Intel open-source software engineers have been busy beginning to prepare their upstream IWLWIFI wireless driver in the Linux kernel for supporting their next-gen WiFi adapters supporting the WiFi 8 "Ultra High Reliability" standard.

Intel has a big update to their IWLWIFI driver slated for the upcoming Linux 7.2 kernel as they continue work on preparing this driver for their upcoming products that will feature WiFi 8 Ultra High Reliability (UHR) capabilities.

WiFi 8 UHR continues to be developed as IEEE 802.11bn and while it may not be finalized for up to another two years, it seems their Linux driver is aiming to be ready for UHR once it's out there and with new Intel WiFi adapters in hand. [1]This merge last week to the networking subsystem's "net-next" tree lays out more of the UHR work as well as adding some new device IDs for existing products:

"iwlwifi - next: 2026-05-26

This contains mainly:

UHR support (DPS, DUO, multi-link PM), NAN enhancements (multicast, schedule config v2, multiple stations), EMLSR fixes, new Killer/LNL device IDs, firmware API cleanups, and a few bugfixes"

Great seeing Intel's timely Linux wireless (and wired) networking driver support work continue upstream. Since Linux 7.0 [2]the Linux networking code at large has been preparing for WiFi 8 UHR with the common cfg80211 and mac80211 code.



[1] https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/netdev/net-next.git/commit/?id=9658d9f243821d49d644e6d0c6fc120600163dcf

[2] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-7.0-Networking