The next generation of Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi 8, is currently being developed behind closed doors. This time, the emphasis isn’t on pure speed, but instead on improving the user experience. Wi-Fi 8, known right now as IEEE 802.11bn Ultra High Reliability, still remains years away. Wireless technology is in a constant state of improvement: Each progression in the evolution of Wi-Fi takes several years to discuss, approve, and then deploy. Wi-Fi 7, the “current” standard, hasn’t even been formally ratified quite yet. But that’s not stopping the development of Wi-Fi 8 behind the scenes, and we already know some details. MediaTek’s Filogic wireless division has released some of what you can expect, with the caveat that final details won’t be nailed down until the final specification is released around Sept. 2028. The key phrase that you should think of in the context of Wi-Fi 8? Not peak throughput, but effective throughput. Further reading: The 5 most dangerous Wi-Fi attacks, and how to fight them Wi-Fi 8 will look a lot like Wi-Fi 7 According to the Wi-Fi Alliance and MediaTek, the United States isn’t the driving force behind the wireless evolution. Instead, it’s China: The country has 650 million broadband subscribers and more than a quarter have 1Gbps broadband connections to their homes. Overall, the average connection speed is 487.6Mbps, which grew 18 percent in a year’s time. MediaTek Theoretically, 802.11bn / Wi-Fi 8 set out (Word document, via the IEEE) to provide enough wireless bandwidth to accommodate your broadband gateway supplying a few gigabits per second, and factoring in the ability of Ethernet to provide even more. EverythingRF interpreted that 2022 document, known as Project Authorization Request (PAR), as one that would provide a minimum aggregate throughput of 100Gbps. Since then, the PAR was approved in 2023, and the working group has begun hammering out more details. As of Nov. 2024, MediaTek believes that Wi-Fi 8 will look virtually identical to Wi-Fi 7 in several key areas: The maximum physical layer (PHY) rate will be the same at 2,880Mbps x 8, or 23Gbits/s. It will also use the same three frequency bands (2.4, 5, and 6GHz) and the same 4096 QAM modulation across a maximum channel bandwidth of 320MHz. (A Wi-Fi 8 router won’t get 23Gbps of bandwidth, of course. According to MediaTek, the actual peak throughput in a “clean,” or laboratory, environment is just 80 percent or so of the hypothetical peak throughput, and actual, real-world results can be far less.) MediaTek Still, put simply, Wi-Fi 8 should deliver the same wireless bandwidth as Wi-Fi 7, using the same channels and the same modulation. Every Wi-Fi standard has also been backwards-compatible with its predecessors, too. What Wi-Fi 8 will do, though, is change how your client device, such as a PC or a phone, interacts with multiple access points. Think of this as an evolution of how your laptop talks to your home’s networking equipment. Over time, Wi-Fi has evolved from communications between one laptop and a router, across a single channel. Channel hopping routed different clients to different bands. When Wi-Fi 6 was developed, a dedicated 6GHz channel was added, sometimes as a dedicated “backhaul” between your home’s access points. Now, mesh networks are more common, giving your laptop a variety of access points, channels, and frequencies to select between. How Wi-Fi 8 will improve Wi-Fi technology MediaTek sees several opportunities to improve the coordination between access points and devices. (To be fair, we’re identifying these as MediaTek’s efforts, only because we can’t be sure that they’ll eventually be approved by the 802.11bn working group for Wi-Fi 8 as a whole.) Coordinated Spatial Reuse (Co-SR): This technology was first implemented in Wi-Fi 6 as Spatial Reuse. The problem occurred when there was a difference in transmission power between an access point “talking” to a nearby device, and simultaneously communicating with a second access point a great distance away. If the first access point reduced its power to communicate with the nearby device, it couldn’t be “heard” by the access point. Wi-Fi 8’s Co-SR is a “maturation” of the Spatial Reuse technology, and will solve the problem by allowing the access points to talk to one another and coordinate their power output, MediaTek said. “Our preliminary trials show that Co-SR could increase the overall system throughput by 15 percent to 25 percent,” MediaTek says. Congestion: the throughout killer.MediaTek