the business value your company offers, how the company started, and what the heck the name means? 

Sands: The Wyebot name came from: W = Wi-Fi; ye = eye; bot = robot. So we monitor (eye) the Wi-Fi environment and use automation (robot) to identify and solve performance issues.

Today’s businesses run on Wi-Fi, which means Wi-Fi problems have significant operational and financial repercussions. Preventing these problems and keeping everything running optimally requires proactive, AI-powered alerts, insights, and answers. That is what we deliver at Wyebot, both network wide with the Wireless Intelligence Platform, and on a device level with DEX Agent.

SDxCentral: How do Wi-Fi 7 performance upgrades affect network admins in specific verticals, such as retail, manufacturing, health care, and others?

Sands: Wi-Fi 7 is also known as IEEE 802.11be extremely high throughput. So its throughput is where it mainly stands out from its predecessors. Wi-Fi 5 offers a max throughput of 6.9 Gb/s and Wi-Fi 6 offers 9.6 Gb/s. Wi-Fi 7 offers 46 Gb/s. This design decision was made so that Wi-Fi 7 could deliver greater speeds and efficiency for every single device connected to the network.

It brings wider channels with the addition of the 6 GHz frequency band: 60 channels as wide as 320 megahertz. This is double the width available with Wi-Fi 6E. The wider the channel, the more data can be submitted simultaneously at the fastest speeds. Wi-Fi 7 has up to five-times the capacity of Wi-Fi 6.

Wi-Fi 7 also provides higher quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM). It supports 4K-QAM, while Wi-Fi 6 supports 1024-QAM. This means that more data can be transmitted at a time (higher transmission rate), which improves video displays.

Two final improvements: multilink operation and more available multi-user multiple-input, multiple-output (MU-MIMO) streams. With multilink operation, Wi-Fi 7 access points can simultaneously send and receive data across different frequency bands and channels. This allows these APs to make more nuanced decisions on how best to avoid congestion and interference. This should lead to increased data rates, improved load balancing, reduced latency, and increased throughput.

Wi-Fi 5 introduced MU-MIMO, which allows multiple clients to simultaneously access an AP. It supported MU-MIMO downlinks and Wi-Fi 6 added uplink support. Wi-Fi 7 doubles the number of spatial streams available (eight to 16), which all means there is more bandwidth available so networks can support more devices, and each device has to wait less time for its turn to download and send data. In other words, faster speeds.

SDxCentral: How does one know Wi-Fi 7 is immediately investment-worthy for a business? 

Sands: If we look at the answers to the previous question, Wi-Fi 7 promises faster speeds, lower latency, and support for even more connections. It’s primed to improve performance in highly congested environments. This is why it provides significantly more throughput. Throughput is the actual amount of data transmitted through a network. With exploding numbers of devices and even more WiFi-dependent use cases, we all have more data.

This is where I see Wi-Fi 7 being the most helpful: SDxCentral: How does AI play a role in the Wi-Fi 7 rollout?

• If you operate in a congested environment, such as a large enterprise or venue – thousands of simultaneous network users at all times.
• If you depend on high-quality video, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) applications, live streaming, or gaming applications for thousands of people.
• If you need to support large data downloads.

Sands: Whenever you introduce something new to your business, you need to know if it’s causing problems, what those problems are, and how to resolve them immediately. You also need to know if you’re getting the [return on investment] you expected and invested in. This takes real-time and constant analysis of the entire network ecosystem. You can’t be blind to any area – not if you want to reliably maintain business continuity and operational efficiency.

AI solutions have eyes on the entire network ecosystem. They don’t take breaks. They process and analyze thousands of data packets a second. They are the only solutions that know in real-time what is happening at both a device and data level on the network and how performance and behavior are being impacted. Not even our expert human professionals can deliver that much knowledge in the same timespan. There’s simply too much data involved. AI supports professionals with the intelligence they need to support company-wide initiatives.

These solutions don’t just parrot back data points but intelligently suggest actionable and proactive resolutions, saving companies time and money with faster resolutions and fewer issues overall.

SDxCentral: Wi-Fi 6 came out in 2018 and took a few years to make a serious impact. Should we expect the same from Wi-Fi 7, or might adoption go quicker since everything's faster now?

Sands: If extremely fast throughput makes a big difference to you – if you are supporting thousands of gamers, or workers who need to download enormous amounts of data – Wi-Fi 7 will make an impact now. For everyone else, I’d expect it to be similar to Wi-Fi 6. There are still businesses that could upgrade to Wi-Fi 6/6E that don’t need the improvements delivered by Wi-Fi 7 right now.