Spirent’s Principal Product Manager says that Wi-Fi 7 can finally deliver the speeds that ISPs promise — all the way to the end user

During a presentation at the Wi-Fi Forum, Janne Linkola, principal product manager in Spirent’s Automated Test & Assurance business unit, said that while mesh networking is not a topic commonly associated with Wi-Fi 7, the company actually sees it as one of the most impactful innovations that the next generation of Wi-Fi brings.

He explained that when purchasing internet service, consumers are often presented with different speed tiers. On the high end, these tiers can reach up to 1 gigabit per second (Gbps), while lower-end options range between 100 to 150 megabits per second (Mbps). However, these speeds are typically measured at the modem, meaning they represent the point at which the Internet Service Provider (ISP) hands off data to the Wi-Fi network — not the actual speeds experienced throughout the home.

The reason for this discrepancy is simple: Wi-Fi performance varies based on distance and obstacles. Linkola elaborates: “Wi-Fi has this magical ability — on the one hand it can operate really fast, and it also operates at a good distance, but it doesn’t do those two things simultaneously. One comes at the price of the other.” This is typically represented as a rate adaptation graph, which is a visual representation of how a network dynamically adjusts its data transmission rate based on channel conditions, showing the relationship between metrics like distance, signal strength, data rate and network performance. 

Further, because many homes receive their internet service through a modem located in a basement or a central utility room, Wi-Fi signals often struggle to provide strong coverage on upper floors. To address this, mesh networking systems have become increasingly popular. “In a normal home… internet often comes into your home through the basement,” said Linkola. “What that means is that coverage on the first floor and especially on the second floor, may not be that great. This is where mesh systems come in. You can take an extender and put it into a more convenient place and as long as your backhaul works well, your home is covered.”

ISPs began promoting mesh systems around 2017–2018, but early extenders were relatively basic and inexpensive, often built with low-power 2×2 antenna designs. These early solutions had significant limitations, including bandwidth reduction. “The extenders that were deployed were kind of low end and relatively inexpensive — they were often based on a low power 2×2 design… and so your rate adaptation might be your television is getting 700 megabits per second when it’s close to the access point, but anything coming through a dual-band extender, basically the speed is automatically halved because every packet is sent twice — once over the fronthaul and once over the backhaul. This is what those early mesh systems could do, about 300 megabits per second, give or take,” provided Linkola.

Additional issues with these mesh systems include poor airtime fairness and ineffective client steering, both of which contributed to performance inconsistencies.

Wi-Fi 7 changes the mesh game thanks to a few key features:

• Higher modulation and faster speeds—The new 320 MHz channels and multi-link operation (MLO) provide much more robust connections.
• Wider channels, better backhaul—Using multiple wide channels in MLO results in stronger, more stable connections.
• Improved rate adaptation—With MLO-enabled extenders, speeds can now reach 16 Gbps at close range. More importantly, even at significant signal degradation (100 decibels, or dB, path loss), speeds can remain at 1 Gbps.

“Wi-Fi 7 brings a lot of elements to the picture that have the potential to change this — the modulation itself is more robust and has faster speeds, but really it’s the 320 MHz channels and multi-link operation,” said Linkola.”If you operate two really wide channels in a multi-link operation, you get a very robust link. The impact of that, looking at the rate adaption curve, if you build an MLO-enabled extender, suddenly you get 16 gigabits per second if you’re close by… but what’s really the focus of the picture… you’ll get a gigabit per second over a 100 dB of path loss.”

These improvements mean that Wi-Fi 7 can finally deliver the speeds that ISPs promise, all the way to the end user. With a properly designed MLO-enabled mesh system, users will experience 1 Gbps speeds across their entire home, even at long distances from the router.

Additionally, easier installation makes these systems more consumer-friendly. Instead of requiring a technician, users can now install extenders themselves, making whole-home gigabit connectivity more accessible and affordable.

Ultimately, Wi-Fi 7 represents a significant step forward in ensuring that consumers actually experience the high-speed internet they are paying for. “We are finally delivering the speeds to the end user that we claim that we are delivering,” concluded Linkola.