Coordinated Beamforming (Co-BF): There’s a trend here: Taking earlier Wi-Fi technologies and extending them to multiple access points. Spatial nulling was a feature that was launched in 802.11ac (Wi-Fi 5), which allowed the router to basically stop signaling in certain directions. By doing so, the router would send the signals to where they were requested, and avoid jamming devices that didn’t want to talk to the router. This technique attempts to solve a fairly common problem in connected households, or in a public space served by Wi-Fi: two devices that sit very close to one another. Coordinated beamforming allows the access points to talk to one another, figure out which device wants the signal and which doesn’t, and align the mesh access point to “steer” the signal away from the device that isn’t communicating to the network by basically refusing to transmit to the region in which it sits. “The throughput offered by Coordinated Beamforming (Co-BF) in next-generation MediaTek Filogic is significantly enhanced, with increases ranging from 20 percent to 50 percent in a mesh network setup with one Control AP and one Agent AP,” MediaTek said. Dynamic Sub-Channel Operation: You’re probably aware that the latest devices support for the latest wireless standards, like Wi-Fi 7. But certain devices may also have more or improved Wi-Fi antennas that allow them higher throughput. In the past, that information would be passed to the router, and stored there. That wouldn’t be a problem under most conditions. But in a scenario where a number of different devices were downloading the same file, DSO would create a dynamic scenario where a more advanced device would receive a subchannel for downloading the file, faster. The difference between the older approach and Wi-Fi 8’s DSO would be that the access point would be able to decide, “knowing” the capabilities of each device and what they were asking for, and route the data accordingly. Here, MediaTek believes that DSO could push data throughput 80 percent higher than without the technology. A common Wi-Fi scenario: As you move around your home, your wireless data rate adjusts accordingly.MediaTek New data rates: You may not be aware of what’s called the MCS Index, the Modulation Coding Scheme for Wi-Fi. It’s basically a table to help your Wi-Fi router determine what the link speed should be, so that you can actually connect and stream data without errors. If your throughput slows down as you move around your house, that’s in part due to your device and router “deciding” what connection speed your device should stream at. The problem, MediaTek believes, is that the “step” down to slower rates is too profound, and additional gradations should be introduced, such as 16-QAM with a 2/3 coding rate. The idea would not be to introduce sharp drops and increases in throughput as you moved your phone or laptop around the home, but smaller increments. Again, MediaTek believes that these finer MCS divisions can improve overall transmission rates between 5 percent and 30 percent. A change of pace Again, the evolution of Wi-Fi 8 depends on how quickly the standard moves through the regulatory process. Wi-Fi 7 (802.11be) was expected to be approved this past September, and it has not, yet. Sony’s PlayStation 5 may not be approved for India because the country has yet to approve the 6GHz wireless channel that the Wi-Fi 7 standard depends upon. That would hinder Wi-Fi 8, too. The probable roadmap for Wi-Fi standards approval. MediaTek Wireless standards take about six years to develop — and impatient hardware makers rarely wait. As MediaTek notes, Wi-Fi 7 products have shipped since the end of 2023, even though the standard hasn’t been formally approved. In part, that’s because the IEEE committee in charge of the standard rarely makes dramatic changes between the approval of the draft standard and the final standard. For Wi-Fi 8, the first products are expected to be available in early 2028, even as the final approval should be due by the end of that year. It’s worth noting, however, that the race to perpetually higher and higher speeds is pausing, for now, in two different segments of the PC market. CPUs have slowed their rush toward higher clock speeds — at Qualcomm and at Intel — in favor of lower power. With Wi-Fi 8, the emphasis now appears to be on improving the overall user experience first and foremost. Correction: Wi-Fi 8 will use the 2.4GHz frequency band, not the 2 and 4GHz frequency bands. The author sincerely regrets that error. Read...

