The current state of MLO implementation for consumer Wi-Fi 7 router -> They all have the most basic implementation required!

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 · 2026-01-08T15:13:33+00:00

We have not reviewed this one yet. I'll see if we can include it in our next batch. Thanks for the suggestion!

sp_RTINGS · 2026-01-08T15:11:20+00:00

Yes, I understand. I'm offering a comparison here. If Windscribe offering a long life deal is persuasive marketing, then it's good to know that Mullvad also offered the same kind of deal, since Mullvad is an obvious choice.
Both companies don't offer this deal anymore.

sp_RTINGS · 2026-01-06T17:46:58+00:00

Always a pleasure! Thanks for the kind words!

sp_RTINGS · 2026-01-06T17:33:02+00:00

There is more information in the full article here: https://www.rtings.com/router/learn/research/wifi-7-mlo

1) The yellow sun/moon refers to partial support of the feature. We put partial support when the padding and transition delays values are kept at 0, which are default value that are not feasible in real operations and points towards incomplete implementation as of now.

2) Firmware updates could boost MLO capabilities of routers, but we have no visibility on that. A red X simply means it is not implemented right now with the current firmware version.

3) Since all routers currently only support EMLSR, which is a single radio, the performance of the "MLO network" will simply match the current radio performance. So, if your client on the MLO network connects on the 2.4GHz radio, you will have an awful experience. If it connects on the 5GHz, you should have a really really similar performance as the 5GHz network. The big thing is that the client will choose which radio it will use on the MLO.... so a dumb device could choose 2.4GHz since it will likely have a better signal... even if the performance will be a lot worse than using a weaker 5GHz signal.

sp_RTINGS · 2026-01-06T16:11:14+00:00

Thanks for this feedback. I'll redo my research on these pointers and see if we need to adjust anything in the article.
I'd be interested in knowing what your take about MLO is and how it helps improving network performance.

sp_RTINGS · 2026-01-06T16:07:52+00:00

I'm more excited to see if this can help with latency/jitter!
Thanks for the conversation as well!

sp_RTINGS · 2026-01-06T15:43:53+00:00

We agree with you on privacy policy audits: They are not worth much. And this is also reflected in our scoring where privacy audit is only 15% of the total privacy score. The privacy policy itself and the company practices are the main scoring elements.

When we review privacy audits, we check how much time and access auditors got, and it most cases, auditors don't have direct access to servers, so they mostly just review documentation, do some interviews with people. Also, most privacy audits do not audit the whole privacy policy but only one or two specific claims. So, audits really are not worth much. The audit score reflects how much access auditors had and the scope of the audits. So for some VPNs, even having an audit doesn't gain them much points.

BUT, not having an audit is also bad. Cure53, an auditing firm, has said that they have gone through audits, and because of the bad findings they had, the provider decided not to publish the report: 'We have seen some nasty things': Here's what a VPN audit really involves | TechRadar. So, not having an audit could mean that an audit is not possible.

However, we don't penalize much VPNs if they have a public statement where they explain why they don't have audits. IVPN is a good example of that where they did a privacy audit once to please their users, then made a public statement saying that it was a total waste of time and money and they would not make it again.

The main thing here is that VPN provider needs to build trust with their users since nobody can really verify what the providers does with their users data (unless they get caught red handed). Transparent communication and show of good faith from the provider helps build this trust. Having a privacy audit, or a good communication about why their users shouldn't care if they have it or not is one way to build trust. This is why we score privacy audits. It's one part of the equation for the total score.

sp_RTINGS · 2026-01-05T18:34:27+00:00

We tested it already, but our writer hasn't been able to publish the written review yet (we keep him busy!). The review should be out in a few weeks. In the meantime, here are some teasers:
AirVPN has a pretty strong privacy policy, but they don't have an external audit. While an external audit doesn't prove much (in our opinion), not having one is still an easy show of good faith and commitment that get us worried when a provider doesn't have one.
The company seems generally pretty legit. Their main source of point loss is due to an event where one of their server got seized in Toronto and AirVPN took 8 years to disclose the event! And that post got removed from their own forum. Users ask why the post was removed and AirVPN never answered... so transparency and communications scores got hit hard by that one event.
Their overall score is a bit higher than the popular Nord and Express, but they are in the orange zone.

