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A deep dive into why Wi-Fi kind of sucks

arstechnica.com

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Re: A deep dive into why Wi-Fi kind of sucks

#131

Post by rconti »

adjusts Meraki APs to auto power, 40mhz channel width on 5ghz

I was dismayed at how terrible range was in my new, Silicon Valley-sized house (~1100sqft). Even with a Meraki AP at the front wall, it would work line of sight about 30 feet and start having issues as soon as I stepped behind a wall.

Having a couple APs has mostly solved my issues, but even so, it feels like overkill for such a tiny house. But the neighbors on either side are pretty close, and I see a lot of interference. Worked a case with Meraki support for a long time, and that seems to be the real problem.

I didn't realize I couldn't "shout over" my neighbors though, so I had signal strength set to max.

Back when I was troubleshooting, I tried everything. 5ghz only. 2.4ghz only. Tweaking channels manually. Tweaking everything manually. The funny thing was, nothing helped.. but when I set things back to auto (Except max power), it all got better. Every incremental change I made caused slightly worse performance, but not enough so to notice. Going back to auto fixed it all.

Hoping auto power helps as well.

Re: A deep dive into why Wi-Fi kind of sucks

#132

Post by Obi_Juan_Kenobi »

mseebach wrote: post #63
willidiots wrote: post #9

I build public Wi-Fi networks, you've probably used one of them. AMA if you have Wi-Fi questions. To say it "sucks" is a bit harsh. It's delivering multiple hundreds of Mbps to you via an unlicensed contention-based medium. The air interface is like sending packets over a noisy Ethernet hub; it's impressive it works as well as it does. That said, this article's a good primer on some of the protocol's fundamental chal…

Is there a good suite of tools to actually measure the quality of a wifi connection and/or surface, even help diagnose, problems?

Wifi Analyzer is a good place to start.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.farproc.wi...

Re: A deep dive into why Wi-Fi kind of sucks

#133

Post by Obi_Juan_Kenobi »

Klathmon wrote: post #44
emodendroket wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I splurged on one of the expensive tri-band routers and honestly now the wireless is good enough that I don't care.

I used to live about 1/4 mile away from any other houses, and I never got why people always complained about wifi. In my experience it always worked well, was fairly fullproof, and had fast enough speeds that it was never an issue. 2 years ago I moved into a condo that has 25 wifi APs within range of me right now. Now I get it. Getting one of the high-end tri-band routers as you said did help, but it's still a diffic…

'Power Line' or similar adapters can work quite well in apartments. You can use it for a wired connection where practical, and otherwise have a couple 5GHz routers for a good wireless access.

Re: A deep dive into why Wi-Fi kind of sucks

#134

Post by JoshTriplett »

joecool1029 wrote: post #130
JoshTriplett wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Miles, easily. But we had three major advantages: 1) We had a shoulder-mounted directional antenna pointed at the rocket. 2) The rocket had a cylindrical patch antenna wrapped around it. 3) Wifi channel 1 is in an amateur radio band, which means we can amplify it beyond the normal limits. We ran it at 1W.

Eh, I run 1W EIRP on consumer equipment and it's legal[1]. Assuming you are in US? Or not? [1]: https://www.air802.com/fcc-rules-and-regulations.html

US, but TTBOMK it wouldn't have been with the combination of amp and antenna. At the time, we'd looked it up and the legal limit without an amateur license was somewhere in the hundreds-of-milliwatts range.

Re: A deep dive into why Wi-Fi kind of sucks

#135

Post by pcunite »

koolba wrote: post #14
willidiots wrote: post #9

I build public Wi-Fi networks, you've probably used one of them. AMA if you have Wi-Fi questions. To say it "sucks" is a bit harsh. It's delivering multiple hundreds of Mbps to you via an unlicensed contention-based medium. The air interface is like sending packets over a noisy Ethernet hub; it's impressive it works as well as it does. That said, this article's a good primer on some of the protocol's fundamental chal…

Which router do you recommend? Is the 5G band consistently worse than the default (i.e. constant connection drops) or is that just my experience?

