Wi-Fi 7 (802.11be) routers and modules have only been launched recently, but engineers are already working on Wi-Fi 8 (802.11bn) "Ultra High Reliability
It will be a long time before Wi-Fi 6 (ax) becomes somewhat close to universal (in the lowest common denominator sense), I could easily see it taking another 5-10 years for Wi-Fi 7/8 to achieve such use.
I also get the impression that Wi-Fi has become good enough at it’s core and we are not really seeing any massive improvements in terms of every day use.
The improvements come in ways other than just megabits per second. The average suburban home has 20+ Wi-Fi networks within range, including everyone’s connected car and TV. If you are in an apartment, the list is insanely long. With this density of access points, new techniques for congestion avoidance and channel sharing are required.
If you want to connect your watch or your security camera or your smoke detector to Wi-Fi and have it conserve battery, you need mechanisms to keep the radio off 95% of the time and modulations based on lower bit rates, but also low transmitter power.
of course, there may be changes in regulations to allow newer Wi-Fi to use additional frequency bands, like the 6 GHz band.
It will be a long time before Wi-Fi 6 (ax) becomes somewhat close to universal (in the lowest common denominator sense), I could easily see it taking another 5-10 years for Wi-Fi 7/8 to achieve such use.
I also get the impression that Wi-Fi has become good enough at it’s core and we are not really seeing any massive improvements in terms of every day use.
The improvements come in ways other than just megabits per second. The average suburban home has 20+ Wi-Fi networks within range, including everyone’s connected car and TV. If you are in an apartment, the list is insanely long. With this density of access points, new techniques for congestion avoidance and channel sharing are required.
If you want to connect your watch or your security camera or your smoke detector to Wi-Fi and have it conserve battery, you need mechanisms to keep the radio off 95% of the time and modulations based on lower bit rates, but also low transmitter power.
of course, there may be changes in regulations to allow newer Wi-Fi to use additional frequency bands, like the 6 GHz band.