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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

#111

Post by aviraldg »

tdy721 wrote: post #58

I think it's getting Bits and Bytes a little mixed up. You can expect about 1/10th speed? Most file transfer dialogs I've seen ("real world"?) display transfer rate in Bytes. Advertisers use bits, that little marketing wave can actually explain the speed drop to 1/8th of the "advertised" rate.

I believe the article takes that into account and describes the speed loss you'd see over and above the "loss" from conversion. (it does use bytes somewhere in between, so you know they're aware of the difference)

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

#112

Post by FeatureRush »

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…

How does Wi-Fi compares to other alternatives for gaming? Which would you suggest to minimize lag introduced on the last mile?

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

#113

Post by Mister_Snuggles »

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…

All of my WiFi problems were solved with a UniFi AP - dropouts, connections randomly slowing down, etc all completely disappeared once I got that AP up and running.

When I need raw speed (e.g, browsing/editing raw photos that are stored on a NAS) I still plug in. Even though the WiFi is rock solid, it's not as fast as wired.

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

#114

Post by twoodfin »

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?

Only have an anecdote, but when I replaced my latest (last?) generation Apple AirPort Extreme with a trio of Eeros for a ~1700 sq foot two-floor house I immediately wished I'd done it sooner.

Expensive for sure, but setup was a breeze, reliability has been great, and I get 200Mbit+ a floor away from my ISP router, where I used to see 20 on a good day.

I was skeptical of how well a mesh could work, but the performance has sold me.

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

#115

Post by Pxtl »

zaroth wrote: post #81
Pxtl wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you're connected wifi is great. It's the long connection negotiation and the slow reconnection process if it gets interrupted or you switch networks that's infuriating. I get upwards of a minute of downtime when I switch from my router to my AP at home.

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 have no idea what I'm doing right or wrong, and every guide says something different - at this point I'm at just "give both networks the same SSID and encryption and password and hope it all works out".

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

#116

Post by dijit »

extra88 wrote: post #62
dijit wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suppose the difference is that I don't expect my television to run on batteries, but I do expect it to work on wifi.

Why? TVs aren't very portable, carrying content over a wire makes much more sense.

I have a partner who hates wires. Wifi is a very normal thing for TV's, Games consoles, Chromecasts... etc;

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

#117

Post by tjohns »

noja wrote: post #37
grk wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does roaming devices between APs actually work? I reading through ubiquiti forums and it looks like they used to support it, but backed out of it. My specific usecase is moving around the office while being on google hangouts on my phone.

Not the OP, but yes it works great. The APs themselves do not need to support it, the client does. But you can also do zero handoff (quicker, like for voip heavy environments) and that needs AP support. Read https://help.ubnt.com/hc/en-us/articles/205144590-UniFi-What...

It's worth noting that newer Ubiquity APs no longer support Zero Handoff. Part of the problem was that all the APs needed to be on the same channel, which caused co-channel interference under heavy usage; there was a significant performance impact. (Also, I believe that chipset in the newer Unifi models just don't support it.)

Without it, clients can still roam between APs, but you'll notice ~1 second of packet drops each time your client roams to a new AP. It won't drop a VoIP call, but you'll notice a moment of silence when it happens.

The future is 802.11r/k/v, which will allow clients to roam themselves quickly between participating BSSIDs without needing to renegotiate the connection each time (as opposed to relying on pure AP-based hacks).

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

#118

Post by tjohns »

grk wrote: post #33
willidiots wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it absolutely does, but it is dependent on the station (the client) doing so. One of my gripes about Wi-Fi is that it delegates too much to the station - your experience is thus dictated by whoever wrote your phone/computer's Wi-Fi chipset driver, and how they interpret the standard. Any Wi-Fi network supports roaming on the network side, you just need all of your access points to use the same SSID, and to dump u…

Should I set channels on the APs in some specific way? We're using mostly apple hardware + ubiquiti APs, and to be honest I expected everything to "just work" with the defaults...

They don't need to be on different channels, but it's recommended for performance (due to co-channel interference).

Think of it this way: Each channel provides a fixed amount of bandwidth, and neighboring APs need to overlap slightly to provide seamless coverage. As a first order approximation, if two APs are on the same channel you'll have twice the range, but half the bandwidth because the spectrum would be shared between them.

(It's actually slightly worse than this, because collisions will happen causing additional overhead.)

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

#119

Post by raphyduck »

extra88 wrote: post #68
mrfusion wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is triband. Can you recommend one?

I had to google it, it sounds selfish when the trouble is caused by many neighbors having their own APs nearby.

Doesn't it enhance to the problem further though? (if yes, then yes, wifi kinda sucks)
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