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Wi-Fi 8 is appearing at CES before most of us have switched to Wi-Fi 7
(www.theverge.com)
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this post was submitted on 06 Jan 2026
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I'm still on WiFi 5. I looked at WiFi 6 routers but then they mentioned WiFi 7 being on the horizon. If they keep doing this, it'll be long before I upgrade.
You should upgrade your router when it’s 8 years old at the soonest.
I still have some with ddwrt that have worked* admirably for years
...and who knows how many unpatched firmware vulnerabilities! Right?
Lol it's patched and up to date
ddwrt can't fix all firmware flaws. These routers have some black box software that nobody knows whats in, those are the riskiest ones.
ddwrt doesn't have firmware updates that manufacturers themselves do not provide, so old obsolete hardware can be vulnerable in perpetuity without ever receiving a fix, ever. Maybe they can patch in a workaround, maybe they never know about it.
You'd have to look at your specific model router to see what vulnerabilities are known as CVEs, and then see if those CVEs are patched by ddwrt. Nobody does this kind of research outside of enterprise security/it teams in my experience. Plus you never know what vulnerabilities exist that haven't been reported and thus do not have a CVE yet... the older the hardware the more likely there is a big gaping RCE flaw that lets who knows who add your router to their bot network with a rootkit.
You should upgrade when you need to, or when your device dies, no sooner.
I did the same, WiFi 6 came out then they announced WiFi 6E was around the corner and when I looked into it, 6E was the one that really gave performance boost, its my understanding that WiFi 6 just helps with congestion from lots of devices, doesn't really give you much of a performance boost on single devices. I use openwrt though, so I've been waiting for a WiFi 6E capable openwrt supported router to come out.
Then there's also the part where your clients have to support it too, and I realized all my devices are old and don't support 6GHz anyway.
The one thing that will probably finally get me to upgrade is I'm debating about buying a Steam Frame, and I'll probably need faster WiFi for that. I'll probably have to go with a generic WiFi AP just for the Frame, until openwrt have a supported model.
If the faster wifi is for streaming from a computer, last I checked the Steam Frame is coming with a USB dongle to facilitate that so it doesn't have go over your network.
Nice, didn't know that, thanks!
I have a thrift store Asus Wi-Fi 6 (AX6000) router. I ended up just turning off 5ghz. My smart home speakers, bulbs, and streaming sticks work so much better now. Every corner of the house and the driveway are consistently covered, so I'm happy.
I went on my router and split my 5ghz and 2.4ghz into two separate SSIDs, and then added all my smart devices to the 2.4ghz and my cell phone to the 5ghz network
Wouldn't all the devices need to support this, too?
Depending on the size of your house/apartment you should really consider Wifi 6. They finally made improvements to the 2.4ghz band, not just the 5ghz and 6ghz band, so Wifi 6 will give you significant speed gains from larger distances away from your router, not just when you are in the same room like it was the case with WiFi 5
5 to 6 is probably going to be the biggest leap in reliability for a long time