Thunderbolt 5. The cutting edge of I/O. All of it — monitors, a Thunderbolt 5 dock, and even a Thunderbolt 5 SSD — was perched on my desk. I was pleased, in the way only tech nerds can be when they have a piece of gear few others do. A few days later, I was more than happy to take it apart and return to a slower and more functional Thunderbolt environment. Because I am simply not sure that the Thunderbolt 5 ecosystem is ready for prime time. This isn’t an indictment of Thunderbolt 5, per se. Rather, it’s all about the headaches that can accompany not one, but a multitude of devices, all of which can interact with each other in unexpected ways. Layer on software, drivers, firmware updates, and the like, and it’s tough to point an accusing finger at any one component. This is what testing cutting-edge hardware can mean: struggling with technology that should just work, but doesn’t. Further reading: Best Thunderbolt docks 2024: Extend your laptop’s capabilities Thunderbolt 5: The next generation of I/O Thunderbolt 5 was announced about a year ago, as the next step in the evolution of the Thunderbolt I/O standard. Thunderbolt wasn’t necessarily designed for power users, but the best Thunderbolt 3 and Thunderbolt 4 docks allows users to place a pair of 4K displays on their desk running at 60 Hz. I find this extremely useful for productivity, as I can arrange several windows’ worth of email, chat, calendar, Web browsers, and more on two or more displays. Both Thunderbolt 3 and 4 provide 40Gbps of throughput. Thunderbolt 5 increases that to 80Gbps, and in certain situations up to 120Gbps, too. This extra bandwidth plays right into the gaming and productivity space, as the extra bandwidth supports up to three 4K displays at 144Hz, two 8K displays at 60Hz, or a single 1080p display at 540Hz. (Intel hasn’t nailed down the specifics of these last two resolutions). Intel is also touting the fact that Thunderbolt 5 should be able to power external GPUs, a capability that was passed over in Thunderbolt 4. The problem is that Thunderbolt 5 hardware is in short supply, period. Although some of the earliest Thunderbolt 5 docks were shown off this past January, it’s now October, and about the only dock I’ve seen announced is Kensington’s SD5000T5 EQ, which I went hands-on with a short time ago. There aren’t too many Thunderbolt 5 cables, either. But a hands-on is not a test and I was eager to obtain hardware that I could use to put the Kensington SD5000T5 through its paces: to connect it to three 4K144 displays via a laptop with Thunderbolt 5 connections and, as a bonus, to see if I could find an SSD that could run at Thunderbolt 5 speeds. I wasn’t expecting it to be easy. For whatever reason, devices with Intel’s Thunderbolt 5 host and accessory component (“Barlow Ridge,” or the Intel JHL9580 and JHL9480) have been few and far between. Docks are still scarce, as I said, and only two notebooks to my knowledge ship with a (non-integrated) Thunderbolt 5 controller, a version of the Razer Blade and the Maingear ML-17. Mark Hachman / IDG Luck favored me. The Kensington SD5000T5 remained on my desk, and Maingear agreed to send over an ML-17 for review. A colleague also was in the process of reviewing a pre-release version of OWC’s Envoy Ultra Thunderbolt 5 SSD and agreed to let me test it for a short time in trade for some benchmarking results. Everything seemed to be coming together. Thunderbolt 5 started off poorly, then got worse A few days later, I had cleared the decks of all of my current projects, and sat down to play with the next generation of I/O power. I updated the ML-17 with the necessary Windows updates, Microsoft Store updates, available firmware updates, and so on. Maingear shipped the notebook to me with the Intel Driver & Support Assistant utility updated as well, so I was pretty sure that I had the latest hardware and drivers. The first steps were fairly positive. As most gamers know, gaming notebooks include a hefty power brick terminating in either a barrel charger or the squarish power connector. One of the benefits of Thunderbolt 5, however, is its ability to supply a hypothetical power draw of 240W. Just being able to plug in the gaming notebook into the Thunderbolt 5 dock and power it up without the need for the laptop’s ungainly external power connector left me quite pleased. Well, kind of. I later discovered that the dock would power the laptop on just one of the two Thunderbolt 5 ports, however, and checking it with a USB power meter found that it delivered no more than 87W, even while gaming. Maingear’s Thunderbolt 5 ports aren’t specifically labeled as Thunderbolt 5 ports, just a generic Thunderbolt connection.Mark Hachman / IDG Power delivery of 240W requires explicit support from the laptop, dock, and cable and I wasn’t too surprised that it didn’t meet my expectations. Unfortunately, however, the trend continued. Acer graciously supplied three of its Nitro XV5 (XV275K) 4K displays for a test bed. All three displays run up to 144Hz on the HDMI port and to 160Hz on the USB-C/DisplayPort, which should have been good enough to meet the Thunderbolt 5’s promised to render an image at 144Hz on three 4K displays. