How's it going guys, today I've got three really interesting upgrades
or developments, whatever you want to call it,
with Wi-Fi that you're probably going to be seeing soon. And I would consider these pretty major. I'm
not going to leave you hanging. I'm just going to right off the bat tell you what these are.
Then we can get into detail. The first one is called Wi-Fi HaLow, and it basically allows
much longer range for IoT devices. The second development is called EasyMesh,
and that basically makes it a lot easier to have mesh networks. You might know
those. And the third one is Wi-Fi 7. Yes, we have barely even gotten Wi-Fi 6 out yet,
but they're already working on Wi-Fi 7, and it could come relatively soon.
Now, before we get into the fun details of the video,
I do want to thank the sponsor this video, myself. And specifically a new wallpaper I
created. If you guys didn't know on the side for fun, I'd just make some high res wallpapers every
once in a while. And usually I'll make a post about them and you can download them for free.
Of course, at the maximum resolution. I'll put all the links in the description,
or you can go to ThioJoe.Art is the page, so you can just check them out on there. And
there's also some animated "Wallpaper Engine" versions. If you don't know,
that's a program on Steam, it's like four bucks but it allows you to have animated wallpaper.
So I created some for those. So I'll put all those links in the description, again the wallpapers
are all free and stuff. I just do it for fun so you can check them out. So anyway with all that
out of the way we can now continue. And the first thing I'm going to talk about is WiFi HaLow. It's
actually spelled H-a-L-o-w, and it's just the name for a new spectrum for Wi-Fi that is sub-1 GHz.
So you may know there's the 2.4, there's the 5GHz, there's the upcoming 6-7GHz,
and now there will also be a lower, 1 GHz. And the idea is it'll be for IoT devices mainly. So
not big, heavy bandwidth main computers or phones and stuff like that. More like smart home devices
or really anything you consider Internet of Things. Just stuff that doesn't really
require a lot of bandwidth, but would greatly benefit from better connection and longer range.
And the benefit of sub-1 GHz is the lower the frequency of a radio wave,
the longer it can propagate, and the more it can pass through obstacles. And the usable
range they've said for this sub-1GHz spectrum is around a kilometer. If there's no obstructions,
obviously, not nearly that far if there are obstructions. But still going to be way longer
than what you're going to get with 2.4 even.
Now, the actual frequency range specification for HaLow is 750 MHz to 928 MHz. However,
not all of that is going to be used in every country. Like most countries,
only part of that is going to be usable for Wi-Fi. But still, it's better to have it. And
then depending on what country you're in, that's what your device will use.
And each channel of this sub-1GHz spectrum could be as narrow as 1 MHz. So that means that say,
your country only has 20 MHz allowed for the sub-1GHz for WiFi. Well, you'll still have
20 channels, that device can use simultaneously,
and that'll mean a lot less interference. And the way the specification works is,
it supports at least 8191 devices, and I believe even more
if it's on the more narrower MHz bandwidth. Now, like I said, speed is not the priority here.
It's not really going to be for streaming video or anything. It's more for devices
that really don't need a lot of bandwidth, like smart lights or something like that.
It doesn't take almost any bandwidth to be able to get the signal,
"turn on this color" stuff like that. And from what I've read,
the speed on a narrowest 1 MHz channel could be anywhere from 150 Kbps, not much at all,
up to 4 Mbps per second, which is actually kind of decent if you're talking about a kilometer away,
and that's going to depend on what "MCS" you're using its so-called. Modular coding scheme.
However, devices could combine multiple channels together and use more than 1 MHz width, and also
for each channel I believe, use up to four spatial streams. I'm not going to really
get into all that, but basically just means it can combine signals
and apparently it can get up to 80 Megabits speed absolute maximum.
Although that would probably mean that there would have to be a lot less interference from any
devices if that was the case. Another benefit is this HaLow protocol would require much less power
usage. It can allow devices to sleep and only send signals very infrequently. And apparently,
it would allow devices to run off a single button cell battery for months or even years.
Now, this standard was actually published way back in 2017, but it's really only until
now that it's kind of gotten attention and started to actually become a thing.
And that partially is because the Wi-Fi Alliance, who kind of manages
the Wi-Fi standards, they actually created a certification program for Wi-Fi HaLow.
So now it'll be a little bit more standardized. So I'm definitely excited for this. Hopefully,
it's going to be rolled out on more devices, and it won't just kind of be left by the wayside.
All right now, the next development is the so-called Wi-Fi EasyMesh Specification and
certification program. Now, if you're not familiar, a Wi-Fi mesh network is not new.
