Wi-Fi 7 Signals the Industry’s New Priority: Stability : technology

[-] 0x0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 299 points 10 months ago

The renewed focus on reliability is motivated by emerging applications. Imagine a wireless factory robot in a situation where a worker suddenly steps in front of it and the robot needs to make an immediate decision.

This example is a real WTF. I really hope nobody is planning on building safety-critical real-time systems on top of WiFi!

[-] ForgotAboutDre@lemmy.world 51 points 10 months ago

I imagine many already exist. But the system should be designed to fail safe with WiFi in mind.

[-] Thrashy@lemmy.world 46 points 10 months ago

I don't know about manufacturing environments but I deal with laboratories a lot, and I'm a bit baffled at how quickly lab operators have jumped on battery-operated wifi sensors for lab monitoring systems. I have like three room sensors attached to my EcoBee thermostat at home and I can barely be assed to change the batteries in those things, I cannot imagine dealing with batteries and connectivity troubleshooting for a building full of sensors whose reliable operation is often critical for regulatory compliance. Seems like the perfect application for PoE systems, to me

[-] Magrath@lemmy.ca 17 points 10 months ago

In industrial there are very few wireless systems unless they are either too remote from the CPU and aren't safety sensitive. Safety is taken very seriously because any incident can mean injuries/death and ending up in the public eye. Any safety systems are hard wired because of reliability.

[-] eager_eagle@lemmy.world 27 points 10 months ago

as a software developer, that example screams bad design

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[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 17 points 10 months ago

I really hope nobody is planning on building safety-critical real-time systems on top of WiFi!

Are you new to the planet? Let me tell you about this thing we have called capitalism...

[-] Wooki@lemmy.world 15 points 10 months ago

Better hope staff don’t Microwave their lunch at the wrong time….

[-] abhibeckert@lemmy.world 14 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

If your robot moves around, then it needs a wireless connection. And it doesn't really get any more reliable than wifi. I'm certainly not going to outsource that to a Verizon cellular connection.

And even for things that can be wired - ethernet is far from reliable. Cables are easily damaged or simply unplugged.

Wifi can work really well, especially with high end networking gear (and not, for example, the wifi access point you get for free from Verizon).

[-] Couldbealeotard@lemmy.world 33 points 10 months ago

I think you've missed the point.

Anything automated that could be a threat needs to have safeguards. Needing constant wifi to prevent death or injury is not an acceptable safeguard.

Consider consumer/professional drones. If they lose connection they have on board protocols to mitigate hazards. Even then they are still governed by laws to isolate then from people because even those safeguards aren't good enough. Suggesting that a robot could completely rely on wifi is preposterous.

[-] jonne@infosec.pub 30 points 10 months ago

I think the point is that that sort of safety critical stuff should be on board, not relying on a wireless connection.

[-] XTornado@lemmy.ml 5 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Yesh it should be self contained. Although to be fair there shouldn't be a way for a human to be there to begin with.

[-] neclimdul@lemmy.world 13 points 10 months ago

As someone using various wireless standards over over twenty years and in IT dealing with wifi instability on basically a daily basis. No.

Wifi is a series of compromises to be convenient. It's "good enough" for most of those but generally and increasingly in newer standards, the compromise is to drop stability for things speed. You'll see this to be the case in a lot of professional wifi gear that will transfer you to a lower standard if it sees weaker signals to improve stability.

To make that concrete, a problem with wifi in an office is an embarrassing "I'll call back on my phone" but a factory floor that could be millions of dollars of downtime to restart an entire chain of machines. Hardened industrial wiring and connections is well established and wifi is just not at that level. The poorly formed example of the robot was trying to convey their intention to start addressing that level of hardening.

All that said, based on my experience reading ieee articles this is all exaggerated. in reality we're probably just getting more stable video calls at higher bandwidths. Still a win for the help desk techs everywhere and people with a heavy wall making Netflix flaky.

[-] Kbobabob@lemmy.world 9 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

This sounds like they're talking about something specific. There was a guy that picked up/crushed by a robot recently that is eerily similar.

[-] Linkerbaan@lemmy.world 7 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

As long as they have a delay counter which immediately shuts the robot down when it hasn't been answered within a certain time period it shouldn't pose much of a problem if it has an E stop. Just inconvenient when it keeps shutting down all day.

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[-] BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world 67 points 10 months ago

I'm guessing the bump to 6GHz means range is even lower. Seems we're leaning towards a future of hardwired-equivalent speed and reliability... within 1 meter.

[-] crsu@lemmy.world 36 points 10 months ago

Then you can buy a bunch of repeaters and the economy is saved

[-] You999@sh.itjust.works 34 points 10 months ago

I know this is a joke but please do not buy repeaters they do not work how you would expect them to work.

Repeaters take an already weak signal and amplify that signal while increasing the latency. Sure this makes the signal go farther but it doesn't increase the bandwidth and if you stand in between the originating wifi source and the repeater your device may not migrate to the source wifi even though it might be faster because the reapeter has the illusion of being a better signal because it's louder.