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. Maingear’s laptop produced an image on just two of the displays plus the laptop itself. (Thunderbolt 4 docks output to two 4K displays, plus the laptop, so I have no reason to believe my interpretation of “three displays” was incorrect.). While one laptop rendered at 4K 144Hz just fine, it was a real struggle to get the other to do the same at 1440p — it took some unplugging and re-plugging to achieve it just once, slowly. I could not consistently repeat this. (Kensington’s dock supplies three upstream Thunderbolt 5 ports. I used Kensington’s own USB-C to HDMI adapter to connect to one display, plus two uni 4K60 USB-C to DisplayPort cables — which are only rated for 1440p165, not 4K — for the others. I was hoping that three displays would light up. They didn’t). Further reading: Is Thunderbolt 5 storage ready? A first look at the cutting-edge tech In fact, the whole setup felt pretty laggy just navigating around the laptop and via a Web browser — not something you’d expect with a top-of-the-line Intel CPU and Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 GPU inside. I’m pretty sure the Thunderbolt connection negatively contributed. Streaming a 4K, 60Hz video stuttered badly when run on the external display that was connected to the Thunderbolt dock — well over 30 percent of the frames were lost. Playing back the same video on just the laptop itself wasn’t perfect, but it was much, much better. Maingear blamed this on the Thunderbolt 5 cable. “I haven’t tested a plethora of cables yet, but the Apple TB5 Pro cable has worked consistently for us,” a Maingear representative wrote in an email. “Where Thunderbolt 4 you were able to get away with a decent USB-C cable, Thunderbolt 5 seems to work best with certified Thunderbolt 5 cables.” That may be true, but Kensington’s Thunderbolt 5 cable was labeled appropriately and this should be certified. And why should I need to buy an Apple cable to get my PC docking station to work? OWC’s Envoy Pro FX SSD. This isn’t the Thunderbolt-equipped Envoy Ultra I was loaned. Unfortunately, I forgot to snap a photograph before I sent it back, but the design is basically the same.Mark Hachman / IDG Storage performance suffered as well When I connected the SSD, the performance of my Thunderbolt 5 test setup was just as bad. I typically run PCMark’s external storage benchmark to test a dock. My colleague Jon Jacobi prefers running storage-specific benchmarks to test the performance of the SSD directly. I prefer PCMark, whose external storage test reports the “bandwidth” of the SSD. That’s what I’m aiming for: How much data does the drive have to work with? I also test a second way, by recording the time it takes to copy a folder full of multimedia and other files from the SSD, through the dock, onto the laptop. I do all that by itself and also while streaming a 4K 60Hz video via the Internet over the Thunderbolt cable, just to see whether a background file transfer will affect performance. The experience, quite frankly, stunk. While running the PCMark test with the SSD directly connected, I recorded a score of 1,743 or 252.3 MB/s. But while connected to the dock, the SSD’s PCMark score plunged to just 1,108 or 159.3MB/s. Was that the dock’s fault or the Thunderbolt 5 connection? One of the two, most likely. When I directly connected the SSD to the laptop and copied my folder to the desktop, it took an average of one minute and five seconds. While streaming video, the same task took 58 seconds longer or two minutes and three seconds. That seemed quite extreme. Weirdly, when I connected the SSD to the dock and then performed the folder copy, it finished in 41 seconds — far faster! But performing the folder copy while streaming the video required two minutes and six seconds, again with the SSD attached to the dock. (The Internet connection was supplied by Ethernet, which remained connected. But letting the system use Wi-Fi didn’t seem to make any difference). It’s worth a reminder that when I tested the Kensington dock on a “normal” Thunderbolt 4-equipped laptop and a slower SSD, the dock performed “normally,” as well. In the past few years, we’ve seen the occasional weird result when benchmarking, such as benchmarks of mobile CPUs run on battery power that exceed the performance of the same laptop while