On our latest episode, Jim and John have a timely-and timed!- debate about whether to deploy Wi-Fi 6e or Wi-Fi 7, as well as what thoughts might go in to making those decisions.
To follow what RUCKUS Networks is talking about concerning Wi-Fi 7, follow their website here https://www.ruckusnetworks.com/solutions/technology/wi-fi-7/
Intro music by Alex Grohl, available here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsRWpx8VJ_E
and
https://pixabay.com/users/alexgrohl-25289918/
On our latest episode, Jim and John have a timely-and timed!- debate about whether to deploy Wi-Fi 6e or Wi-Fi 7, as well as what thoughts might go in to making those decisions.
To follow what RUCKUS Networks is talking about concerning Wi-Fi 7, follow their website here https://www.ruckusnetworks.com/solutions/technology/wi-fi-7/
Intro music by Alex Grohl, available here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsRWpx8VJ_E
and
https://pixabay.com/users/alexgrohl-25289918/
Episode 71 - The Great Wi-Fi 6E vs Wi-Fi 7 Debate
John Deegan: And all right, I guess it's time for the music, which we can both hear now, hopefully not garbled. And we can explain that on the other side of this. So,
Good morning, Mr. Palmer. I'd like to see you bouncing around. Cause that means you actually can hear the music, which it, it might as well be the inside joke that we start with. I finally figured out after how many episodes have we been doing, like 10 now. I finally figured out an audio glitch that was making me hear the music, but not Jim or Jim heard it, but it sounded like it was underwater.
So, welcome to the show. How are you, Mr. Palmer?
Jim Palmer: I'm good, Mr. Deegan. And yes, the audio sounded good. I, I, for the first time in a live recording, I got to hear the music, so Woo. Well done. Mr. Engineer.
John Deegan: Yes, I am definitely not an audio engineer, but I play one on Fridays every other week. You know,
Jim Palmer: it's actually kind of funny because we talk about, you know, it's like, oh, you're not an audio engineer, and yet when I teach my antenna class, I talk about the fact that, you know, waves are very similar, whether they're audio or RF.
And so it's funny that we can, we can both be like really good RF engineers or you know, Wi-Fi engineers, so. Better than the average bear. But when it comes to audio, we both are terrible. Which is funny because it's like, well, it's just a wave, right? So how can, how can we, how can we be good at one and not good at the other?
John Deegan: I, I, I could say something about that and maybe, maybe I shouldn't, but it's, oh, what the hell? We can't see the Wi-Fi, so maybe we're not good at that either. We just can't see it or hear it and, and audio. You can hear it and so, you know, you're not good at it. I laughed.
Jim Palmer: We just, we just think, we just think we're good at Wi-Fi, is what you're saying.
John Deegan: Well, I've got the paper that says I'm, I'm, I reasonably know what I'm doing or knew what I was doing. But anyways, before we make it too much of a train wreck on a Friday let's see, we, we, we kinda, anybody that runs a, a podcast on a regular basis know sometimes you run outta topics and we kind of kicked around one and it's gonna be a little bit of a new setup.
I've got a timer on my desk. I'm holding it up to the camera that nobody other than Jim can see, cuz that's our gag, and so we, we decided, you know, with Mobility Field Day, by the time you might be listening to this Mobility Field Day will be happening shortly thereafter. This will drop the morning of Mobility Field Day, where Jim will be in front of a firing squad and he'll be getting all sorts of questions thrown at him.
And I, I promise I won't throw any of 'em at him myself. But so, one of the topics or one of the discussions rather we had was 6E or 7 and it's, I wouldn't say it's a hot or controversial topic, but it's timely. You're starting to see all the 60 stuff that could come out has come out. I don't know that anybody's coming out with another 6E AP and the enterprise space in the coming months.
I think everybody's eyes and ears are focused on seven. And so Jim and I were talking about this the other day and we're like, you know, this would make a really interesting podcast topic, but we could make it even more interesting. And that's where the timer comes into play, Jim. Right?
Jim Palmer: Right. Because. You and I both know that we could go on for many, many, many minutes.
