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Does our “need for speed” make our wi-fi suck?

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Re: Does our “need for speed” make our wi-fi suck?

#141

Post by protocolture »

bcrl wrote: post #124
kuon wrote: post #118

For me the only thing that really matters, and globally sucks with WiFi is roaming. My house is old and has stones walls up to 120cm, including the inner walls, so I have to have access points is nearly all rooms. I never had a true seamless roaming experience. Today, I have TP-Link Omada and it works better than previous solutions, but it is still not as good as DECT phones for examples. For example if I watch a twi…

DECT phones run on the 1.9 GHz spectrum which doesn't get absorbed by water like 2.4 GHz, and will penetrate through many other materials far better than higher frequencies. Most people place wifi repeaters incorrectly, or invest in crappy repeater / mesh devices that do not multiple radios. A Wifi repeater or mesh device with a single radio by definition cuts your throughput in half for every hop. I run an ISP. Cust…

"Wheres your router"

"The basement"

"Uh, i can send someone out to install some repeaters for $$$"

"No just make internet good now"

Re: Does our “need for speed” make our wi-fi suck?

#142

Post by StillBored »

typpilol wrote: post #13
JoshTriplett wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The other bit of advice that is buried in there that no-one wants to hear for residences is the best way to speed up your Wi-Fi is to not use it. You might think it's convenient to have your TV connect to Netflix via WiFi and it is, but it is going to make everything else that really needs the Wi-Fi slower. It's a much better answer to hook up everything on Ethernet that you possibly can than it is to follow the mo…

The reality is that most people only have a single cord coming into the house So they would have to do quite a bit of work to run cable. Also people living in apartments that cant just start drilling through walls. I'd say most ppl use wifi because they have too, not pure convenience

A lot has changed in the 25 years since gbit wired ethernet was rolled out. While wired ethernet stagnated due to greed.

Got powerlines? Well then you can get gbit+ to a few outlets in your house.

Got old CATV cables? Then you can use them at multiple gbit with MoCA.

Got old phone lines? Then its possible to run ethernet over them with SPE and maybe get a gbit.

And frankly just calling someone who wires houses and getting a quote will tell you if its true. The vast majority of houses arent that hard, even old ones. Attic drops through the walls, cables below in the crawlspace, behind the baseboards. Hell just about every house in the USA had cable/dish at one point, and all they did was nail it to the soffit and punch it right through the walls.

Most people don't need a drop every 6 feet, one near the TV, one in a study, maybe a couple in a closet/ceiling/etc. Then those drops get used to put a little POE 8 port switch in place and drive an AP, TV, whatever.

Re: Does our “need for speed” make our wi-fi suck?

#143

Post by m463 »

PaulHoule wrote: post #2

I did some experimentation with UniFi hubs and came to the conclusion that if you can give each device its own WiFi channel that would be ideal -- contention is that bad and often an uncontended channel with otherwise poor characteristics will beat a contended channel that otherwise looks good. The other bit of advice that is buried in there that no-one wants to hear for residences is the best way to speed up your Wi…

> not use it.

A few things come to mind...

- You can buy ethernet adapters... for iPhone/ipad/etc. Operations are so much faster, especially large downloads like offline maps.

- many consumer devices suck wrt to wifi. For example, there seem to me ZERO soundbars with wired subwoofers. They all incorporate wifi.

- also, if anyone has lived in a really dense urban environment, wifi is a liability in just about every way.

- Whats's worse is how promiscuous many devices are. Why do macs show all the neighbor's televisions in the airplay menu?

- and you can't really turn off wifi on a mac without turning off sip. (in settings, wifi OFF toggle is stuck on but greyed out)

Re: Does our “need for speed” make our wi-fi suck?

#144

Post by protocolture »

paulddraper wrote: post #42
PaulHoule wrote: post #2

I did some experimentation with UniFi hubs and came to the conclusion that if you can give each device its own WiFi channel that would be ideal -- contention is that bad and often an uncontended channel with otherwise poor characteristics will beat a contended channel that otherwise looks good. The other bit of advice that is buried in there that no-one wants to hear for residences is the best way to speed up your Wi…

There are two kinds of networks: wireless networks and reliable networks. Wired connection is an absolute hack.

Lmao.

People say this until it takes 3 days to restore a fibre cut, when the wireless guys just work around the problem with replacement radios etc.

Issue with Wireless is usually the wireless operator. And most of them do work hard to give wireless a bad rep.

Re: Does our “need for speed” make our wi-fi suck?

