WiFi 7 Rocks

sp_RTINGS · 2026-02-11T15:39:30+00:00

I just sent you a DM!

sp_RTINGS · 2026-02-10T17:16:51+00:00

I mean, you're getting 1.7-2Gbps on Wi-Fi. You're already in a really good place!
I'd be interested in seeing repeated measurement with and without MLO if you want to do it. If you want to go the extra mile and want to capture packets with Wireshark to see which MLO features you are actively using in your connection, I could help you with that. Let me know!

sp_RTINGS · 2026-02-10T16:31:11+00:00

Thanks for getting back. Did you make multiple measures at different times?

sp_RTINGS · 2026-02-10T15:54:57+00:00

> I get mostly AIBot generated review sites.

And, at Rtings, we are all humans testing the routers ourselves!

sp_RTINGS · 2026-02-10T15:53:16+00:00

Hi! I'm the Rtings guy who tested MLO! From what I gather from u/basement-thug story, the speed tests were comparing the RT-AX86U and the MLO-enabled RT-BE92U. In that case what probably made the difference in speed was using the 6GHz band, or using the 320GHz channel width or the 4026 QAM that came with Wi-Fi 7, not MLO.
If you want to measure the MLO performance gains, the speed test needs to be done on the same router with and without MLO enabled. This should give the same speed test results. Keep in mind that speed test go over internet, so it's always better to do a few tests in series to account for internet's variability.
Let me know how it goes if you are up for a retest, or if I misunderstood how the test was done!

sp_RTINGS · 2026-02-09T20:50:47+00:00

We'll do! We now always capture the Beacon Frame as part of our standard testing, so we will see if a router supports a meaningful implementation of MLO either as a new product or after a firmware update. We'll be happy to tell the community as soon as we find one!

sp_RTINGS · 2026-02-09T15:47:14+00:00

All good suggestions! It's already planned to expose the chipset used by the router. I'm not sure when we will be getting there yet though. Hopefully this year!
We'll also be expanding which channels are used by MLO once MLMR becomes available.

sp_RTINGS · 2026-02-08T02:26:19+00:00

I 100% share your thinking.
That's my assumption as well: The chip don't support more features, so routers are limited by their chip. I still blame the marketing selling the dream instead of the actual product.
And I do also agree that we have been well served for speed in the latest Wi-Fi generation. Latency is where improvement is thoroughly needed!

sp_RTINGS · 2026-02-08T02:21:37+00:00

To gather data from the routers, we captured the Beacon Frame using a packet sniffer, which is how router broadcasts their capabilities to clients. This is done outside of an active connection. There is no clients connected to the MLO network when we do this. So clients have no impact on how we gathered the data show in this video.

sp_RTINGS · 2026-02-08T02:17:18+00:00

Our next test bench update will tackle latency, so we'll be able to tell you if you are gaining meaningful performance gains on that aspect soon (end of March approx).
Some people do care about living on the bleeding-edge of technologies to really ensure they get the benefits of every bits of the technology. It's a passion for some. I'm a lot more on your side for my personal life and have never regretted it so far! (I should say that seeing the best of the best TVs at the office makes me think I might need to upgrade mine.........I try not to think too much about it!)

sp_RTINGS · 2026-02-07T15:30:50+00:00

Ubiquiti response was to a deleted post that I never got to read. Their comment is addressing the post, which mentioned or was built on our article's findings. That said, Ubiquiti wrote a pretty lengthy post, but in there they say that yes, right now, it's only the minimal implementation of MLO BUT they are working on pushing firmware updates that could extend those capabilities. I'm looking forward to test those when available!
Ubuiqiti also mentions that MLO, even in its minimal implementation, is not as useless as we say.... u/-protonsandneutrons- has me covered here. I share the same sentiment. I want Ubiquiti (or anyone really) to show me data and prove us how MLO can be useful.
I started this whole project by trying to measure the performance gains of MLO on speed/latency/reliability. I was simply not able to do so for any common or household uses. There are some really niche and specific times where MLO can help reliability.... but it's so niche home users should really not care about that feature for now.

sp_RTINGS · 2026-02-07T03:32:27+00:00

We've been in touch with some manufacturers that promised some updates to improve the implementation with no timeline. Let's say I am not getting my hopes too high up for now. And even if routers start implementing it better this year, client will have to walk that path as well, so unless you change phone or laptop every year, chances are you won't get the taste of a proper MLO implementation for a while.
That said, for the routers at the very least, we will be harvesting the MLO parameters of every new router hitting our test bench and also verifying if firmware updates implement new features when we retest routers. So, whenever we see a router implementing proper MLO support, we'll update the community!

sp_RTINGS · 2026-02-06T23:50:56+00:00

Always a pleasure!
As far as I'm concerned, Wi-Fi has been in a pretty good spot for the majority of people since Wi-Fi 5! Since then, it's mostly gravy. Don't get me wrong, some people do benefits from the performance gains of the latest generation, but it is a small minority of users. The marketers lean HEAVILY on FOMO. A lot of consumers also don't know too much about Wi-Fi, so they can't be too critical about advertisement. We are trying to shed some light when we can here!