And so what we've decided to do on behalf of our listeners is we're going to set a timer and and say, when the timer goes off, we are done talking. So we have to be very clear, concise, and to the point so that we can be done in less than the three hours that we could talk on the subject. So John?
John Deegan: Yes sir.
I will
Jim Palmer: Go ahead.
John Deegan: I'm going to hit start on the timer. Hopefully you can actually hear the Audi Audible. And we're going down from 25. Okay.
Jim Palmer: All right.
25 minutes from now, we are going to solve the 6E versus 7 debate.
John Deegan: I don't know about solve it, but, okay.
Jim Palmer: Oh, we're solve, we're solving stuff on a Friday morning, John.
John Deegan: So right off the bat, Mr. Palmer, what would you do? 6E or 7? What
Jim Palmer: it depends.
John Deegan: Ah, he stole my answer. So, so in fairness it does depend, but what does it depend on, Mr. Palmer?
Jim Palmer: You know, it's funny. It it, this is one of the topics that I know is going to be talked about. At Mobility Field Day and yeah, this episode will drop on morning of day two.
So this will actually, if you're, if you're really a glutton for punishment, you can listen to this before you listen to me talk and present in the afternoon. This will drop in the morning. I present in the afternoon slash evening. And you know, it's funny because it really seems for us, it's not that big of a deal.
Not because we don't have to buy, you know, million dollars worth of gear. But because we know and understand the natural progression of technology, I remember writing a blog post a few years ago on my personal blog where I talked about, do you go Wi-Fi 6 or Wi-Fi 6E? And the answer that was, at that point a few years ago, is still the answer that I would tell you today.
And I would tell you that it really doesn't matter about the technology. The technology doesn't matter. The the key thing that I, I point at that I always look at, and I will always argue, and this is the point I'm taking today, is that it really matters about where you are within your budget cycle.
That's it.
When do you get to have your chance to, to buy new APs or upgrade your existing network? Because you know, if we look at it now and you go, do I wait for 6E? You know, or do I, 6E's out, or do I wait? Do I do 6E or do I wait for 7? Well, it's an easy question. When do you have the money to buy APs?
John Deegan: Yeah. Yeah. If that one, if,
Jim Palmer: Because look, we know that Wi-Fi 7 is coming. At CES earlier this year, January of 2023, there was some consumer APs that were announced. There's, I've seen some reports of some, some smartphones out of Asia. I haven't seen anything in the US, but it's out of Asia where there's Wi-Fi 7 clients.
But the consumer home AP, that's Wi-Fi 7 isn't really shipping. It was just announced, but it's not shipping until this, the summer of 2023. And so if you're looking at the question, do I wait for Wi-Fi 7? The question is, can you afford to wait for Wi-Fi 7? You know, if you try to wait until we get, you know, Wi-Fi 7 APs released and shipping, is your money still going to be there?
Or are they gonna simply say, "You know what, you didn't spend it. So we're gonna take that money, give it to somebody else and we'll come back to you in five or six years, you know, whatever your AP refresh cycle is before we give you more money."
John Deegan: Right. And, and I think, you know, that's one thing that that's come up with, you know, cuz obviously we work on a, a couple different areas of the business on the RUCKUS side of things.
And with me as an SE I've talked to customers I was not that long ago, still a customer. Although of a different vendor and you, the refresh cycle is definitely key. When are you budgeted to replace things? And sometimes it's not even what you're budgeted to replace. But I had this happen a couple times where I.
There was a budget surplus, and it's probably the most funny thing to me in the corporate world, but if you have a budget for say 2023 of 10 million, and in November of 2023 they come to you and say, we've only spent eight. We need to hurry up and spend the other two because we won't have 10 million in the budget next year if we don't.
So sometimes you buy stuff because you have the money that you weren't expecting to, but budget is definitely a concern. But one of the things that I hear a lot, or I have heard a lot, this came up at WLPC as well as other interactions we've had with some peers was I wanna wait for the latest and greatest.
