Wi-Fi 8: Stability, not speed, is the name of its game
Officially, Wi-Fi 8 is known as IEEE 802.11bn or Ultra High Reliability (UHR) Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN). The key word in that mouthful of a name is reliability. Instead of chasing higher speeds, which is what Wi-Fi 7 was all about, Wi-Fi 8 is designed to deliver a more consistent and dependable connection.
You may have read that Wi-Fi 8 will be much faster, up to 100 Gigabits per second (Gbps). This speed boost would be accomplished using a technology already used in some 5G implementations called millimeter wave (mmWave). That's the theory, anyway. In practice, mmWave promises to be hard to implement. Many people expect, as do I, that if mmWave does appear, it will be in an even later protocol called Wi-Fi 8E. I don't expect to see mmWave in devices this decade.
Wi-Fi 8's stability is important because while Wi-Fi 7 is as fast as blazes -- I've seen speeds of over 1.9 Gbps from my Netgear Orbi 970 from an AT&T Fiber 2 Gbps connection -- it can be unstable at times. In particular, when using Wi-Fi 7's ultra-highspeed 6 GHz band, I've sometimes seen an inability to maintain stable connections. In addition, the backhaul from the main router to its satellites has sometimes glitched.
