Qualcomm Networking Pro Series Gen 3: Another Real Buzz on 10Gbps Wi-Fi 7

This portion of extra content is part of the explainer post on the new Wi-Fi 7 standard.

There are four areas where the new standard is better compared to the existing Wi-Fi 6 (and 6E).

1. The all-new 320MHz channel width

The first thing to note about Wi-Fi 7 is the new and much wider channel width, up to 320MHz, or double that of Wi-Fi 6/6E.

This new channel width is generally available on the 6GHz band, with up to three 320MHz channels. However, Wi-Fi 7 can also combine portions of the 6GHz and 5GHz bands to create this new bandwidth—more in the Multi-Link Operation section below.

Details of Wi-Fi channels can be found here, but the new channel width generally means Wi-Fi 7 can double the base speed, from 1.2Gbps per stream (160MHz) to 2.4Gbps per stream (320MHz).

So, in theory, just from the width alone, a 4×4 broadcaster 6GHz Wi-Fi 7 can have up to 9.6 Gbps of bandwidth—or 10Gbps when rounded up. But there’s more to Wi-Fi 7’s bandwidth below.

Wi-Fi 7 also supports double the partial streams, up to 16. As a result, technically, a 16-stream (16×16) Wi-Fi 7 6GHz band can deliver up to over 40Gbps of bandwidth, especially when considering the new QAM support below.

2. The 4K-QAM

QAM, short for quadrature amplitude modulation, manipulates the radio wave to pack more information in the Hertz.

Wi-Fi 6 supports 1024-QAM, which itself is already impressive. However, Wi-Fi 7 will have four times that, or 4096-QAM. Greater QAM means better performance for the same channel width.

As a result, Wi-Fi 7 will be much faster and more efficient than previous standards when working with supported clients.

Wi-F 7 vs. Wi-Fi 6/6E: The realistic real-world speeds

With the support for the wider channel width and higher QAM, Wi-Fi 7 is set to be much faster than previous standards on paper.

You might have read somewhere that Wi-Fi 7 is “up to 4.8 times faster than Wi-Fi 6,” and hardware vendors will continue to combine the theoretical bandwidth of a broadcaster’s all bands into a single colossal number—such as BE19000, BE22000, or BE33000—which is excellent for advertising.

As always, these numbers don’t mean much, and things are not that simple. In reality, a Wi-Fi connection generally happens on a single band at a time—that’s always true for Wi-Fi 6E and older clients—and is also limited by the client’s specs.

The table below summarizes what you can expect from Wi-Fi 7’s real-world organic performance compared to Wi-Fi 6E when working on the 6GHz.

	Wi-Fi 6E	Wi-Fi 7
Max Channel Bandwidth (theoretical/top-tier equipment)	160MHz	320MHz
Channel Bandwidth (widely implemented)	80MHz	160MHz
Number of Available Channels	7x 160MHz, or 14x 80MHz channels	3x 320MHz, or 7x 160MHz channels, or 14x 80MHz channels
Highest Modulation	1024-QAM	4096-QAM
Max Number of Spatial Streams (theoretical on paper / commercially implemented)	8 / 4	16 / 4
Max Bandwidth Per Stream (theoretical)	1.2Gbps (at 160MHz) 600Mbps (at 80MHz)	≈ 2.9Gbps (at 320MHz) ≈ 1.45Gbps (at 160MHz)
Max Band Bandwidth (theoretical on paper)	9.6Gbps (8×8)	46.1Gbps (16×16)
Commercial Max Band Bandwidth Per Band (commercially implemented)	4.8Gbps (4×4)	11.5Gbps (4×4)
Available Max Real-word Negotiated Speeds(*)	2.4Gbps (via a 2×2 160MHz client) 1.2Gbps (via a 2×2 80MHz client)	≈ 11.5Gbps (via a 4×4 320MHz client) ≈ 5.8Gbps (via a 2×2 320MHz client or a 4×4 160MHz client) ≈ 2.9Gbps (via a single stream 320MHz client or a 2×2 160MHz client) ≈ 1.45Gbps (via a single stream 160MHz client or a 2×2 80MHz client)
Available Clients (examples)	2×2 (Intel AX210)	2×2 (Intel BE200 / Qualcomm NCM865)

Like Wi-Fi 6 and 6E, Wi-Fi 7 has been available only in 2×2 specs on the client side. That, plus the sweet-spot 160MHz channel width, means, generally, it’s safe to conservatively expect real-world rates of the mainstream Wi-Fi 7 (160MHz) to be about 20% faster than top-tier Wi-Fi 6E (160MHz) counterparts.