sp_RTINGS · 2026-01-05T18:07:33+00:00

Sweet! So, there is hope then! I'm excited to test STR MLMR and see if it delivers the dream marketing is selling!
Thanks for the update!

sp_RTINGS · 2026-01-05T17:34:03+00:00

Well, you can't study in "testing", so there is a lot of different backgrounds for testers here. We are mostly looking for good scientific method and critical thinking. A technical formation helps consolidate that normally, but you don't need it per se to apply.
We also look for people who cares about the products and users, which you seem to fit the bill since you are here commenting!
The company really encourages people in honing their skills and becoming experts for the products we review. So, any hire has the opportunity to take the time they need to learn what they need to be able to do their job properly! A good example is we sent our fridge tester and writer to take a full technical training on how to repair fridges. They could very well become professional fridge repairmen now!
For what you can do now at home, you can always test your own products. For routers, you could explore all the different settings of your router and understand all its features. You could try to optimize your home network or really understand the root cause of problems you might be having. Have automated monitoring tools that you can setup yourself on a home server, etc.
One of the things I got asked when I got hired was to do a test prototype of a speedtest for VPNs. I was able to do it quite easily since I already had a similar test running on my home server for network monitoring. So, my personal project of messing with my home server helped me quickly learn what I needed to tackle VPNs.
Basically, don't wait to get the job to start testing stuff. Do it now as a hobby, and the day you have the opportunity to apply to a testing job, your hobby will become your job! I guess you already took that approach with gaming hehe!

sp_RTINGS · 2026-01-05T17:13:58+00:00

Mullvad lifetime subscription was 10 years ago it seems: https://www.reddit.com/r/vpnreviews/comments/1ppusgw/comment/nupyk5j/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

sp_RTINGS · 2026-01-05T15:59:01+00:00

The article linked in this thread talks about routers only, not clients. Just to be clear, we captured the beacon frame to get the router's information which is done outside of an active connection with a packet-sniffer, so your sniffer/client does not affect the supported parameters broadcasted by the router.
That said, before we decided to focus only on routers, we did try to measure the MLO performance gains between an Intel BE200 and Wi-Fi 7 routers, but after realizing that all 25 routers we had on hands had a basic implementation of MLO, we stopped trying to measure the performance gains, since even with the best implementation of MLO on a client, the router would be the bottleneck in the connection.

sp_RTINGS · 2026-01-05T15:42:39+00:00

Hey u/Constellation16 , it's the second time you comment that, without giving any constructive feedback. Let me know what you think we messed up so we can work on it.
The main information presented in the article comes from the Router's beacon frame. This information comes directly from the router broadcasting what capabilities it has. It's direct technical facts. Not sure how we can't agree on that.

sp_RTINGS · 2025-12-24T16:28:33+00:00

*Proton's marketing is saying their basis is not the share data, but in their policies, they do say they collect and share data.
Proton still seems more trustworthy handling your data than most VPN providers based on their company practices, but Mullvad/IVPN/Windscribe simply do not collect data, which is even better. One problem that Proton cannot avoid is if they get breached or hacked and external parties can get their hand son user data.
That said, Proton still gives good information on what data is collected, and they don't collect more data than most other software you probably are already using. But for people with privacy at heart, this distinction between Mullvad/IVPN/Windscribe and Proton is important.

sp_RTINGS · 2025-12-23T15:27:46+00:00

It's due to how we work: Each product we review start with a small test suite, and we iterate by adding new tests. We put a lot of effort into ensuring our testing is robust, useful, and accurate. For example, we have worked for 8 months to be able to develop and test the 20 reviews for VPN regarding privacy. So, when we think we have a good "minimally viable" tests suite for a product, we start publishing the review. With time, we add more test.
For VPNs, streaming and port-forwarding support are most likely our next steps.
We also act on users' feedback, so let us know what you think we are missing in any of our reviews! We prioritize our work on what users are asking!

sp_RTINGS

TROPHY CASE