One of Wi-Fi 7's best features can actually slow your connection down

Published Oct 8, 2026, 5:00 PM EDT His love of PCs and their components was born out of trying to squeeze every ounce of performance out of the family computer. Tinkering with his own build at age 10 turned into building PCs for friends and family, fostering a passion that would ultimately take shape as a career path. Besides being the first call for tech support for those close to him, Ty is a computer science student, with his focus being cloud computing and networking. He also competed in semi-pro Counter-Strike for 8 years, making him intimately familiar with everything to do with peripherals. Wi-Fi 7 routers came with some new configuration options, and one of the more interesting ones is Multi-Link Operation, or MLO. MLO lets your devices use more than one Wi-Fi band at the same time, and it's one of the biggest reasons why Wi-Fi 7 speeds look so more like a generational leap than the versions before it. It also happens to be one of the first settings I make sure is turned off on a new router. On the more affordable Wi-Fi 7 models and in a house full of older devices, it can do more harm than good. What MLO is and what it's supposed to do It sounds great on paper Credit: TP-Link Until Wi-Fi 7, a phone or laptop talked to the router on one band at a time. Even a tri-band router gave each device a single lane, whether that was 2.4GHz, 5GHz, or 6GHz. If that band got crowded, or you walked out of its range, the device had to drop it and reconnect on another. MLO removes that limit, so that a Wi-Fi 7-enabled device can hold links to the router on multiple bands at a time, and treat those links as a single connection. This, in theory, delivers more speed, lower latency, and a connection that's more stable than one that relies on just a single link at a time. Both ends of the connection need to support it in order for it to work properly. MLO also comes in two main modes: STR and eMLSR. In STR mode, a device uses its links at the same time, which is what MLO is usually described as in marketing material. eMLSR works a bit differently, only allowing the device to listen on several bands but only using one to send and receive at a time. This can make a connection feel more stable, but it doesn't make it faster. Many devices can't use more than one link at a time Even if they advertise Wi-Fi 7 support The switching mode needs less power, so it's what a lot of client devices ship with. Intel's BE200, a very common laptop card, does show Wi-Fi 7 support in its spec table, but it uses eMLSR across 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands, so the speed boost isn't available there. A lot of other devices fall into that same boat, so turning on MLO is useless in those cases. Even if your router and devices both support MLO, the network can deliver lower real-world speeds than if you just used single-band 5GHz or 6GHz connection from the same router. TP-Link's own support documentation confirms this, noting that a single band may perform better when a device's MLO support is partial. A dual-band router is rarely worth bonding It shows its best with 5GHz and 6GHz MLO is at its best when it pairs 5GHz with 6GHz, two fast bands with room to spare. A dual-band Wi-Fi 7 router doesn't have a 6GHz radio, so the only pairing on offer is 5GHz and 2.4GHz, the slowest and usually the most crowded band in the house. Combining these using MLO is usually just a glorified form of band steering, which is something that almost all modern routers have these days and enables your router to move devices between its bands under one network name. It adds friction with older devices If your house is full of older stuff, MLO can actively inhibit connections A downstream effect of MLO is how the network gets secured. When 6GHz is part of the link, WPA3 becomes a requirement, and most routers will warn you when you turn it on that you might be cutting off some legacy devices. If you plan on mixing and matching Wi-Fi 7 devices and older hardware, there is a mixed WPA2 and WPA3 mode, but your mileage may vary there, too, because not all devices support that either. MLO also creates another network name in some cases, which adds more friction if you change the name. MLO can push great speeds in scenarios where it's suited It earns its spot in some circumstances In a mesh system where all of your devices are up-to-date, MLO can be a game changer. Mesh nodes specifically benefit, and the speeds between the nodes can hit multi-gigabit speeds in some cases. If Ethernet isn't an option between your mesh nodes and MLO is supported, it's absolutely worth trying. The same goes for tri-band routers: when paired with devices that can leverage STR, which are admittedly few, speeds can be well above what a single-band connection can offer. Even if eMLSR is the only option, switching between bands in a crowded airspace can ensure your device is sitting on the most optimal band at any given moment. MLO is best skipped unless all of your important devices can handle it So on a new dual-band router, I'd leave MLO off. On a tri-band router where your mesh nodes or other devices can actually harness it, it's worth at least trying out. As is always the case with wireless networking, real-world results will vary heavily depending on your environment. The construction of your walls and floors, along with other devices in your area and on the network play a massive role in connection quality and speed.