However, the new standard does have more bandwidth on the broadcasting side. So, it can handle more 2×2 clients simultaneously with high-speed real-world rates. And that’s always a good thing.

3. Multi-Link Operation

Multi-Link Operation, or MLO, is the most exciting and promising feature of Wi-Fi 7 that changes the norm of Wi-Fi: Up to Wi-Fi 6E, a Wi-Fi connection between two direct devices occurs in a single band at a time. MLO changes that.

It’s worth noting that MLO is a feature and not the base of the standard, meaning it can be supported by a particular device or not.

In a nutshell, MLO is Wi-Fi band aggregation. Like Link Aggregation (or bonding) in wired networking, it allows combining two or more Wi-Fi bands into a single Wi-Fi link (single SSID). That said, you can have MLO as long as the broadcaster has more than one band, which is the case with all Wi-Fi 7 hardware.

Still, generally, there are two MLO operation modes:

• Simultaneous Transmit and Receive Multi-Link Multi-Radio: It’s multi-link aggregation using all available bands (2.4GHz, 5GHz, and 6GHz) to deliver higher throughput, lower latency, and better reliability. (For dual-band hardware, such as the Asus RT-BE88U, this mode combines the 2.4GHz and 5GHz band.)
• Enhanced Multi-Link Single Radio: It’s multi-link using dynamic band switching between 5GHz and 6GHz—this mode is only available to broadcasters with these two bands—to deliver load balancing and lower latency.

No matter which mode is used, the gist is that the bonded link delivers “better” connection quality and “more” bandwidth.

It’s important to note, though, that at the end of the day, MLO increases the bandwidth, allowing different applications on a client to use the two bands simultaneously. The point here is that no application on the client can have a connection speed faster than the fastest band involved. A speedtest application, for example, still uses one of the bands at a time. This connection speed is still limited by the hardware specs on both ends of the link, whichever is lower.

So, the MLO feature affords supported clients the best probability of connecting successfully at the highest possible speed using the fastest band at any given time, which changes depending on the distance between the client and the broadcaster.

Considering the vast amount of pre-Wi-Fi 7 clients on the market, keep the following in mind about MLO in consumer-grade hardware:

• By nature, link bonding will be more complicated than single-band connectivity—there are just too many variables.
• MLO only works with supported Wi-Fi 7 clients. (A Windows computer must run Windows 11 24H2 or later to support MLO.) Considering the different performance grades and hardware variants, the result of MLO will vary case by case.
• Wi-Fi 6 and 6E and older clients will still use a single band at a time when connecting to a MLO SSID. And they might pick whichever of those is available in the bonded link. You might get frustrated when they use the slow band instead of a faster one, like in the case of Smart Connect. That happens.
• An MLO SSID requires the WPA2/WPA3 or WPA3 encryption method and won’t allow legacy clients to connect. This can be a big headache for those assuming the SSID will just work with all clients. In other words, turning MLO on can cause a big compatibility issue with the hardware’s primary SSID(s).
• The reach of the bonded wireless link is as far as the range of the shorter band.

MLO in real-world usage: Great for wireless mesh, but client compatibility can be a big issue

In real-world experience, MLO has the potential to be a game-changer in a wireless mesh network by fortifying the Wi-Fi link between broadcasters—the backhaul—in terms of bandwidth.

Wi-Fi 7 mesh systems, via my testing method, have shown sustained wireless backhauling links over 5Gbps at 40 feet away.

However, in terms of reliability, MLO has been buggy. During 2024, many Wi-Fi systems proved to be unreliable with this feature turned on, though toward the end of the year, things became better with the latest firmware. That’s often the case with new technology.

On the other hand, for devices (clients), the effect of MLO has proven to trade the (lack of) backward compatibility for a relatively subdued impact on performance.

Specifically, with single broadcasters or mesh systems with wired backhauling, the feature plays an insignificant role and generally does not noticeably improve the real-world rates of individual clients—currently available at 2×2 specs, such as the Intel BE200 or Qualcomm NCM865 chips—despite the higher negotiated speed of the bonded link.

In a way, MOL is the alternative to the finicky “Smart Connect“, where a single SSID is used for all of the broadcaster’s bands. In fact, you can think of MLO as the enhanced version of Smart Connect with higher bandwidth and security requirements.