Yeah. And, and here's the reality, right? So if you've got Wi-Fi 6 and you don't need to upgrade, like you're not dying, like you, you're not struggling, you've got a relatively new you know, healthy plant and you don't have any sort of greenfield deployments coming up then I, in my mind, you could probably wait till Wi-Fi 7.
You've got Wi-Fi 6, all of your clients are probably Wi-Fi 6 capable. Maybe you've got some that aren't. But you probably don't have a whole lot of 6E clients. You certainly don't have any Wi-Fi 7 clients right now. So the budget cycle's definitely gonna dictate what you do and when, but just as important as your clients.
And so I think it depends on, and there's that, that buzzword again, but I think it depends on, in addition to the budget cycle, what you do, you know what, what vertical you're in, right? So if you're in hospitality or you're in say you're like a, a large public venue, a stadium, a convention center, something like that, where having the latest and greatest might seem like you're chasing a fools gold, but it also might be a selling point to your convention guests or, you know, potential events in the future. You know, if you've got Wi-Fi 5, and we, everybody on this podcast, you and I both know this and, and anybody that listens to us that's gone to WLPC knows this firsthand one of the biggest pains we had at the old facility, there was poor Wi-Fi.
Even this year was a hot topic because of, of certain configurations and things like that. So, you know, the guests, especially nerds like us, want the best that they can get. But here's the thing, right? So I don't have a 6E device that I use on a daily basis. I have a, a Google Pixel in my drawer right here.
I have a couple Wi-Fi 6E chips in a and a drawer a few feet below my feet. But I don't have one that I use on a daily basis. I have 6E APs. I haven't deployed any of my house yet, so it, it really, I. You have to ask the question as the engineer or the deployment team, what do I need? What are my client needs going to be?
Because if your clients are all using three and four and five year old devices, you don't need 6E or 7 now. But if they refresh every three to four years, chances are they're probably going to need it sooner than later. I think the areas that I probably don't envy the, the most would be like a, I'm not even sure if I would say high schools, but definitely colleges I think would have some really challenging refresh cycles, not the least of which is because you can only do upgrades in like a two week window over the summer when there's no sports camps or orientations or other physical plant activities going on.
But I mean, obviously you don't control the clients, right? Corporate enterprise, maybe you do, you, you dictate who's getting what phones and you can control what phone, you know, if it's gonna be Wi-Fi 6 or 7. But colleges you don't, and depending on the school, I mean, you could have hundreds of thousands of devices if you go to a big state school potentially.
And some of the kids are gonna be wanting the latest and greatest I, I'm sure. You know, that's not hard to figure out. Like they're, they just, I want a new phone every year. And some of the kids have the same android beater phone that they've had for five years that's held together with duct tape. It works just fine for what they need.
They don't care. So I think it, yeah, I mean, it, it, it, but there's no wrong answer. That's the beauty part, right? At the end of the day, 6E gets you 6..
Jim Palmer: Well, see, I think, I think that actually there is a wrong answer. I will, I will argue with this, on this, on this point, and I've, I've heard this argument from other people.
Is that the timer?
John Deegan: No, that was just me hitting the dog because you're arguing with me.
Jim Palmer: Oh, okay.
John Deegan: So I didn't hit the dog, I hit the dog soundboard. Don't anybody think I actually hit an animal.
Jim Palmer: So I don't wanna argue with you because I've heard this, I've heard this. This. Stance. I've heard this opinion from other people, and I kind of tend to agree with it.
You know, I think there is a wrong answer because if you, if you wait, if you refresh, say you refresh this summer, right? We're gonna go with, with your, your higher ed, which I, I do agree with you as a, as a very challenging environment. My hat's off to all the higher ed people because you're really juggling a lot of balls there.
But the problem I think you have is if you look at it and you say, Hey, I'm going to, you know, not. Deploy 6 GHz and 6E today because we expect to start seeing Wi-Fi 7 APs next year, you know, first half of of 2024. The problem is, is you say, okay, I'm, I'm going to not do 6E. I'm not gonna introduce 6 GHz this summer.