plugged in. Still, the wildly varying results, including the heavy stuttering while playing video, told me something’s not quite right. What is it? I don’t know, which is souring me on the whole Thunderbolt 5 experience. Should you buy Thunderbolt 5? Not right now When testing a single device, a good review works to isolate the variable. Desktop CPUs are tested against the fastest GPUs possible, with common motherboards, memory, and storage (if possible), so that any differences in performance can be directly attributed to the new CPU. Maingear’s Windows 11 Settings menu reports the controller as USB4 v2, which should be essentially identical to Thunderbolt. I can’t find any specific mention of “Thunderbolt” in the Settings or in the Device Manager, just USB4.Mark Hachman / IDG In this case, I’m testing a new dock, laptop, and SSD, with new cables running between them. That’s at least three unknowns I can’t really nail down. So Maingear can accuse the cable of being faulty, while I suspect that Maingear’s hardware may be at fault. I can’t know for certain. What I am a bit suspicious about is the relative lack of Thunderbolt 5 hardware, even late in 2024. Intel has cycled through its Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake launches, and neither includes an integrated Thunderbolt 5 controller. Intel gave some good reasons for excluding it — desktop vendors prefer to “upsell” by using discrete components, for example — but the instability that I’m seeing makes me wonder if there’s something more going on. I’m not writing Thunderbolt 5 off at all. An updated driver could potentially solve this problem or it might require a more sophisticated hardware revision to Intel’s Barlow Ridge controller itself. I don’t know. For now, however I would not recommend buying into the Thunderbolt 5 ecosystem. When you buy (or test) bleeding-edge hardware, sometimes you’re the one that ends up with the cuts. Read...

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I’m getting tired of my laptop running just six to eight hours before it runs out of juice, so I’ve been extremely tempted these past couple of months to buy a new laptop featuring Qualcomm’s Arm-based Snapdragon X Plus or Snapdragon X Elite processor. I have no doubt that if I swapped my six-hour-lasting x86-based laptop for one that goes for 20+ hours, I could get a lot more done in my day; plus, it would mean I don’t have to be near any kind of outlet when I travel this holiday season. In fact, if it weren’t for my heavy load of household expenses this month, I’m pretty sure I would have jumped in already and snapped one up, either an HP Omnibook X or Lenovo Yoga Slim 7x. But for what it’s worth, I’m glad I haven’t — at least for now… Further reading: The best laptops we’ve tested Qualcomm has capable chips Firstly, let me say my decision not to buy an Arm-powered laptop has nothing to do with the capability of the Qualcomm chips. In fact, they have really got my tech guy spider senses tingling. This qualcomm laptop lasted 24 hours! on a charge Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 6 Read our review When you hear that Lunar Lake laptops have comparable power efficiency – that’s not entirely true. The Qualcomm Snapdragon X Plus-powered laptops, at least the ones I’ve seen, outdo most Lunar Lake laptops for battery life (though Intel’s new laptops still last more than a day). One, the HP Omnibook X, even eclipses the opposition by about six hours in our tests. When it comes to max clock speeds though, Lunar Lake has a slight edge on Qualcomm’s best chip, the Snapdragon X Elite. But then again, the Qualcomm chip’s base clock speed is slightly higher than its Lunar Lake counterpart – so that cancels out performance being a deal breaker for me. What I can’t get past, though, is the incompatibility issues I’ve experienced with Windows 11 on Arm now that I’ve had more than a rudimentary play around with the OS. That is annoying as heck and something I’m not willing to put up with! It’s true what they’re saying on forums There’s no denying that Windows 11 on Arm breaks down a little outside its native app environment more often than it should do. So far in my dabbling, I’ve encountered errors and crashes with apps like Slack and Steam, and that’s despite them being some of the most common apps you’re likely to find. Daily updates aren’t as forthcoming as I’d expect either, which leaves me wondering if these apps are really getting enough love from their creators. In the worst cases I’ve found software that requires Intel componentry just won’t work at all on Qualcomm-powered PCs – that’s especially the case with VPNs. Many software creators are lagging on conversions for drivers for hardware too, despite there being a lot of demand