Wi-Fi 7 is a wired upgrade

The access points are the easy part. Switch-port power and port speed decide whether a Wi-Fi 7 rollout actually performs — so before the first AP goes on a ceiling, the question is whether your closet and your cabling can feed it.
CHECK YOUR BUILDING Design the upgrade

What Wi-Fi 7 needs from the closet

Two things decide whether a Wi-Fi 7 AP performs like Wi-Fi 7 or like the network it replaced: the power class of the port it plugs into, and the speed of the cable behind it.

Port power: plan for 802.3bt

PoE class Per port Wi-Fi 7 result
802.3af (PoE) 15W Won't power the AP
802.3at (PoE+) 30W Runs degraded — radios throttle
802.3bt (PoE++) 60–90W Full performance

A Wi-Fi 7 AP on a PoE+ port usually boots — then quietly disables radio chains or drops a band under load. Plan bt-class ports so the AP you paid for is the AP you get.

Uplink speed: 1GbE is the bottleneck

Top Wi-Fi 7 access points move 2–5 Gbps of real, measured traffic — enough to saturate a 1GbE uplink on day one. That figure is tested goodput, not the theoretical PHY rate on the box.

Every AP drop needs a multi-gig path back to the switch — 2.5GbE for wall-plate APs, 10GbE for flagship ceiling units.

Is your building ready?

Answer three questions about what's in the walls and the closet today. No sign-in, no email.

Two ways to get there — neither pulls new cable to every room

Cat5e / Cat6 in the walls

Upgrade the closet, keep the runs

If your horizontal cabling is Cat5e or better, the cable can carry multi-gig — it's the switch behind it that can't. EX-series access switches put 10GbE and bt-class PoE++ on every port, so each existing drop becomes a full-rate Wi-Fi 7 feed.
  • 10GbE PoE++ on every port
  • 24 or 48 ports per switch
  • 25G/40G fiber uplinks
  • Cloud-managed with ReadyView
ReadyLinks EX-48 48-port 10GbE PoE++ switch
Coax or telephone wiring only

Retrofit multi-gig over the wiring you have

Older buildings rarely have Ethernet to every room — but they have coax or phone pair. GL-series switches drive multi-gig over that existing wiring to an in-room IPC client, which powers a Wi-Fi 7 access point over PoE++. Walls stay closed, rooms stay rented.
24.4Gbps
Wi-Fi 7 AP
The IPC-APWF7 ceiling AP pairs with an IPC client for power and multi-gig backhaul — no new cable to the room.
90W
PoE++ out
IPC clients source bt-class PoE++ per LAN port — the AP, the phone, and the camera all power from the one retrofit drop.
ReadyLinks IPC-APWF7 Wi-Fi 7 ceiling access point

Throughput figures are measured goodput reported in vendor testing — not PHY data rates. Power classes per IEEE 802.3af/at/bt.