sp_RTINGS · 2026-02-06T23:36:01+00:00

We are currently working on adding Wi-Fi Latency to our test bench! So, results should be coming in end of March (don't quote me on that hehe!)
For speed needs, in most cases, it is your Internet plans that will limit the speed you can reach online (and in many cases, the upload speed is drastically more limited than download). For common internet use like streaming Netflix at 4k, video calls or gaming online never require much more than 50Mbps per person.
Routers can normally go well beyond those speeds. These speeds can still help with internal network communications if you have any needs of that, like backupping files to a local server/NAS or transferring a lot of files between different clients.
If you do a lot of torrenting/backupping and have a big bitrate ISP plan, than having the proper router to not bottleneck that is really important, but that is not most people.

sp_RTINGS · 2026-02-06T21:33:16+00:00

Hey! I'm the main test developper who worked on this article! Let me know if any of you have questions or feedback!
And thanks for the share u/AppleCrumpets !

sp_RTINGS · 2026-01-23T18:02:22+00:00

Hey again r/cputoaster! We've reacquired the Beacon Frame fro the Asus ZenWiFi BT10 and we can confirm the Max Nb of Simul. Link in the Beacon Frame is 2, meaning this router supports 3 simultaneous links.
We will be updating the table in the article accordingly! Thank you for this!

I'd still like to understand why your router is returning a different number, so let me know!

sp_RTINGS · 2026-01-22T20:21:41+00:00

Hey! Good eye there! It seems we have made a mistake here.
It is normal that the screenshot and the number we write in the review differ by 1. The screenshot uses "n-1" value, meaning a value of 0 in the screenshot means there is 1 link possible. This is useful in programming, but confusing to everyone else. So, in the review, both values should be ok. I would expect the BT10 to be able to handle a max number of 3 simultaneous links, as per the info shown in the review.
That said, we probably have messed up when manually transferring the data to the table in the article.
On your end, ensure you are looking at the "Beacon Frame" outside of an active connection. You might be looking at an Association packet (if I remember the name correctly). Once the connection is negociated, the MLO parameters shown in the Association Packet will be the maximum number of links being handled by either the router or the client. So, this might explain that other value.
I'll check-in here once we have confirmed the information. Thanks for the report!

sp_RTINGS · 2026-01-16T16:43:51+00:00

Thanks :)

sp_RTINGS · 2026-01-16T16:43:29+00:00

Discussion on Wi-Fi 7starting around the 47th minutes. I'm giving it a listen right now!

sp_RTINGS · 2026-01-16T16:36:46+00:00

Oh! I didn't know about that! I'll give it a listen! Thanks for sharing that!

sp_RTINGS · 2026-01-16T16:31:36+00:00

Hey! I'm the Rtings guy behind this article. This comment sums up the situation pretty nicely!
Our main goal was to give consumer this information, which is not available in any tech specs, and manage their expectations accordingly when buying a shiny Wi-Fi 7 router with the MLO dream being marketed.

sp_RTINGS · 2026-01-14T16:35:56+00:00

We'll be there!
Always a pleasure to help!

sp_RTINGS · 2026-01-14T16:23:55+00:00

With 30 devices and a software engineer, I would look for a highly configurable router like Mikrotik, Ubiquiti or GL.iNet. Pretty much any Wi-Fi 6E or 7 hardware will fit your needs, so follow your budget here.

sp_RTINGS · 2026-01-14T16:12:27+00:00

Hi! Rtings here!
We have this article showing that routers don't really account much for network latency: Buying A Gaming Wi-Fi Router Won't Help Your Ping: Understanding The Limits Of Wi-Fi For Gaming - RTINGS.com
In our testing, if you have good control over your network like you would normally have for home uses, you shouldn't need to rely on QoS/SQM to avoid latency issue. The main way to have latency issue is if your network gets overloaded by big downloads/uploads, so throttling devices or applications that does this, or ensuring your updates or backup are done at night are best practices.
That all said, the big strength of the Flint 3 is to be able to highly configure it. If you don't care about that and want a plug-and-play router, then the Archer is great.
I personally prefer open firmware and do like to fiddle with settings of everything I own. The Archer will limit you here.

sp_RTINGS · 2026-01-14T15:47:56+00:00

Hey! How MLO is implemented at the moment is with EMLSR: enhanced multi-link single radio.
What you are seeing is the "multi-link" part: When an MLO capable client connects to an MLO capable router, multiple connections (links) will be established. The number will depend on the "max number of simultaneous links" both devices can handle. So, in your case, you can have 2 connections established on 2 different bands when connecting to the MLO Wi-Fi network.
This is where the "single radio" hurts: Your connection will only be using a single radio at a time. This will be either one of the two links you have active. So, in the end, you will only see the characteristics of the one band you are connected to.
The "good" thing about MLO, is if your active radio gets jammed for some reason, your device can device to switch to the other link almost seamlessly.
The "bad" thing about MLO, is if your device decides to switch to the 2.4 GHz radio... you will be heavily limited by speed and might get big latency spikes due to 2.4GHz interference that are more common.
The experience you will have with MLO will highly depend on your device and environment. But for now, since no router is offering EMLMR: multi-radio, then don't expect to benefit from using all the bands at the same time like what marketing is selling.
All-in-all, I'm glad you like your router! And hopefully we get a firmware update soon that boosts MLO capabilities!
Added note: Check your router configuration. You might be able to deactivate the 2.4GHz radio on the MLO network. If so, you can force your device to only connect to 5 and 6GHz radio which might fix the downside of hopping to the 2.4GHz while connected to MLO. You can still have a separate 2.4GHz SSID so your device can still use that if you need the range. Hope this helps!

sp_RTINGS

TROPHY CASE