Microsoft catches the Wi-Fi 7 wave with Windows 11

More than a month after the Wi-Fi alliance introduced certification for Wi-Fi 7 devices, Microsoft has added support for the technology to Windows 11. This is in build 26063 in the Canary and Dev Channel of the Windows Insider program. However, it will likely make its way into the hands of the broader public before long since …

[cornetman]

> Microsoft described Wi-Fi 7, also known as IEEE 802.11be Extremely High Throughput (EHT), as a "revolutionary technology that offers unprecedented speed, reliability, and efficiency for your wireless devices."

Until someone puts the microwave oven on, of course.

[David 132]

And also I'm pretty sure that's exactly the same form of words they used when hyping WiFi 6, and 5, and...

The hardest part of the job must be the riffling through the thesaurus, looking for new adjectives.

"How about 'unprecedented'? Nooo... we used that last time. 'Unparalleled'? Nah, that was what we said about 5..."

[biddibiddibiddibiddi]

"How about undescribable?" "I'm not sure that's a word. Which means we can trademark it!"

[Paul Crawford]

Or half a dozen other WiFi points are around you competing for spectrum. Oh yes, like most blocks of flats...

[Anonymous Coward]

Install OpenWRT, turn transmit power up to 200mW. Yours will work at least.

[TheThiefMaster]

WiFi 7 supports the 5 and 6 GHz bands which are resistant to microwave ovens.

For the other guy, 6 GHz is also resistant to interference from surrounding APs as it's attenuated strongly by walls

[phuzz]

Of course, if it's blocked by walls, you need to have an AP in every room. I've lived plenty of places where the internal walls were as solid as the external ones. (And places where they were just as flimsy).

[Pascal Monett]

"Applications that struggle with latency [..] will also benefit"

How ?

WiFi is local. It's all very nice to have a mutli-GB connection to the nearest fiber link, but if that fiber is only 1GB, I fail to see how so very much better WiFi 7 is going to be.

To be clear : I have a 1GBps fiber link coming right into my home office. Thanks to that, we can watch TV without lag, while my home PC is torrenting Linux ISOs, my wife is on the Internet on her smartphone and her laptop, and my daughter is downloading God knows what while also watching whatever it is she finds interesting.

Of all of that equipment, the only thing actually tethered to a physical line is my home PC, with its GB network card connected to my home switch that can handle GB connections and is linked to the Orange Box, thus to the fiber that allows everything to communicate with them thar intartubes.

From where I sit, WiFi 7 is not going to increase the speed of my fiber. So the fiber is the limit, the bottleneck.

And I don't think that's going to be a problem for my household. WiFi 6/5/whatever is working fine here, thank you. Including WiFi 7 in Windows 11 which is mainly used in tower PCs (which have a GB Ethernet connection already) and maybe some fondleslabs, is not going to change the universe, as far as I can see.

But yeah, I know the drill. Marketing needs to feed . . .

[Rahbut]

Re: "Applications that struggle with latency [..] will also benefit"

I get what you're saying, and perhaps that's what the marketing machine is trying to imply? "it makes your internet faster === better for gaming" or something along those lines.

Normal wifi is somewhere in the region of 1-3ms latency and wired is <1ms on a simple LAN (we're not talking multiple hops, VLANs or anything fancy). Presumably getting the latency down nearer to ethernet is a good thing; a worthwhile technical improvement - although of little practical/tangible benefit right now.

[Version 1.0]

Re: "Applications that struggle with latency [..] will also benefit"

Marketing needs to feed on us ... this Wi-Fi upgrade will result in a lot of existing Wi-Fi devices that everyone has been using for years needing to be thrown away and replaced because the original devices will stop working as well as they were originally designed to do. These days all "upgrades" generate more corporate income.

[Steve Davies 3]

Re: Marketing needs to feed

I wonder if their 'AI in everything push is not going so well?

This could be Plan B to get us to use the One legged dog with Rabies that is W11.

How many El Reg readers have any device capable of WiFi-7? Hands up now.... Wot! No one... Quelle surprise.

[Sandtitz]

Re: Marketing needs to feed

"How many El Reg readers have any device capable of WiFi-7? Hands up now.... Wot! No one... Quelle surprise."

What a silly remark. I don't have 400Gbit networking products at home or workplace, yet I'm quite glad the operating systems support it. Or many other advances in tech.

Linux kernel has had WiFi-7 development for 1.5 years now according to Phoronix.

Why aren't you ranting about it - because it is not Microsoft?

[Roland6]

Re: Marketing needs to feed

> yet I'm quite glad the operating systems support it.

It’s just a new driver that MS happen to include in the standard build, nothing special.

I suspect if you install a WiFi 7 adaptor in say a W10 system, it would automatically install (MS approved) drivers.

