WiFi 7 set to deliver speeds up to 40 Gigabits per second, slated for a demo by MediaTek at CES 2022

[Redaktion]

MediaTek recently stated that it would be showing off a WiFi 7 demo at CES 2022. During a presentation for a company event, MediaTek highlighted how WiFi 7 could be up to 2.4 times faster than the existing WiFi 6 standard, and that it will be showing off a WiFi 7-capable device at the technology expo next year.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/WiFi-7-set-to-deliver-speeds-up-to-40-Gigabits-per-second-slated-for-a-demo-by-MediaTek-at-CES-2022.580421.0.html

[Hunter2020]

Go away Wi-Fi 7.  The more faster they make wifi, the smaller radio wavelength they must use.  2.4GHz radiation is already harmful let alone 5GHz.  Imagine the craziness when you're irradiated with 60GHz energy all day/night long!

[Solaris7]

It seems some people are living in heavens and are immortal and all rosy and cozy. But due to these technical advancement (including wifi) is causing them to live on earth. Then they should make them more cozy by living under a rock literally and leave all form of technical advancements, because all of them in some way are detrimental to us and nature.

[a]

The frequency of natural light is 5 orders of magnitude higher than 5GHz wifi (from 480 trillion Hz upwards). If you think wifi is harmful to you, how do you not melt in sunlight?

[DF]

This is why all those soldered Wifi chips are a bane to customers.

[Barebooh]

The frequency of natural light is 5 orders of magnitude higher than 5GHz wifi (from 480 trillion Hz upwards). If you think wifi is harmful to you, how do you not melt in sunlight?

We literally do. That's what sunscreen's for (or you can enjoy your melanoma later).
Also, remind me again what happened last time you tried staring at the sun?

[Thor78]

My ping to Google servers is already 1ms over WiFi 5...

It would be good that notebookcheck don't fall into marketing trap... It's impossible that WiFi 7 will bring several milliseconds of improvement as it's already way under 1...

[vertigo]

The frequency of natural light is 5 orders of magnitude higher than 5GHz wifi (from 480 trillion Hz upwards). If you think wifi is harmful to you, how do you not melt in sunlight?

That's not how it works. It's not as simple as higher frequency = more harmful. Visible light is high enough frequency and low enough energy that it's easily blocked by pretty much everything (clothes, skin, even paper). Higher frequencies have more penetration and/or do damage because they have more energy and because their extremely short wavelength allows them to essentially worm their way through, winding their way around the atoms. Microwaves are harmful for the same reason, only inverse: their longer wavelengths allow them to slip through the atoms as well. Visible light just happens to be in the middle where its wavelength isn't short or long enough.

Picture a grid of tightly-spaced dots. A low-frequency sine wave could slalom its way through, like a car around cones, perhaps crossing between dots every one or two it passes, and a high-frequency one could do the same, but switching direction once or more per dot. Meanwhile, a sine wave with a mid-range frequency would just crash into the dots, like a car slaloming through cones at the wrong rate.

There's a reason radars, which operate in the microwave frequency, must be disabled when there's a chance of a person being exposed to them: because they're dangerous. Same goes for microwave ovens being designed as a Faraday cage (the screen in the door is sized to cause the microwaves to not be able to penetrate, like positioning the dots above just right so a specific wavelength sine wave can't get through), and why you're not supposed to operate it with the door open. Microwaves are very harmful. This isn't in doubt; it's a widely accepted and known fact.

There's also mounting evidence, unsurprisingly, that phones, Wi-Fi, etc are harmful. So there's absolutely cause for concern here. But as usual, the desire for progress and, perhaps more importantly, profit, overrides that, and we just push on full-steam ahead throwing caution to the wind, because all the companies care about is getting more bandwidth to increase consumption and get users to spend more time and money on their products and, of course, keeping up with the competition, because if they don't do it, others will.