I'm going to wait, but then you end up not having any 6 GHz channels for how long, how long before you get that opportunity again? And so, yes, while there might not be a lot of 6E clients today, what, what is it going to look like in two years from now? Because yeah, you're still gonna have the five-year-old beater Android phones.
You can never get away from that. You're, but you're also going to start seeing a lot more. Devices, I think coming out this year that are going to have 6 GHz. Now, whether it's Wi-Fi 7 or if it's 6E we don't know. And that's the next topic I'd like to discuss. But we also know that, you know, you do have, you know, it's this window time of, and so you look at your refresh cycle and you say, okay, this is the one chance in the next five years that I'm gonna be able to put an AP into this building.
Can you afford to not get 6E? Would you rather have like a Wi-Fi 5, keep your Wi-Fi 5, or you know, a Wi-Fi, or put in a Wi-Fi 6 and not put in 6 GHz? If it's going to take you another five years to put 6 GHz into a building like that, can you afford to wait that long? Or you gonna start getting so many complaints in two years that all of a sudden your entire refresh cycle gets jacked because you now have to pivot and be like, even though we just put in some APs two or three years ago in this building, we now have to go back and redo it because we really need 6 GHz.
And so yes, while Wi-Fi 7 is coming, and it's coming next year, you know, if, if that building on your campus is not slated to be touched again for another five years, can you wait those five years to not have 6 GHz?
Maybe you can, maybe you can't. We can't answer that. But it's a question that needs to be asked when you make that decision of, do I do Wi-Fi 6E APs, or do I stick with, you know, Wi-Fi 6 or not do anything.
John Deegan: Yeah. And I mean, I think that's, that's the beauty part. And I've had that conversation with some, some folks as well, that like, at the end of the day, it, and I go back to like, again, we're gonna beat the, the hell out of it depends today, but it, it does depend, right?
If you can, if you have the money and you have to do something today, even though we all know Wi-Fi 7 is basically going to drop sometime later this year. Probably, maybe, I mean, again, well, so, so I say probably maybe and you groan and I'll, I'll, I'll put out, I'll, you know, it's, it's the, the el the elephant in the room, right?
AFC was supposed to be out when I was at a different job when there was no pandemic. Okay. And people can talk to me and say, no, no, that's not true. I was driving in my car in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, listening to a podcast by the Clear to Send folks talking about AFCs impending release. Okay. I was not wearing a mask.
I didn't have to get shots to go to work. There was no pandemic. Okay. That was like three years ago. It's still not out. It's already slipped again in 2023. So I say that because I. It, it's a moving target, right? There is no like guarantee that on September 1st, 2023, the FCC and all, everybody else is gonna be happy and agree to everything and all of it's gonna come out.
And Wi-Fi 7 is gonna be a thing and the balloons are gonna fall out from the heavens. It doesn't matter. There's no guarantee. We're all assuming, but you know what they say when you assume. And so we've got the history and, and again, so AFC is still not a thing, right? So it, it's sort of the point I I, well it's, I'm a little bit all over and I apologize, but.
People have bought 6E outdoor APs. The few that are were made, we, and we as RUCKUS don't have an outdoor purpose-built solution. We, our play is to put it in a box when AFC comes out, that's neither here nor there because I think by the time AFC becomes a thing, they'll be a Wi-Fi 7 outdoor AP from everybody.
But you've got people that have bought Wi-Fi 6E outdoor APs, that today, I mean, they might have bought 'em last year. They still can't use them. I mean, they can be outdoor, but you can't use 6E, you cannot use the 6 GHz spectrum outdoors because it hasn't happened yet. But they bought it with the expectation that it would eventually happen and they'd be able to use it because of that 6 GHz spectrum, which is the best thing, really the only thing worth anything for 6E.
But I think if you're at this point, and you can wait and you know, you're not gonna lose the budget, wait for 7 in that case. But if you know you're gonna lose the budget and you can get your hands on 6E APs and you desperately need them right now, like you've got a greenfield deployment, it's going live in a month, go 6E, you're not gonna get 7 in time.