[Sandtitz]

Re: Marketing needs to feed

"It’s just a new driver that MS happen to include in the standard build, nothing special."

It won't be just a new driver, although I suspect a Wi-Fi adapter would probably work without official OS support.

802.11be includes ability to connect simultaneously to all 2.4/5/6 GHz bands. Operating Systems expect wireless adapter to connect to a single band, so existing framework needs new code in how connectivity is reported and configured. 802.11be should come with major latency improvements so perhaps changes in the network stacks are needed as well. Certainly some work has been done with Linux kernel, and not just new drivers.

I do not understand what people have against newer gen devices and faster speeds. "640kB is enough"?

[Roland6]

Re: Marketing needs to feed

> Operating Systems expect wireless adapter to connect to a single band,

That’s s**t programming based on an invalid assumption. WiFi connectivity to multiple bands/channels has been possible since the adoption of 2.4 and 5Ghz bands. Similarly the ability to use multiple fixed network connections has been around and used since at least the mid 1980s and probably earlier.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "Applications that struggle with latency [..] will also benefit"

I'm similar. I'm on VM 1gbs (1.145) and run that through a mix of 10gbs and 2.5gbps with only my main pc and sever on 2.5gbps cabled. Everything just works. I think the WiFi is 6 but a lot of devices don't need or use it. Not sure there will be need to go WiFi 7. I just don't need it. We can watch multiple 4k streams and I can download gigs of data in minutes all at the same time. I think though not certain that we have hit a plateau. More speed would be nice but I just don't see a use case for it. I especially don't see a use case for WiFi 7. What am I going to need a theoretical 40gbps speed for when wifi 6 does 9.6gbps theoretical? Not to mention I have no devices with WiFI 7.

[Roland6]

Re: "Applications that struggle with latency [..] will also benefit"

The main use case I’ve come across is video/tv streaming over a (domestic) WiFi network, so Joe Public’s children can watch streams in their bedrooms whilst the parents watch something else in the lounge, all without having to run any cables….

[phuzz]

Re: "Applications that struggle with latency [..] will also benefit"

Latency and bandwidth are two different things. The simplistic explanation is that bandwidth is how much data you can transmit/receive at once, latency is the time it takes between you sending a packet, and it reaching it's destination.

Latency is mostly noticeable in online games, or VoIP/video calls. eg when you talk, but it takes a noticeable amount of time before the other person hears you.

(Of course, if you don't have enough bandwidth, your latency is going to go way up, so they are somewhat linked)

[Roland6]

Re: "Applications that struggle with latency [..] will also benefit"

And as we have learnt, in networking the biggest contributor to latency (besides distance) is network devices and thus the quality of the silicon in them, which naturally will cost.

Expect part of this is chicken-and-egg marketing: drum up mass.market demand to enable manufacturers to produce at scale and (hopefully) at a lower per unit cost.

Aside: increased bandwidth impacts distance based latency considerations by allowing more bits to arrive within a given time “window”.

[James O'Shea]

does anyone

actually have hardware capable of using WiFi 7? My laptop has an Intel AX210 wireless thingie. The specs https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/204836/intel-wifi-6e-ax210-gig/specifications.html say WiFi6E. Is that really WiFi 7, or would I have to get a USB thingie? https://www.tp-link.com/us/home-networking/usb-adapter/archer-tbe400uh/ for example.Hmm. My home WAP supports WiFi6, but most definetly NOT WiFi 7. And also doesn't know diddly about WPA3. I suspect that it will be a while before AT&Useless hands over a new WAP, they only just gave me this one last year. The office WAPs are WiFi 5 and those will not be getting upgraded any time soon, we only cleaned out the last of the 802.11g and n WAPs in July last year when we put in new WAPs across the board, management will NOT be ponying up cash for another mass upgrade, they went as cheap as possible as it was. I recommended WiFi 6. They saw the prices, got a quote from someone getting rid of old stock at low prices, and went with the low bid. There have been complaints about the (lack of) speed already. (Never mind that just a few years ago the same guys who are complaining would have killed for WiFi 5 speeds...)

How about cell phones, tablets, etc.? How much hardware support is REALLY out there? Anyone have a clue?

[Steve Davies 3]

Re: does anyone

Great comment. You have described the real world... not the Ivory Tower that the MS Marketing Bozos inhabit.

What are the plans of the major ISP's to give us WiFi-7 routers? Now much extra per month do they want to fleece us for?

As you say WiFi-5 and 6 are working fine for most of us and there is no need for an upgrade.

MS Droids will probably have a plan to remove Wi-Fi-5 and Wi-Fi-6 from Windows (or just hobble it speed wise) just to force us to spend money we don't have on an OS that most of us we don't want.

[Freddellmeister]

Re: does anyone

You need to upgrade your AX210 to BE200 to enjoy Wifi 7. AS210 is only Wifi 6E.