Check out these two products:

* MikroTik hAP AC * Grandstream GWN7610

Re: A deep dive into why Wi-Fi kind of sucks

#136

Post by Tempest1981 »

If anyone is involved in the standards committees -- please try to make the naming more user-friendly. My non-techie friends are totally confused by A, AC, AX, B, G, N, WiMax.

No need to reveal the inner workings of the standards committees to the public. Simple numbering would help.

Re: A deep dive into why Wi-Fi kind of sucks

#137

Post by dfox »

Pxtl wrote: post #115
zaroth wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Virtually none of the handoff delay is actually due to L1 or L2. The PHY handoff itself can happen in less than 10ms, and with Pre-Auth that handoff is actually happening before you even leave one AP for another.

It may simply be the DHCP that's the problem - the step it's hanging on is always "requesting IP address". I've tried fixed IPs and that hasn't helped. Part of the problem is that even though I bought a designated access point device instead of a generalist wifi router (and I suspect it's the same device with marginally different firmware), the configuration process to make this stuff work is completely opaque. I hav…

Setting all APs in one network to same ESSID is exactly wbat you should do and for half-reasonable APs that works well.

Big name brand vendors will sell you APs that support some proprietary coordination mechanism between them (usually with central "wireless network controller" as separate device), but that is not required for roaming to work. Such solutions (apart from centralized management) are mostly to keep your APs from interfering with each other (which is non-issue unless you have more than three and unless they are placed in unfortunate physical locations).

Re: A deep dive into why Wi-Fi kind of sucks

#138

Post by phil21 »

bsenftner wrote: post #10

My day to day happiness quotient shot up the day I ditched my wireless wifi and ran Ethernet cables through my spaces. I'd realized I was constantly noticing wifi issues, and an apple mbp I use for email seems to drop wifi every half hour. But no longer, with them all wired up! Realizing there are USB3 to Ethernet gadgets really hits home how our modern technology is market-driven-dumb and anti-consumer: all modern l…

I think a lot of this is the 2004 model of plopping an integrated router/access point/modem in a single location in their house simply doesn't work any longer. At least for any sort of Urban deployment. You are seeing many large companies also realizing this and trying to bring products to market.

You can get very solid wireless in your house if you are willing to spend some money on it, and of course the time on the infrastructure. This means a network drop to each room, and very dense access points.

If you try to play games and avoid the "running wires to a room" part - you're just going to have a bad time. I don't see the "mesh wireless" stuff working long-term, they are simple stop-gaps. Once in the room though you can get away with wireless.

I recently just "made it rain" access points (ubiquity in this case) more or less so anywhere in the house you have or are very close to having line of sight to an AP. Since that transition wireless is as good as wired for me.

It's a bit more expensive, but also makes my quality of life far better. Everything just works. I also took the opportunity to get a quality PoE switch for the telco closet, a solid UPS, etc. Now my network survives power outages for 5-6 hours from a single UPS and switch, powering half a dozen APs throughout the house. Bonus is the PoE IP cameras also stay working during an outage.

Re: A deep dive into why Wi-Fi kind of sucks

#139

Post by matthewmcg »

willidiots wrote: post #32
rwmj wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever built "moving" wifi networks (trains, planes), and do those have special challenges?

Yes and nothing special, as long as the clients and AP are moving consistent to each other. If the client is moving >10MPH relative to a fixed AP (i.e. you're driving past the AP in your car), Wi-Fi doesn't handle that well. Your movement creates Doppler shift in your RF signal, which Wi-Fi can't adjust for (vs. e.g. LTE which does).

I wonder if there are also multi-path effects that become relevant with motion.

Re: A deep dive into why Wi-Fi kind of sucks

#140

Post by maskz »

komali2 wrote: post #53
nojvek wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you not sue modem providers for false advertising? America is a litigious country, I wonder why this hasnt happened? I filed a FCC complaint on Frontier delivering 10th of their speeds. They gave me an upgraded connection that gave me full 30Mbps within a week. The only way Corporations are going to learn how to back off is when they have to pay for their mistakes.

Did you reply to the wrong comment? Or maybe the phone app I'm using misorderered...

I think it's the wrong comment, or maybe our wifi connection misordered content.. /s
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