I was asked today, “when are you sharing the Annual Gift Guide? It’s October!”

I guess it’s shopping season and a great gift for techno geeks who game or are gear heads is a high speed router. WiFi 7 is the latest wireless communications standard to hit the technology marketplace.

WiFi 7 is an upgrade from WiFi 6e and promises faster speeds. Technologists consider the new standard to be Extremely High Throughput or EHT. This standard, like WiFi 6e, was designed to support the ever growing number of household devices in addition to high speed throughput.

More Devices Demand More, More

An average family of four is straining current network standards. A household with teenaged children means 4 phones, 2 tablets, and 4 computers. If your household is a fully connected one like mine, it also means your heating and cooling is on the network in addition to an Amazon Alexa device, and one or more smart TVs streaming content. All of this connectivity could be pushing gigabytes per hour inside and outside the house.

A lot of devices can cause your home router to become a choke point for your household’s usage of Internet services. Your router could be blocking the throughput of your devices regardless of how fast your Internet Service Provider can deliver connectivity to you. WiFi 7 doubles the amount of bandwidth used for your internal devices. This provides a wider pipe for you to stream, game, and pay your bills.

Connectivity Still Depends on Your ISP

WiFi 7 delivers 4.8X speeds over WiFi 6e, but that doesn’t mean your Internet speed is any faster. WiFi is still local to internal networks. It just makes congestion less of an issue. Your external Internet speed is totally dependent on your ISP, but the roundtrip could be quicker.

WiFi 7 isn’t due until early 2024. Look for new device announcements closer to the end of the year. If you were thinking of picking up a new router for your loved one for the holidays, hold out for a little bit and upgrade on 7.