All Wi-Fi 7 broadcasters require Smart Connect for their broadcaster’s primary SSID before MLO can be used with them. That said, here are the general options in terms of SSIDs—some hardware brands have more than others:

1. Turn MLO and get the most flexible SSID configuration options, including support for legacy clients.
2. Turn MLO on and:
   • Use the primary SSID (via Smart Connect) with MLO and let the system handle the rest. This is the most common case of canned mesh systems, such as those from Netgear (Orbi) or Amazon (eero).
   • Turn off Smart Connect, use the bands’ primary SSIDs without MLO, and use a virtual SSID with MLO.
   • When applicable, use separate virtual SSDs with lower requirements for legacy clients.

That said, MLO is best used when you have mostly Wi-Fi 6E and newer clients, which won’t be the case until years from now. In the meantime, this feature should be turned off when you use a single Wi-Fi 7 broadcaster or a mesh with wired backhauling unless you have the option to create additional SSIDs with lower security requirements for existing clients.

Finally, in terms of range, the MLO bonded link has the reach of the shortest band involved. Since the 6GHz band has just about 75% of the range of the 5GHz when the same broadcasting power is applied, MLO can only be truly meaningful with the help of Wi-Fi 7’s fifth and optional feature, Automated Frequency Coordination, mentioned below.

4. Flexible Channel Utilization (FCU) and Multi-RU

Flexible Channel Utilization (FCU) (a.k.a. Preamble Puncturing) and Multi-RU are two other items that help increase Wi-Fi 7’s efficiency. With FCU, Wi-Fi 7 handles interference more gracefully by slicing off the portion of a channel with interference, 20MHz at a time, and keeping the clean part usable.

In contrast, in Wi-Fi 6/6E, when there’s interference, an entire channel can be taken out of commission. FCU is the behind-the-scenes technology that increases Wi-Fi’s efficiency, similar to the case of MU-MIMO and OFDMA.

Similarly, with Wi-Fi 6/6E, each device can only send or receive frames on an assigned resource unit (RU), which significantly limits the flexibility of the spectrum resource scheduling. Wi-Fi 7 allows multiple RUs to be given to a single device and can combine RUs for increased transmission efficiency.

5. Automated Frequency Coordination

Automated Frequency Coordination (AFC) is an optional feature and deals with the 6GHz band, so it’s not Wi-Fi 7-exclusive—the band was first used with Wi-Fi 6E. It’s not required for a Wi-Fi 7 broadcaster’s general function. In fact, it wasn’t even mentioned in the initial certification by the Wi-Fi Alliance.

Due to local regulations, the 6GHz band’s availability, hence, the implementation of the AFC feature, differs around the world. For this reason, some Wi-Fi 7 broadcasters, such as the Asus RT-BE88U or the TP-Link Archer BE230, forgo this band to remain dual-band.

Still, Wi-Fi 7 makes AFC more relevant than ever. That’s because the 6GHz band has the highest bandwidth (fastest) yet the shortest range compared to the 5GHz and 2.4GHz bands when using the maximum allowed broadcasting power. Originally, AFC was intended only for outdoor applications, but when implemented, it’s significant for all applications.

Here’s how AFC works when/if available:

The feature enables a 6GHz broadcaster to check with a registered database in real-time to confirm that its operation will not negatively impact other existing registered members. Once that’s established, the broadcaster creates a dynamically exclusive environment in which its 6GHz band can operate without the constraint of regulations.

Specifically, the support for AFC means each Wi-Fi 7 broadcaster can use higher broadcasting power and more flexible antenna designs to have higher signal output.

Preliminary, AFC can increase the broadcasting power to 36 dBm (from the current 30 dBm limit) or 4 watts (from 1 wat). The goal is to make the range of the 6GHz band comparable to that of the 5GHz band—about 25% more. When that happens, the MLO feature above will be truly powerful.

Still, even then, Wi-Fi 7’s range will remain the same as that of Wi-Fi 6, which is available only on the 5GHz band. However, AFC makes its 6GHz band better than the case of Wi-Fi 6E.

This feature requires certification, and its availability is expected to vary from one region to another. Hardware released before that is said to be capable of handling AFC, which, when applicable, can be turned on via firmware updates.

Hardware vendors generally prioritize compliance and compatibility over performance, so AFC is not the priority.

The new chips Broadcom announced today collectively support all these new features of Wi-Fi 7.