Ethernet has been the best option for connecting a computer to the Internet for decades. The cables guarantee zero latency in our local network, and a stability that WiFi cannot guarantee. However, Wi-Fi can be faster than wired connections, and companies are beginning to consider a future without Ethernet cable .
We are talking about MediaTek . The company, as we gathered a few days ago, affirms that it has managed to reach speeds of 24 Gbps through the WiFi 7 standard. However, in the future they believe that 30 Gbps can be exceeded with this standard, and it may even reach 40Gbps.
Up to 40 Gbps: is cable necessary?
These figures are not through a single device, but refer to the maximum capacity that a router can support through several connections. However, what is certain is that thanks to standards such as WiFi 6E or the future WiFi 7 , it is possible to reach speeds of several Gbps with a single device. In fact, in some Smart TVs , more speed is achieved by WiFi than by Ethernet, since WiFi 5 offers better performance than the 100M Ethernet ports that some televisions incorporate.
To do that with an Ethernet cable you need to have a 2.5G or 10G port. The former is becoming more common in high-end computers and motherboards, but 10G is only available in ultra-high-end computers and motherboards. In the case of wanting such a port on a computer, it is necessary to spend 60 or 70 euros.
For these reasons, Alan Hsu, Corporate Vice President and General Manager of MediaTek’s Intelligent Connectivity Business, states that “the release of Wi-Fi 7 will mark the first time that Wi-Fi can be a true replacement for Ethernet cable for high-end applications. bandwidth”.
Independent channels: keys in the WiFi
And reason is not lacking. With standards like WiFi 4 without MU-MIMO , the router had a single data channel to offer the connection to the devices that were connected. Thus, if there were, for example, several people streaming at home, and we wanted to play over the Internet, latency and jitter increased because the data channel is not stable, which can lead to packet loss.
With current standards, we find dedicated data channels for each device. For example, if we have a router with 4 antennas, one of those antennas can be dedicated to our computer, so that we have a single and stable data channel with which we do not have packet losses or speed drops, assuming of course that coverage is good.
Thus, WiFi may not replace Ethernet directly in the home, or at least not through a single access point. What we will see is, for example, having a WiFi repeater on each floor of a house or in rooms very far from the main router, and it is not necessary to have an Ethernet cable to each room. For this reason, WiFi 7 is not going to replace Ethernet, but it can be an essential complement to avoid having to carry a cable to the final device in the coming years.