[Tetsuro]

Even Wi-Fi 5 is perfectly fine for the common consumer, which is more concerned about battery life. Anything more than 200 Mbit is just a plus, not a necessity.

[Barebooh (sincerely)]

Anything above 50 Mbit/s is not a necessity - unless you're a pirate.

[_MT_]

There's a reason radars, which operate in the microwave frequency, must be disabled when there's a chance of a person being exposed to them: because they're dangerous. Same goes for microwave ovens being designed as a Faraday cage (the screen in the door is sized to cause the microwaves to not be able to penetrate, like positioning the dots above just right so a specific wavelength sine wave can't get through), and why you're not supposed to operate it with the door open. Microwaves are very harmful. This isn't in doubt; it's a widely accepted and known fact.

Power is a very important factor. Frequency makes a difference when it comes to the ability to damage DNA. With frequency, individual particles have more energy. At high frequencies (think ionizing radiation), they essentially become projectiles, punching through and damaging things when they hit them. At lower frequencies, they're unlikely to be able to do damage alone. But when you have a lot of them, you can absorb a lot of energy (heat). This is all very much simplified. In nature, things tend to be a matter of probability. Which is why exposure is important.

With microwaves, the primary danger is, essentially, cells being cooked. Our internal organs are sensitive to heat. Because microwaves penetrate, heat is delivered straight to internal organs. A microwave oven needs shielding because it's powerful. It's designed to heat things up quickly to pretty high temperatures. It would be dangerous to us (and consider the possibility of having a metal plate, screw or implant in your body) but also to electronics. A Wi-Fi router is thought to be safe because consumer devices are weak, or should be. If you want a radar with long range, it will have to be powerful and therefore more dangerous up close at full power. Higher frequency radio signals should penetrate less. But that in itself only means that the energy is more concentrated.

Then there is the risk of EM field exposure (or the possibility that cells can be damaged even at RF in certain circumstances). Which isn't that well understood. Our bodies use electrical signals, we've got iron in our blood and muscles, we use EM fields in medicine. But really nailing down effects especially of small fields is difficult. The danger that was investigated with phones was that you have a transmitter right next to your brain when you're making a call and the phone is punching through to a tower who knows how far away. Understandably, you don't want to transfer too much heat into your brain. The potential risk here is that if they lose range as a result of their efforts to boost throughput, they might be tempted to boost power or play loose with limits. If you have a Wi-Fi access point that's being used from far away through walls, you don't want to be sitting near it. Ideally, you want APs nearby so that weak signals can be used.

It's not just about profits. Even if we did acquire evidence that essentially all electronic devices are bad for us, how many people do you think would give them up? They can clearly live with them for a pretty long time. And in the end, say 68 years with compared to 74 years without might be worth it to many people. For example, there is some evidence that no amount of alcohol is safe for us. There is a level our liver can handle but it appears any amount is bad for our brain. Do you see people stopping drinking? And there is no doubt alcohol has huge negative social impact. Again, do you see people stopping drinking? Essentially, when a company pushes envelope, they're asking the market - does this matter? And of course, the problem is that most people are clueless. Especially the muppets in marketing. I guess it's easier to keep face straight when you don't even understand what you're saying. :-)

[_MT_]

Anything above 50 Mbit/s is not a necessity - unless you're a pirate.

If you're accessing storage over a network, it's really nice to have high bandwidth. Would you fancy loading a game over a 50 Mb/s link? I wouldn't. I remember very well the days of 100 Mb/s LAN and 54 Mb/s WLAN.

[IO by HFCL]

Wi-Fi 7 offers the efficient structure of handling 16 antennas, "opening the door" for coordinated MU-MIMO (CMU-MIMO), empowering Access Points to experience robust coordination beyond just roaming. Further, it supports speeds as high as 40 Gbps with a longer range, lower latency, and fewer traffic congestion problems. This blog explains every bit of the Wi-Fi 7 technology spectrum in depth.