It's just the reality of it. And there's a couple, so there's the, the one on the client thing I wanna touch again, and then I'm gonna go someplace where you, you would not expect me to go here, but I mentioned clients. And there's an, the, the other elephant in the room, the iPhone. Okay. Everybody likes Android, all the other stuff.
Apple is one of the biggest handset suppliers in the world. They didn't put 6E in the iPhone last fall. Okay? This fall we expect Wi-Fi 7 to be a thing, right? You're already, like you said, CES already has Wi-Fi 7 APs coming out, right? You know, home routers and things like that. You've seen some, some interesting devices coming out of APAC.
What's Apple going to do? They put 6E in the iPad. They've put 6E in, I believe a MacBook. Are they gonna do 6E in the iPhone and then like a day later it's gonna be Wi-Fi 7 announced? Were they gonna be some, be, be way, way ahead of the curve? And, and go Wi-Fi 7 this year? I don't know. Because I remember leading up to their announcement, there were a lot of people on the, you quote unquote in the know that fully expected that iPhone to be Wi-Fi 6E last year.
So that's gonna be something worth watching. I honestly wouldn't make my network decisions based on that, but I think there are people that are watching And I'm gonna flip gears completely away from clients and then I'm gonna let you have the mic back. But, so this is the un unexpected thing out of my mouth, so, so I hope you're sitting down Jim.
But with 6E and 7, the APs get a third radio because of the 6 GHz spectrum, they need more power. So it's not just an AP refresh anymore for two reasons. I mean, one, the one obvious thing is you're going to have to redesign your network. This is not a rip and replace. Generally speaking, 6 GHz covers less than 5, covers less than 2.4.
If you're doing a rip and replace, you're going to have coverage gaps on the 6 GHz spectrum, so you're gonna have to redesign it, you're going to have to add more APs. That's not a sales pitch, that's just the reality, but you need more power. Which means you're not gonna be able to just plug them all into the same old switches.
You're probably going to need new ones and I hate switches, but it's, it's, the reality is it's potentially one of the more complicated upgrades. Not many complicated, but more involved upgrades. It's not as simple as just plugging in 10 APs to replace 10 APs because those 10 APs that you're replacing the new 6E or 7 APs, they could jack up your power budget significantly.
Jim Palmer: Well, hopefully, and I'm not surprised that you went there.
John Deegan: I have, I have fresh scars.
Jim Palmer: I I'm hoping that people have been listening to us for a long time. Because this is a common inside joke within Wi-Fi people that we don't look at switches as switches anymore. Switches are not, you know, switches are not the networking thing for Wi-Fi people.
Switches are a 24 port power outlet. That's it.
John Deegan: That's true.
Jim Palmer: So hopefully you, hopefully you've been listening to the smart people in the Wi-Fi world for the past few years. You know, when Wi-Fi 6 came out. Cause we've always heard this thing about M gig. M gig, M gig, M gig and yes, we might actually be the point now where you are probably going to need, especially with that third radio, and whether it's 6E or 7, you're going to need to have more than one gigabit per second on your uplink from your AP to your switch, you're going to need.
Are you gonna need 10 per port? Probably not. I wanna, you want it? Are you going to need five? You know what? Because here's the thing. You go down, you go 2.5 and it's like, do you really wanna be, you know, that close to it? Because W RUCKUS has some numbers that I've seen that I'm actually going to be sharing.
And so I'll share here a few hours before I share it on, on, on Mobility Field Day, we have some numbers where we, we call 'em good put, which is we, we have the theoretical maximum of Wi-Fi 7, which you know, is like 46 gigabits per second. So, Which is never, never, never, never gonna happen. Just simply because of the, the requirements to get there.
We know, we all know that, but when you take a look at the possibility or what we call the good put of potential throughput of where we go, Hey, you know, we might be there, we are finally actually getting to that point where the maximum speed with just one spatial stream client is over 2.5 gigabits per second.
So do you need 10? Probably not. Do you need five? Ooh. Now you might need that. So hopefully you've been listening to these because everybody's talked about that, but you know, it's like, oh, speed, speed, speed. But if you talk to the people in the know, they'll look at a switch as a a 24 port or a 48 port power outlet.