The better route to go is to use multiple wifi APs through out the building connected back to your router with ethernet.

You could also go with mesh access points but you have to do a lot of research and planning; The two key things to look out for is they mesh system must have a dedicated backhaul and you must place them where each node has an excellent signal to the next node. Since most backhauls run on 5Ghz and 6Ghz this means there shouldn't be any walls between them.

[-] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 9 points 10 months ago

Exactly. I'm going to be running Ethernet through my house soon, and even if we stay full Wi-Fi, we'll benefit by having physical cables connecting the APs. I already have a separate AP, just need to run the cables to get a second in our basement where the signal is weak.

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[-] AlternateRoute@lemmy.ca 33 points 10 months ago

Yes but WiFi 7 FINALLY lets devices connect to multiple BANDS at the same time with a new feature called Multi-link operation (MLO).. IE the device can hold on to a longer range but slower band and more seamlessly transmit data over the best one at the time.

[-] frezik@midwest.social 27 points 10 months ago

That's an advantage if you utilize it right. Less range means your neighbor's wifi is less likely to interfere with your own. Multiple access points are a superior way to get coverage of your whole house than some octopus antenna monstrosity.

The inverse square law doesn't have to be a problem.

[-] PHLAK@lemmy.world 13 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I think the prevalence of mesh systems is intended to remedy this. Instead of a single AP that can cover your entire house you can mesh two or three (or more) APs to get the coverage desired.

[-] HeyJoe@lemmy.world 6 points 10 months ago

That's how I do it, except because I have all these AP's I just set them up near the devices that will use it and plug them all into the AP's and use the backhaul which is way more reliable. Phones and tablets are the only things that use the wifi and never really found an issue with speed or reliability since moving to mesh.

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[-] Aurix@lemmy.world 41 points 10 months ago

Fighting games with Wi-Fi instead of Ethernet? Sounds more like a dream. This genre is particularly demanding on stable low latency connections and current technology absolutely doesn't offer it. Spreading across frequencies sounds like a latency vs reliability trade-off.

[-] MeaanBeaan@lemmy.world 10 points 10 months ago

I feel like this is really dependent upon the game. Guilty Gear Strive for instance uses roll back net code and my personal experience playing it online over wifi is that it feels practically identical to playing locally. Here and there I might have minor issues if the person I'm playing against has horrible Ping but for the most part wifi is flawless.

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[-] highenergyphysics@lemmy.world 9 points 10 months ago

Back when 5G cellular was first rolling out, a professor brought in a Qualcomm senior level manager and the topic was how 6G was being developed for long distance low latency capabilities.

How much of that was industry bullshit, no idea but it sounds like they had a pulse on the tech now that we hear about it years later.

[-] samsepi0l@lemmy.world 10 points 10 months ago

And 5G is mostly ass anyway. I feel like LTE is faster and EASILY more reliable everywhere I am. If I lose power at my house, I can barely send text only messages in any app.

[-] TheRealKuni@lemmy.world 5 points 10 months ago

What phone are you using? My first 5G phone didn’t support midband 5G, and yeah, my experience was similar. Lowband 5G was maybe slightly faster than LTE, but wasn’t worth the lower battery life, higher heat, and spottier performance that was associated with early 5G radios.

Now I’ve got a phone with midband 5G support and midband 5G kicks the shit out of LTE.

[-] PalmTreeIsBestTree@lemmy.world 5 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

I am still using LTE because it always works and is plenty fast for what I need to do on a mobile device. 5G also uses more battery too.

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[-] Rapidcreek@lemmy.world 23 points 10 months ago

Kudos to the working group.

[-] LiamMayfair@lemmy.sdf.org 20 points 10 months ago

Glad to see stability and QoS being prioritised over throughput this time around. I feel like once WiFi broke through the 300 Mbps barrier with the 5GHz band, strictly focusing on further improvements in throughput would just yield diminishing returns for most people.

However, latency and signal strength have been notoriously annoying long-term problems that I'm happy to see finally being acknowledged.

[-] MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca 15 points 10 months ago

I work with WiFi all the time and let me tell you that after looking at usage graphs for what feels like forever, you don't need 1Gbps WiFi.

Most clients aren't averaging 50Mbps, nevermind 500-1000. What you want is consistent wifi. Something that doesn't show down because you dumped everything and the kitchen sink onto it. There's a lot of good ways to ensure this and nobody wants to pay for it.

Simply put, dumping 30-50 client devices, between cellphones, tablets, laptops, TVs, gaming consoles, IoT things (like smart lightbulbs, fridges, etc), and in more cases than I'd like to admit, desktops... Onto a single multifunction wireless router, with little more than dual band WiFi, is generally going to suck.

