The mechanics behind the headlines
The generations comparator lab quantifies the jump from Wi-Fi 4 to 7; this plate shows the machinery. A single Wi-Fi 7 connection exercises each headline feature in turn: EHT discovery and a 320 MHz channel on 6 GHz, a Multi-Link association that treats two bands as one connection, 4096-QAM on a clean link, preamble puncturing that keeps a wide channel alive around a noisy sub-block, and restricted TWT that reserves protected airtime for real-time traffic.
It is also honest about the limits. 4096-QAM needs roughly 40 dB of SNR and steps down to 1024-QAM a few decibels later — so it appears only very close to the AP. And a Wi-Fi 6 client on the same network simply associates single-link with none of the new features. The two failure scenarios make those realities concrete: a clean rate step-down, and graceful legacy coexistence.