Wi-Fi 8 is the marketing name for IEEE 802.11bn, the amendment being developed under the working title Ultra High Reliability (UHR). It is the first Wi-Fi generation in roughly thirty years that does not lead with a bigger headline speed number. That single fact explains almost everything else about it — the feature set, the silicon marketing, and the confusion among buyers who assume every new generation is a throughput upgrade.

Every indoor WiFi deployment contends with the same physics: concrete pillars block signal, metal file cabinets create shadows, thick structural walls force users to connect at degraded rates from around corners. The engineering response to date has been to add more access points, reducing the distance from every point to the nearest AP until the obstructions no longer matter. Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces propose a different response: change the environment itself.

WiFi 8 is not a product yet. IEEE 802.11bn, the standard that will become WiFi 8, is in active development with a projected completion date around 2027 and Wi-Fi Alliance certification programs expected in 2028. But the architecture it is building toward represents a more fundamental shift in how WiFi works than any generation since OFDM replaced DSSS in 2001. The defining technology is Multi-AP Coordination, and understanding it requires a brief re-examination of how all previous WiFi generations treated the problem of multiple access points.