I usually hear a chorus of responses to this because people don't really put together that their smart watch, Alexa, smart smoke detectors and thermostats, all count as wifi devices. It usually doesn't make a huge difference how much each device is actually using the wifi, the fact that all of them are connected at the same time is, in and of itself, a problem with only a single access point where that contact can be made.... Dual band or not.

I don't consider mesh solutions to be solving the core issue since all of the client traffic needs to end up at a single device with all the same problems. The fact that they get filtered through what is essentially, fancy repeaters, isn't super relevant. The problem still exists. But if you suggest an infrastructure network with multiple wired access points, people generally take one look at the price, then leave and go buy the latest night hawk from Netgear at the nearest electronics store and put it out of their mind, since it's "good enough" (which it isn't, in the current WiFi climate).

I want people to have better wifi, but I can't save you all from yourselves. Now the IEEE is taking on the job, I suppose. Trying to "fix" wifi because most people can't be arsed to install a reasonable solution for what they actually need. They'd rather spend literally thousands of dollars a year on fast internet service that they don't need and can't use because it's all getting filtered through their sub $300 network that they've had (or will have) for two+ years, and then have the gall to complain that their wifi sucks, and they don't get it because they're paying $100+ a month for their fancy gigabit or multi-gigabit internet connection.

[-] zewu@lemmy.world 6 points 10 months ago

I agree when it comes to average usage, but having >=1Gbps headroom for bursty traffic, e.g., when moving files locally between devices, is awesome.

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[-] hark@lemmy.world 14 points 10 months ago

Is this supposed to be the wi-fi standard that would allow for wireless VR? I'd love to have a standard that makes such a setup possible.

[-] Codilingus@sh.itjust.works 22 points 10 months ago

Wireless VR has been a thing since wifi 5ghz. And from first hand experience, it works great.

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[-] Kbobabob@lemmy.world 6 points 10 months ago

Yeah, but you'll need to be within 5 feet of the access point. I kid, but i am curious how range will be.

[-] SuperSpruce@lemmy.zip 8 points 10 months ago

Good. I almost never need speeds in excess of those possible with WiFi 2, and 90% of the time WiFi 1 speeds are enough, but very often my speeds drop below 1mbps, rendering accessing the Internet on my phone or tablet essentially useless.

[-] AA5B@lemmy.world 11 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Currently gigabit Ethernet is faster and more reliable than WiFi, despite WiFi theoretically being equivalent. The benefit of increased speed and scalability is never needing wired infrastructure at the home/office.

We’re in a race: on one side WiFi7 had great potential, but on the other side 2.5gE is becoming more common on new PCs. Who will win? Will consumers care, if they don’t have a home lab and can’t get an internet connection to match?

For those claiming current bandwidth is more than people need, I would agree in theory but it just doesn’t pan out in reality. There are always network glitches and irregularities, there’s ever more tracking and advertising, there’s ever more Interference.

Recently my fiber provider had issues and my connection was downgraded to 350/150 with 44ms: theoretically still way faster than I need yet even “simple” web pages were noticeably slower.maybe I’m spoiled but I couldn’t imagine trying to game on that

[-] HakFoo@lemmy.sdf.org 12 points 10 months ago

I resent wireless because I feel like we got led astray by the aesthetics crowd. It was never good-- contested bandwidth, poor penetration, paper-mache security, but it was so much more attractive than cables asunder that we're throwing moonshot resources at it to try to make it good enough.

Meanwhile, consumer wired has stagnated. You can finally get 2.5GbE on a lot of new mainboards, but there are few affordable home router/AP devices, especially with multiple 2.5G ports. the local home centres still primarily stock spools of Cat5E, and even new-build developments treat networking as a low-priority line item, probably well below cable TV jacks, if they mention it at all.

If we had put the same emphasis on wired, there'd be 10/40Gb fibre NICs in commodity systems, and the Home Despot would sell all-inclusive fibre and Cat6A or 8 retrofit box kits.

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[-] jaschen@lemmynsfw.com 6 points 10 months ago

I switched my house to 10gbe & 2.5gbe and never looked back. Not only is it fast, it's so much more stable. I still have 1gbe for things like PoE cameras but man. My network is rock solid.

[-] Ephera@lemmy.ml 5 points 10 months ago

You might just have a crappy router in general...? Not as in, you need the newest router with fastest speeds to tide over the slower times. What I mean is that there's lots of cheap, no-name routers that are just extremely unreliable. Many ISPs hand them out.

Investing into a more expensive router from a widely known brand is usually well worth the money, in my experience. You can probably even buy a used one and still have a better experience.

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[-] UltraMagnus0001@lemmy.world 8 points 10 months ago

What about my older 2.4 ghz stuff wifi6 don't play well with those

[-] Kbobabob@lemmy.world 7 points 10 months ago

Why do you think the routers wouldn't support 2.4?

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[-] csm10495@sh.itjust.works 5 points 10 months ago

I'd honestly like distance and stability crossed. Shorter distance than wifi6 isn't very useful at least at my house where one wall seems to block most of the signal.

By time I'm at my garage it's all 2.4g.

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