for them. Intel/Qualcomm When things go pear-shaped and stop working, Windows 11 on Arm doesn’t provide a capable safe mode to keep things ticking smoothly either. Troubleshooting is possible, but it often involves long sessions trawling through Microsoft’s websites. In a nutshell, the transition layer that I’d expect to be in place in Windows 11 on Arm by this time is nowhere near where it needs to be, despite it having been in development for going on a decade. Dare I say it, even Apple’s OS does a better job outside its native environment than Windows 11 on Arm does. If this was just my experience I would rethink my stance, but I see the same problems talked about on forums and even at laptop launch events. At one such event, a representative from a laptop manufacturer disparagingly remarked: “We couldn’t even get the benchmark to work on the Qualcomm-powered laptop at all.” Unfortunately, I wasn’t surprised. It could all change next year Compatibility issues may not last forever, however. Admittedly this is the first generation of Qualcomm Arm-based PCs and as 2025 draws near we’re already hearing about more on their way. That’s going to be an incentive for Microsoft and other software companies to develop apps that will amount to more of a seamless user experience. After all, the number of users with Arm laptops is set to rise exponentially and they’re going to have a louder voice. It may be that the steps Microsoft has taken to make Arm-based apps more accessible of recent years needs a little more time to yield results. To its credit Microsoft has introduced kits and Arm-native versions of Visual Studio and .NET platforms to simplify the conversion of x86 apps to x64 Arm apps. It has also added Unity support for game development for Windows on Arm devices – all welcome moves. Time will tell. But for now, there’s just not enough support there to convince me to lay down upwards of $1,000 on an Arm-based laptop. Instead, I’ll find myself a nice Lunar Lake laptop — something like the Lenovo Slim 7i Aura Edition and I’ll feel chill that it’ll run everything I want it to. While I’m enjoying my smooth ride, I’ll be sure to keep a flame burning for users of Windows on Arm that they get the support they will desperately need. Read...

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Virtual private networks, or VPNs, are one of the most effective ways to keep your data private and secure while online. They encrypt and hide our confidential web activity and are a key component in helping us to navigate safely while connected to the internet. As VPN usage continues to increase globally these apps are quickly becoming a cornerstone of our online security. Due to this importance, it’s worth looking at what’s in store for the next-gen VPNs to see how they’ll continue to provide us privacy and security into the future. From VPNs utilizing blockchain to new encryption standards even quantum computers can’t break—and maybe even anonymity for your smart appliances—here are the coming advancements in VPN tech I’m most excited for. Further reading: Best VPN services 2024: Top picks for speed, price, privacy, and more Blockchain technology is coming to VPNs The decentralized node structure of a dVPN may be the way of the future.NordVPN Decentralized VPNs, or dVPNs, offer a new twist on VPN technology and they are quickly growing in popularity. By distributing network functions across many nodes rather than routing traffic through one company’s centralized servers, they can theoretically afford better privacy and security to users. A dVPN runs on a peer-to-peer network that leverages blockchain technology. Decentralized nodes, operated by volunteer hosts, eliminate single points of failure and ensure that no single entity has control over every user’s data. Due to a dVPN’s more democratic functioning, they are also seen as being more resistant to censorship and government data sharing. Just over the last year or two, decentralized VPNs have started to gain traction in the global market. So does this mean crypto bros are about to take over your VPNs? Not likely. While dVPNs certainly seem like an attractive offer, more so with all of the hype surrounding everything crypto and blockchain nowadays, this decentralization doesn’t inherently mean a better experience.  With a traditional VPN, you have to put your trust in just one company. But this company, assuming you choose wisely, will run regular audits to prove it’s trustworthy, has a vested interest in keeping its network secure, and has the financial backing to continually make improvements to its applications. Using a dVPN on the other hand means that you have to trust each volunteer node host. Depending on how the dVPN company operates, these hosts may not be required to prove their trustworthiness or the privacy of their nodes.  