Network specialist Netgear has announced in a support document that Windows 10 will not support the new, faster Wi-Fi 7 standard, confirming previous reports.

The Netgear support document in question is about Wi-Fi over the 6 GHz band. This was introduced with the Wi-Fi 6E standard and is also mandatory for Wi-Fi 7. According to Netgear, in order to use the 6 GHz band, a PC must have a compatible network adapter with the latest drivers and also use the latest version of Windows 11.

In this context, Netgear stresses that Microsoft has indicated that it will not backport 6 GHz support to Windows 10. So even if you have a 6 GHz-capable network adapter installed in your computer, if your PC is using Windows 10, you will not be able to use 6 GHz Wi-Fi until you upgrade to Windows 11.

In other words, since Windows 10 doesn’t support the 6 GHz frequency band, but 6 GHz is mandatory for Wi-Fi 7, Windows 10 can’t handle Wi-Fi 7.

Wi-Fi 7 (officially referred to as “802.11be Extremely High Throughput EHT”) promises significantly more bandwidth than Wi-Fi 6E, theoretically up to 46 Gbit/s instead of the 9.6 Gbit/s. The main innovation that Wi-Fi 6E brought was the use of the 6 GHz band for WLAN communication as a supplement to the 2.4 and 5 GHz frequency bands previously used.

Further reading: Wi-Fi 7: A deep-dive into the blistering new wireless standard

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This article was translated from German to English and originally appeared on pcwelt.de.

Author: Hans-Christian Dirscherl, Redakteur

Hans-Christian Dirscherl schreibt seit über 20 Jahren zu fast allen IT-Themen. Sein Fokus liegt auf der Koordination und Produktion von Nachrichten mit hohem Nutzwert sowie auf ausführlichen Tests und Ratgebern für die Bereiche Smart Home, Smart Garden und Automotive.

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