If you are at all serious about playing games competitively online, chances are you've been told that a wired Internet connection is the way to go. The main reason comes down to the increased latency and potential packet loss that comes with Wi-Fi connections. Now, thanks to the efforts of Valve, AMD, Qualcomm, and a few other companies, Wi-Fi might just be a very viable alternative.
These companies have worked together to create a new technology called Wi-Fi Dual Station and is apparently coming soon to Windows 11. Wi-Fi Dual Station looks to combine both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz (or 6GHz if available) bands to improve latency beyond simply utilizing just one band at a time. This would, according to these companies, improve latency for games and other software that need fast and reliable connections.
This tech makes its debut in Windows 11. However, given the current state of that operating system, I strongly urge users not to "upgrade" to Windows 11 for quite some time still. Valve has already added initial support for Wi-Fi Dual Station to the Steamworks SDK.
Right now, games like Dota 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive should be some of the first titles to benefit from this new technology. Really, the first games that will benefit are any titles that make use of the Steamworks SDK for their networking solution.
"We’re seeing considerable reductions in jitter and packet loss with Wi-Fi Dual Station enabled, especially when the AP is heavily loaded," said Fletcher Dunn at Valve. "This is important for any online title, and especially beneficial for competitive online titles such as CS:GO and Dota 2. Games using the Steamworks SDK for networking will experience these same benefits with no added development time."
Right now, only a few newer laptops support this Qualcomm FastConnect tech. Acer's latest laptops mostly include FastConnect 6900 already. Lenovo says that they will be adding the tech in future products. AMD, in collaboration with Qualcomm, say that they will start to integrate this technology into "enterprise platforms." Intel uses its own Wi-Fi 6 technology and probably won't have support for FastConnect or Wi-Fi Dual Station as a result.
Looks like I'll be sticking with my 50 ft. ethernet cable for a little while longer. I wish I were joking.