It's been around for years and allows you to basically combine multiple Wi-Fi access
points. And allow a phone or device to kind of see them all as the same thing so it can swap
between the closest access point, whichever has the best signal without the user having
to manually go in and switch to an extender or something like, that that has a different SSID.
So it's a way more convenient way to set up a Wi-Fi network,
though it is a little bit more expensive, and plenty of manufacturers have created their own
Wi-Fi mesh routers and networks. But the problem is obviously different
mesh access points from different manufacturers are not really going to usually work together.
However, that certification program will change this because now going forward,
if the manufacturers want to follow this standard, they'll have to make their products in a way that
will actually make them inter-compatible. So say you buy a Linksys mesh network,
you might be able to go buy and Netgear access point to add on to it. Because
maybe that one's cheaper and it works fine and you don't have to buy the super expensive one.
Or maybe you buy the expensive ones for your main ones, and then again a cheaper one for
some corner of your house, that sort of thing. And apparently, the EasyMesh specification will also
be backwards compatible with Wi-Fi 4, 5, and 6. So you could buy a, maybe cheaper router that
only supports Wi-Fi 5 or something like that, but it would still be able to do the mesh.
Or if you have a device that only supports an older version, you could use it on the mesh
network still. So again, I think this development is also really awesome. It's going to make mesh
networks a lot more affordable I think, and easier to expand. And now finally we can talk about Wi-Fi
7. Yes, you might not even have Wi-Fi 6 or 6E yet, but they're already working on Wi-Fi 7.
And according to a webinar that was hosted by the CTO of Wireless Connectivity at Intel,
he speculated that we could have Wi-Fi 7 within three years,
which is a lot shorter than the usual 6 years between generations.
And supposedly Wi-Fi 7 would be possibly capable of speeds of around five times what Wi-Fi 6 is.
Meaning it would be around 46 Gigabits per second max. And the reason for this is it would be
capable of something called multi-link operation or MLO, which would basically allow devices to
connect to multiple channels simultaneously. Now I'm not talking about channel bonding,
where you kind of combine it wider, but I also mean, you could connect to , for example,
both a 5 GHz and a 6 GHz on completely different spectrums, which you can't do right now.
Also, the Wi-Fi 7 specification would include that sub-1GHz spectrum of Wi-Fi HaLow, as well as the
6-7 GHz spectrum of Wi-Fi 6E. So it's kind of like the best of all worlds. Now I mentioned connecting
to multiple channels before, but this will also allow you to combine channels into bigger ones.
So currently, the maximum is 160 MHz wide channels. Now, apparently, you'd be able to
go up to 320. And one interesting thing that's being worked on with Wi-Fi 7 is something called
OpenRoaming, where it's an industry initiative where apparently a lot of big companies like
supermarkets, that sort of thing, target, Walmart, whatever are working on creating a,
effectively a network of Wi-Fi that would be as accessible and seamless as cellular networks.
So potentially, I don't know how would work, but potentially
you could maybe I don't know, sign up and pay for some kind of subscription.
And if you were to go in range of one of these hotspots, then it would automatically connect
you and maybe have faster speed or something like that. Now you might be thinking, wait a minute,
aren't public Wi-Fi hotspots, not a good thing to connect to? And for the most part, yes. However,
with Wi-Fi 7 and a specific feature WPA3, which is the latest security protocol for Wi-Fi, there's an
optional feature called Wi-Fi Enhanced Open, which basically fixes all the old issues of connecting
to a public Wi-Fi hotspot where if one person connects, then there was the same encryption key
used for everyone that's connected, so that one person connects and can decrypt all the
traffic from everyone else. Assuming they weren't using HTTPS or something, which most things do.
But with Wi-Fi Enhanced Open, it is an optional feature, but presumably
any public Wi-Fi hotspot would be using it. Basically allows every single device that's
connected to have a separate encryption key. So no matter how many people are connected to it,
they can't spy on other people's connections. So you just have to trust the Wi-Fi hotspot itself,
and not everyone else connected to it, which is a big improvement, obviously.
Who knows if that will actually pan out. It's just something to keep an eye on. So yeah,
some big features coming to Wi-Fi you can expect relatively soon,
I guess in the next couple of years . I know I'm definitely excited. If you
guys enjoyed this video, be sure to give it a thumbs up to the algorithm
knows you liked it. And if you want to subscribe, also be sure to click the bell next to the
Subscribe button to get notifications. I only upload about twice a week tops,
so you don't want those videos getting lost in the rest of your subscriptions. If you guys want to
keep watching, the next video I'd recommend is one where I was talking about Wi-Fi 6E.
If you don't know what that is, it is that new higher 6 GHz / 7 GHz
spectrum. You'll definitely want to know about that. You can click on that right
there. So thanks so much for watching, guys, and I'll see in the next video.