You know, like a, a big massive power strip you put in your garage to plug all your, your tools into. You've been, you've been paying attention to the fact that you are going to need more than 30 watts per port. So AT is just not going to cut it anymore. And the bigger thing that you have to look at, and to your point with designing these new networks, is it's not just power per port, it's power per switch.
What is the overall switch budget? That's where, you know, if you go back a few episodes, when we talked about the 8200, that's why the 8200 is was built the way it was, was to help improve that overall switch PoE budget, because that's what we really need. That's the part that we are concerned about, is it's not just, hey, I can do, you know, PoH and the RUCKUS proprietary power stuff where you can get 90 watts per port.
So, And you've been able to get that on a 7150 or one of the older, you know, the, the original ICX switches, that's always been there, but it's all about, hey, how many APs can I run at 45 watts or 60 watts per port? And on the overall switch budget, you're looking at it and you're like, oh, I can run two or three APs and then I'm completely out of PoE.
I can't run my PoE phones, I can't run my PoE cameras. You can't run all this. So hopefully people have been listening to us and paying attention for the past few years when we say, do you need M gig? No, it's nice. But what you need is you need power. You need that additional power. And so that I think is a very good point when you start talking about, you know, the overall part of 6E or 7. But the thing is, is it doesn't matter in the 6E or 7 debate, you're, both of 'em are still tri radio. Which then brings us to the next thing that we heard at a presentation at WLPC is how do your APs downgrade when they don't get the required budget? So understanding that then becomes an issue of, hey, do I, do I cut down radio chains?
Do I cut down my IoT, you know, does my USB port on the AP turn off? And it's something that I've been trying to work with on, with the AP guys with RUCKUS is to understand better and put it on the spec sheet. And we, you and I have gone over both of those, you know those, those spec sheets where we look at it when we say, and they're doing a good job of, hey, if you don't get, if you get, if you get full power, then you get full functionality, that's easy.
But what happens if you only get the 30 watts of AT, 802.3at power and you get 30 watts? What does that mean at that point? And they've been able, they've been doing a good job of documenting that. So as the designer, as the architect of the network, when you start looking at it and you go, oh, my switches, I'm, I'm only, you know, in order to get the number of switches per, or APs per switch that I need, you know, and this is what my switch can support, can I go back and, you know, and then what do I lose?
Maybe I lose IoT radios, which is fine because I'm not using IoT. You know, again, it's that it depends. But I'm going to go back while I still have the microphone in our, in our debate here and talk about the iPhone.
You held it up too fast. I don't know how much time I have, so I got three minutes.
I don't believe that we're going to see an iPhone with 6 GHz this year.
I think they wait.
John Deegan: It's gonna be interesting to see because I, I, I don't think, and Apple's done it sometimes where they've gone and, and done something completely on the one hand, crazy and unexpected, but at the same point in time, like totally Apple, like getting rid of the optical drive before everybody else did, and everybody thought they were crazy.
Now tell me when that was the last time you saw an optical drive and a laptop. They don't exist anymore. Yes. Right. So they were a little bit ahead of the curve on that. Although everybody liked to give 'em a whole lot of grief because then you had to carry the dongles and the adapters and the external drives and whatever.
So on the one hand, it wouldn't necessarily shock me to see them go Wi-Fi 7. But the big thing there is Wi-Fi 7 would have, they would have to know with utmost confidence by, well, they would've already had to know, honestly as they're manufacturing these devices, cuz they probably already started.
They'd have to know with confidence that Wi-Fi 7 would be approved and out in that like October, November timeframe. Cuz the phone usually drops in October and they announce it in like September. So if they haven't gotten that confidence from the the regulatory bodies, it's not gonna happen. But I do think they're gonna go 6E and, and only because like months after the fact, they went 6E on the iPad and it's in their laptop.