Intel makes the BE200 an E-keyed card while many older laptops use A-keyed socket.

AX210 uses an A+E card which has broad compatibility with both A and E keyed laptops.

Many modern devices, that use AX210, unfortunately have soldered them down, hence making upgrades impossible.

This leaves a narrow band of machines that can make use of BE200. On the thinkpad line we have:

P1 Gen 1, X1 Extreme Gen 1 (Not Gen 2 onwards)

P52, P53

(Not the P15/17 Gen 1, CNvIO only)

P15/P17 Gen 2

P16 and newer are soldered.

Some other thinkpad lines like certain L-series might also be new enough to use E-sockets without soldering.

[Terry 6]

Re: does anyone

My fairly new iPhone 14 only uses WiFi 5- the newest (iPhone 15) will take 6 and I reckon it might be sometime before the world gets to have saturated that market.People hold on to phones much longer.

Laptops- most seem to get held on to until they cease to function these days. And desktop users (we're a shrinking group) are likely to be using wired Ethernet connections if they want and can get access to very high capacity internet access.

So 7- Meh!

[James Turner]

Re: does anyone

If your iPhone 14 is only doing WiFi 5 then something is broken. Apple are reasonably quick to jump on new wireless standards and have supported WiFi 6 since the iPhone 11. Only the 15 Pros have 6E, but that’s had relatively little deployment.

[Terry 6]

Re: does anyone

You may be right. I'd read that it doesn't. But we'll see what happens when my phone is connected to it (when VM sort out why the new hub they just sent me isn't accepting wifi)

[joed]

Re: does anyone

more like - has everyone even moved on to wifi 6 (or cared to move)? It's not like an expensive and often huge "spider" of fancy wifi router would magically upgrade ones internet connection (definitely not without addition outlay of money). Not only this, some of the promised speed can only be realized within short range/same room and even then, anything past 50Mbps is irrelevant for normal use. I bet that tech giants would love if everyone was on Ggps+ plan but most have different priorities.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Dev drive wouldn't be needed if M$ woudl optimize its NTFS usage.

Two things not only could, but are proven to speed up a lot, even on SSD: Get the $MFT defragmented into one chunk, and reorder the entries in the $MFT to group files of one directory together. Second would be to defragment the Directory, i.e. the clusters which store the directory structure, and group them together.

I have to do regulary (every two to thee years) for an quite active drive:

1. Backup that thing (robocopy is enough).

2. Format the thing fresh.

3. robocopy back with /CREATE, which creates the $MFT entries and directory storage in one place, since it creates ZERO LENGTH files.

(3.1 do that again somewhere else on the target drive as dummy to force the $MFT to grow early on and in one piece - see fsutil.exe fsinfo ntfsinfo d:, all lines starting with MFT)

4. robocopy the real data back, same as with 3. but leave out /CREATE.

(4.1 don't forget to nuke the dummy created in 3.1)

Result: Same data on the SSD, but hell, why is the access suddenly so fast? Why does bitlocker unlock suddenly take only a fraction of a second instead of four seconds? Simple! See my complaining above what M$ should improve with their defrag tool in the first line of this comment. And then we would not need a pseudo ReFS marketing push which reminds you on and on how mature ReFS actually is.

[Roland6]

Re: Dev drive wouldn't be needed if M$ woudl optimize its NTFS usage.

>” Get the $MFT defragmented into one chunk, and reorder the entries in the $MFT to group files of one directory together. Second would be to defragment the Directory”

Wasn’t this what the major third-party disk management tools do?

I seem to remember the MFT defrag and reorder required a reboot and ran before the OS started.

There was a MFT defrag utility included on Hiren’s BootCD.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Re: Dev drive wouldn't be needed if M$ woudl optimize its NTFS usage.

Defrag the $MFT is something a lot claim, but not many actually do, or are successful at it. The reordering of the entries of the $MFT is done by no-one. None. Nada. Same goes for defragmenting the directory itself. When I had a mechanical HDD there I could hear about 20 to 30 seconds of rattling from the "defragmented" drive when opening a specific directory after a fresh boot, only to get the information for those little triangles in from of the directory. Doing that format | robocopy /create | robocopy "copy real" cycle had a huuuge impact. The directory mentioned above opened in less than a second, even after a fresh boot.

[Roland6]

Re: Dev drive wouldn't be needed if M$ woudl optimize its NTFS usage.

> Defrag the $MFT is something a lot claim, but not many actually do, or are successful at it.

Found this:

“ Defraggler and the Master File Table (MFT):

As noted above, the MFT stores the locations of files on the hard drive. The MFT is represented as a file (called $MFT in the NTFS file system), but it cannot be defragmented in the same way as other files. The location of the MFT's first fragment is fixed. Defraggler can only gather up the other fragments of the $MFT file and append them to that first fixed fragment.”

