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Forum Discussion
WIFI 8
You all see wifi 8 is now a thing and other companies promoting it. I thought the orbi 970 was future proofing ? with this new wifi 8 it seems like we are soon to be getting new hardware again for wifi 8? We are still here waiting on wifi 7 to work properly lol. Most of us using wifi 7 which doesnt show you are on wifi 7 because it still shows your connection as 5ghz Little to no 6ghs connection. On a few devices like the samsung phones shows what ghz you are connected to beside the wifi and I have still yet to see wifi 7 showing up there.
8 Replies
I thought the orbi 970 was future proofing ?
No such thing. FWIW, WiFi 9 is being discussed.
WiFi 8 isn't finalized yet, so any marketing you see on it is about pre-standard implementations.
The bottom line here is that if you are satisified with the performance you are geting now, there is no need to immediately jump to the next gen wifi when it is launched.
Most of us using wifi 7 which doesnt show you are on wifi 7 because it still shows your connection as 5ghz Little to no 6ghs
WiFi 6e was the first to support 6 ghz (launched back in 2021). Of course the client devices need 6 ghz radios to use it. It can take quite a while for new tech to take hold.
That said, there is more to WiFi 7 than 6 ghz - including more efficient modulation and MLO. Though MLO is still a work-in-progress for Netgear (and other vendors).
Why would you say no such thing is being discuss if somebody is educating you it is? Please go on Asus website you will see it's basically there already. If you read what I wrote you would have notice we are not happy with the current wifi 7 and behaviors a matter a fact if we were happy none of us will be on this thread right now we are disgruntled customers speaking out over here, With that said Wifi 7 seem to not be ready yet either why we having so many issues so it shouldn't be surprising of them releasing wifi 8 shortly. they did it with 6e and 7. I have the latest techs testing with wifi 7 including the new Mac book pro and google pixel 10 pro, samsung s26 and none of them seems to be handling wifi 7 with the orbi.
Agree especially being in the minority with a Google Pixel 10 Pro. Why would I want to consider WiFi 8 when WiFi 7 is still having issues and I suspect has yet to implement all the promises. It is all a rolling baseline. But if you believe in marketing hype - press. Since I don't live on the Internet, I would be happy with a stable 2G system or as Jimmy Buffett would say, " I don't want a 12 lb. Nestle's crunch for 25 dollars, I want my Junior Mints!"
Agree especially being in the minority with a Google Pixel 10 Pro. Why would I want to consider WiFi 8 when WiFi 7 is still having issues and I suspect has yet to implement all the promises.
All Google Pixel 8/9/10 [XL, Pro or not] share the very similar Wi-Fi tech. On Wi-Fi 7 maxing out on 160 MHz bandwidth, with a max PHY rate of 2401 Mbps on 802.11ax (resp. 1733 Mbps on 802.11ac). This is done to keep the energy consumption low. Many product reviewers or tech geeks don't appreciate Google is not running ahead, and does remain very conservative.
There is still a lot of wild nonsense written in the Internet since these phones are out, like users claiming lack of MLO.
In fact, like virtually all Wi-Fi 7 clients, it can do NSTR Mode (Nonsimultaneous Transmit and Receive Operation) only. NSTR Mode refers to non-simultaneous transceiver mode or synchronous mode. That is, simultaneous receiving and sending operations are not allowed. At the a time, all links can only receive or all links can send data on one a single band only.
In my observations, the Pixel 10 Pro and the Pixel 8 Pro are now (as Wi-Fi 7 client) - changing channels without involving roaming - as well as the Pixel 6 (a Wi-Fi 6 client, all enrolled to the Android Beta program), currently operating Android 17 QPR1 Beta1, are all operating amazingly reliable on our Netgear WBE7xx APs, as of writing on V12.8.0.7, since availability (about one week). Earlier Android 17 Betas required the [Fix connectivity] (Settings ->WiFi or Internet, top right icon) every now and then to regain Wi-Fi access.
STR Mode (Simultaneous Transmit and Receive Operation) on the other hand, refers to simultaneous transceiver mode or asynchronous mode. That is, two or more links work completely independently, and they don’t interfere with each other. This is a mode wireless infrastructure like Mesh systems can use on the wireless backhaul. Netgear Insight indicated this mode earlier as "active" MLO.
A matter a fact here is the link
I always look here first to see what is happening as most anything WiFi for the home gets checked here:
https://www.wi-fi.org/wi-fi-macphy
One good example is Multi-Link Operation (MLO). While this looks interesting, fancy, and very promising to reach higher bandwidth over the air, almost the only application for MLO are wireless backhaul on real-word-existing Mesh system. Almost and of April 2026 now, there are virtually -no- real concurrent usage MLO wireless clients available. Another overly marketing pushy Wi-Fi vendor still writes:
MLO also requires MLO-compatible client devices, such as laptops with Intel BE200 wireless adapters, the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, and the Google Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro.
I think you have forgotten about the last two model years, soon to be three, of Apple's iPhone, and their current model of MacBook Pro laptops. Probably some Apple desktops support it too. This is a massive number of consumer and business devices, and it can be a benefit to reliability of connections without the little micro drops that happen in a mesh world - so apps like Zoom, remote desktop, FaceTime, Virtual Desktop Technologies may run smoother. It can help in latency-sensitive apps too, as traffic can be split or dynamically routed over the lowest-latency link at any moment. This is especially useful in environments where running ethernet is not practical. Under the covers there are benefits in the management of the network in terms of congestion triage, power use, traffic capacity, and band steering options; but people don't see that, they only see the lack of those network tools if their network performance suffers.
And on the 971 it works well - it just happens as long as the Apple device is configured for "Automatic WiFi 6E", which then uses the max wifi, whether that's WiFi 6 or MLO, that the device supports. There is no configuration on the server.
But it's still rolling out, to be sure - it doesn't help stuff like everybody's favorite app web browsing, many apps are not MLO-aware, and I doubt there are any MLO-compliant coffee shop networks around 😀
Yes StephenB​ the Apple devices all support EMLSR mode, which is single radio. Nothing more advanced yet that I have read, like on the brand new Macs. I believe that is single radio as well. Also I think the things I mentioned as improvements don't necessarily show up as a big gain for any single user, unless there is congestion etc. - I think it allows the router to more effectively manage the entire network traffic more efficiently/more effectively, indirectly helping all devices of course.