I think that's, it's inevitable that they'll at least go 6E because at the end of the day, it's the beauty part with, with 6E and with 7, I don't wanna say there's no wrong answer. I know, I, I kind of agree with your point from before, but if you go 6E. Your clients are gonna work on 6E and then when you go 7, the 6E clients are gonna work on 7 two.
So there's nothing wrong if, if you can only, and I'm using air quotes that nobody else can see. If I'm only being able to put in 6E, it's better than nothing. Right? If. Again, back to the budget. If you know you can wait until 7 is actually out and you're not gonna cost yourself to lose any budget and you're not gonna hurt any of your projects, then wait.
Because we know we're on the cusp of a 7 becoming readily available. But at the same point in time, if you can't wait and or you're gonna lose budget, go for 6E because it's out now. You can get it now. They're shipping now. I just got a box of them at my house the other day. They work fine, they're supported.
It's not like you're, I mean, you're literally not losing that much in the life cycle, right? 6E is gonna work with 7. Yeah, there's gonna be some stuff that's gonna come out that's gonna be 7 specific. There always is. But you know, looking back at the grand scheme of things from a throughput and technology perspective, like Wi-Fi 5 and Wi-Fi 6, clients still work perfectly fine.
Jim Palmer: The last thing I'll say is 6E is no longer burn bleeding edge.
John Deegan: No.
Jim Palmer: So for people who are concerned about that, yep. And our time is up. 6E is,
John Deegan: You can finish.
Jim Palmer: But 6E is not bleeding edge anymore. It was a year ago, and so my stance would be a little different. Six E is not bleeding edge anymore.
So for people who need stability, have the budget and have to go this year. You go 6E, you go, you go the 6E AP. If you can wait, like you pointed out this, we will agree on, then you wait until Wi-Fi 7. If it's not going to mess up your refresh cycles, if it's not gonna mess up your budgeting and your money stuff, then then you wait.
But I think, I think the biggest, the biggest changing factor at this point is the fact that 6E is not bleeding edge.
John Deegan: Yeah, I agree. I agree.
Jim Palmer: We.
John Deegan: There's no limiting factor from a technical perspective. It doesn't scare me to say go 6E.
Jim Palmer: Nope. Not anymore.
John Deegan: It's, it's purely a, what can you get away with perspec tive you know, opinion at this point.
You know, you know, if you're, if your bean counters are making you spend money and it's gotta be spent before 7 is available, well, they made your decision for you, but you're not gonna, I mean, I mean, we haven't seen everything that's gonna be in 7, and I certainly don't know everything that's gonna be in 7.
But there's always gonna be something better, whether it's 7 or 8 or 9 or whatever else they cook up. There's always gonna be something else better. It's the same thing with, with all tech and all, you know, cars like, oh, I want to get that car. I need a car now. And then the day after you buy that car and you're like, I love this car.
Then the next day they announce the new thing. So you can't have that buyer's remorse. If you need it, go get it. If you can wait, wait. But I think it'll serve him well no matter what.
Jim Palmer: All right. Timer beeped.
John Deegan: Timer beep.
Jim Palmer: We need to, we have to respect the timer a little bit. Maybe we,
John Deegan: I ring the bell. So, so let's wrap,
let's,
Jim Palmer: and with that,
John Deegan: I stole that from my other show.
So closing thoughts. Anything you wanna, you say before we send it home?
Jim Palmer: Tune in to Mobility Field day later today. And if you are watching other people and you don't hear this till later, then go find the recording. Oh, go find a recording in a week from now. And if you happen to be, I will be in Sunnyvale next week, so if you happen to be there and come find me, yeah,
John Deegan: Maybe you'll actually have some stickers.
Jim Palmer: I might, yes.
John Deegan: All right. I've got nothing else. I think we had a good one. It was nice and and rapid fire. Hopefully everybody liked it. If you did come find us on Twitter and, and tell us. And if you don't find us on Twitter, don't tell us. All right. I got nothing else, Mr. Palmer. If that's all it is, I'm gonna hit the music and I'm gonna say, have a good one and see you in a couple weeks.
Jim Palmer: Have a good one, man.
John Deegan: Take it easy.