So, while dVPNs are sure to become a popular choice for those seeking decentralized privacy, there will still be a place for traditional VPNs in the future. What is most likely is that you’ll see two separate markets develop, one for dVPN services and another for traditional centralized VPN services. It will then be up to you as the user to choose which you believe is best suited to protect your data. The post-quantum encryption revolution is upon us Post-quantum encryption will become the new standard for VPNs in the near future.Pixabay In August of this year, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) made history by releasing the first quantum-resistant encryption standards. Outside of a few overly enthusiastic cryptographers, this news might not have made a splash but it’s set to have huge implications for the future of online privacy and security. Researchers and tech companies are racing to build quantum computers that will have the capability to crush the encryption standards of today’s machines in mere minutes—something currently impossible. So, how does this relate to VPNs? Well, VPNs are heavily reliant on cryptographic protocols for securing communication on their networks. When you connect to a VPN, it encrypts your traffic by scrambling the data into an unreadable form, thereby preventing third parties from viewing and understanding that data. If a quantum computer with vastly greater computational power were to get ahold of this same encrypted data, it could decipher it with ease. These new ‘post-quantum’ encryption standards will not only set the bar for VPN providers in the coming years, but also provide a roadmap to help them become more secure. “Post-quantum” encryption will become a selling point that VPNs will advertise and market to consumers. For users, it might seem like a boutique feature now, but once quantum computers are up and running—most experts believe it could be within the next decade—you’ll absolutely want your VPN to be using these new standards. We’re already seeing some VPN providers offer ‘post-quantum’ encryption. Just recently NordVPN took the initiative and launched an app with post-quantum support. Others such as ExpressVPN and Surfshark have also implemented their own versions as well. It’s only a matter of time before this becomes the new norm for all VPNs.  VPNs will soon protect your refrigerator, too The all encompassing internet of things, or IoT, refers to a network of connected devices that communicate and share data with each other. For most people, this takes the form of smart home devices such as thermostats, TVs, lights, refrigerators, and home security systems. Thanks to IoT devices we now have more control over our environment than ever before. When it comes to cybersecurity however, smart devices are generally some of the most vulnerable and least protected pieces on your home network. Cybercriminals love to exploit IoT devices and in many cases, simply hacking one device will give them access to everything else. VPNs are out to change this in the near future. By providing fully integrated home network security, a VPN can encrypt and protect communications for all of your devices. Unlike the typical personal VPN that requires you to connect each individual device, IoT VPNs extend across an entire network to safeguard all devices. At home this can already be done via a router VPN.  Unfortunately, there are still a few drawbacks to using a router method. Many VPN providers still impose simultaneous device connection limits that can be taken up quickly by all of your IoT devices. Router VPNs also create a single point of failure meaning you need to make sure failsafes, such as an automatic killswitch, are set up correctly. This all requires a bit of technical know-how which the average layperson may not have. Routers with built-in VPNs, like Aircove from ExpressVPN, are just one of the ways that next-gen VPNs will protect all of the devices on your home network. ExpressVPN VPN companies are working on new and innovative solutions for at-home IoT coverage. More and more services are switching over to unlimited device connection models. Others such as ExpressVPN have even started selling their own routers, ready to go right out of the box, with the VPN built into them. VPNs are likely to begin offering configurable IoT options in their mobile apps as well. This will allow users to easily control which devices on their home network are connected through the VPN, all in a centralized hub. So in the future, even the AI-generated grocery list from your smart fridge will be encrypted and secure from prying eyes. Read...

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