[ https://support.ccleaner.com/s/article/how-windows-stores-files-and-how-defraggler-works?language=en_US ]

From what I’ve read, it seems this is the best most tools achieve with the MFT.

Interestingly, I think your approach cleans out many areas of cruft that accumulate with NTFS, not just the issues with the MFT gaining a large number of deleted entries.

If you are suffering from MFT fragmentation, there is a registry setting which allows you to reserve more space for the MFT.

[Jou (Mxyzptlk)]

Re: Dev drive wouldn't be needed if M$ woudl optimize its NTFS usage.

Defraggler, Contig (sysinternals) Ultradefrag and a few others: Yep, I know them. Especially when booted from USB stick they usually manage to defrag the $MFT, or at least reduce the number of chunks it is splitted. Especially Contig can to it for many other NTFS internals too, which is my first choice when I think a drive needs it.

But none reorder the entries in the $MFT. And none of them defrag the directory (don't mix up with defragmenting the contents of the directory). And while they are there: Collect all directory-data clusters in one continous block, like contig for $MFT defragmentation. These two are what even can slow down NVME and SATA-SAS-SSD storage over time a lot. Observed, not guessed.

As far as the registry key is concerned: Reserving 12.5 % as $MFT, the lowest entry, is way too much. My case of above 3 million files "only" needs 2.2 GB $MFT (with the robocopy /create with additional dummy trick 4.4 GB as a pre-reservation for over 6 million files). Reserving 12.5 % of a 4 TB drive would waste nearly 500 GB space when only 1/100th of that would ever be needed. Read the MS-Article about that registry key, described in detail - especially the Windows 2000 reference there :D.

I miss an "$MFT reservation" option in format. Either by giving it the number of files which may end up there, the preferred size in Mega or Gigabytes, or as a float for fraction. Percentage would still reserve too much for my 4 TB example with 1%, but float would allow me to choose 0.002, i.e. ~ 8 GB $MFT reservation. Or if the $MFT would be extended in larger blocks for big drives, i.e. in 1/1000th of the drive size for everything from 500 GB and larger. mkntfs has a "-z, --mft-zone-multiplier" option allowing to set percentage, which was fine for drives up to ~500 GB. But the volume crated with that linux tool would be an older ntfs version.

[Roland6]

Re: Dev drive wouldn't be needed if M$ woudl optimize its NTFS usage.

The only tool I have come across that cleaned the MFT and directory files was Evidence Eliminator, which suggests what you want is regarded as a two stage process: deep clean/secure erase followed by a defrag.

I note there are some alternatives to EE, so it might be worth an investigation of these privacy/data shredding tools.

It is a shame that removing HDD/SSD/NvME is becoming much more difficult, (or even mounting two NvMEs in a conventional 2.5 inch SATA drive bay) as then your copy process could be more automated and simply become a regular flip flop between drives.

I note Condusiv Diskeeper has evolved to address SSD/NvME I/O performance issues. But there is little about what it actually does to an NTFS file system; for the price I would expect some more information..

The little bit of additional reading I’ve done about NTFS show there are some “interesting” performance issues with NTFS, which it seems most people either just live with or do as you do and use reformat and reinstall as the workaround.

[Roland6]

Re: Dev drive wouldn't be needed if M$ woudl optimize its NTFS usage.

I don’t know what Contig achieves in terms of reordering/restructuring the MFT with respect to what you achieve through a clean restore of files.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-gb/sysinternals/downloads/contig

[elsergiovolador]

Trick

Tired of fixing bugs in your specification and its implementation?

Release new "upgraded" specification!

Then claim it's new so it is normal it contains bugs...

Rinse and repeat.

[BenMyers]

Pie in the sky

Microsoft-think believes that the entire world will go racing ahead with wifi7, and we all trip over one another getting there. This a true pipe dream, a dream which comes about from smoking one of several substances.

This is what I see down here on the ground. Billions of mobile phones and computers still use Wifi5 (802.11ac), even new computers sold as cheap consumer models. Routinely, I still see decade-old 802.11n routers. If it's not broke, people do not fix or replace routers, never mind that they waste hours of time with slow wifi access. Only recently has 802.11ax (Wifi6) gotten any traction. Upgrading the wifi in laptop or desktop is a fraught proposition, as name brand computer manufacturers continue to use BIOS white lists to lock out "unauthorized" wifi cards.

As usual, we get a lot of meaningless PR puffery from Microsoft.

[biddibiddibiddibiddi]

Re: Pie in the sky

I think the vast majority of the time, the people touting all this know it's just meaningless puffery, including the executives, but they have to do it. They can't very well say "You know, everything's working pretty well right now. No need to go out and buy anything. You don't need upgrades."