#145

Post by godelski »

marssaxman wrote: post #53
JoshTriplett wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The other bit of advice that is buried in there that no-one wants to hear for residences is the best way to speed up your Wi-Fi is to not use it. You might think it's convenient to have your TV connect to Netflix via WiFi and it is, but it is going to make everything else that really needs the Wi-Fi slower. It's a much better answer to hook up everything on Ethernet that you possibly can than it is to follow the mo…

The house I live in was built with ethernet, but of the fourteen outlets the builders saw fit to include, not one is located where we can make use of it. The two devices in our house which use a wired connection are both plugged directly into the switch in our utility closet. (We do have one internet-connected device which permanently lives about an inch away from one of the ethernet sockets, but it is, ironically, a…

Rental or do you own?

If you own, you should replace and/or move them. Might sound scary if you've never done this before but it is much easier than you'd think. If you want to make your future life easier I suggest running a PVC pipe (at minimum in the drop down portion). Replacing or adding new cabling will be much easier if you do this so it's totally worth the few extra bucks and few extra minutes of work. They'll also be less likely to be accidentally damaged (stepping on them, rodents, water damage, etc). I seriously cannot understand why this is not more common practice (leave the pull string in). You might save a few bucks but you sacrifice a lot more than you're saving... (chasing pennies with pounds)

If rental, you could put in an extender. If you're less concerned about aesthetics you can pop the wall place off and directly tie into the existing cable OR run a new one in parallel. If you're willing to donate the replacement wire and don't have access to the attic but do to both ends of the existing cable then you can use one to pull the other through. You could coil the excess wire behind the plate when you reinstall it. But that definitely runs the risk of losing the cable since it might be navigating through a hard corner. If you go that route I'd suggest just asking your landlord. They'd probably be chill about it and might even pay for it.

Re: Does our “need for speed” make our wi-fi suck?

#146

Post by xethos »

sokoloff wrote: post #117
passivegains wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got good results from running cables around the entire perimeter of a room to avoid crossing doorways. Doesn't work so well on bathrooms though.

I’m pretty tech-addicted, but I’ve never felt the need for a hard-wired drop in the bathroom.

I assumed to get from one side of a doorframe to the other, instead of crossing underneath the door, go around the perimeter of the room the door is for. Which seems like a lot to remove a trip hazard, but I suspect the Wife Approval Factor plays a role

Re: Does our “need for speed” make our wi-fi suck?

#148

Post by Retric »

sidewndr46 wrote: post #78
runjake wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't know how 2025 houses are built but I would be surprised if they didn't have an ethernet jack in every room to a wiring closet of some sort. Not sure about coax. Speaking from a US standpoint, it still not common in new construction for ethernet to be deployed in a house. I'm not sure why. It seems like a no-brainer. Coax is still usually reserved to a couple jacks -- usually in the living room and master be…

Adding cat5e or cat6 to each room is just a cost. Builders generally compete on cost.

It’s a cost that doesn’t show up on listings. There’s a surprising number of ways new US construction sucks that just comes down to how it can be advertised.

Re: Does our “need for speed” make our wi-fi suck?

#149

Post by gh02t »

bcrl wrote: post #124
kuon wrote: post #118

For me the only thing that really matters, and globally sucks with WiFi is roaming. My house is old and has stones walls up to 120cm, including the inner walls, so I have to have access points is nearly all rooms. I never had a true seamless roaming experience. Today, I have TP-Link Omada and it works better than previous solutions, but it is still not as good as DECT phones for examples. For example if I watch a twi…

DECT phones run on the 1.9 GHz spectrum which doesn't get absorbed by water like 2.4 GHz, and will penetrate through many other materials far better than higher frequencies. Most people place wifi repeaters incorrectly, or invest in crappy repeater / mesh devices that do not multiple radios. A Wifi repeater or mesh device with a single radio by definition cuts your throughput in half for every hop. I run an ISP. Cust…

Eh, multiple APs and roaming being awful isn't just a matter of shitty placement and bad wireless backhaul, it's also client side software. I have two APs on opposite ends of my house and my phone tries to hang on to whatever AP its connected to far longer than it should when moving around the house. My APs are placed correctly, and support 802.11r, yet my phone and most other devices don't try to roam until far, far past the point they should have switched to the other AP.

The design of roaming being largely client initiated means roaming doesn't really work how people intuitively think it should, because at least every device I've ever seen seems to be programmed to aggressively cling to a single AP.

Re: Does our “need for speed” make our wi-fi suck?

#150

Post by molszanski »

BadBadJellyBean wrote: post #89
PaulHoule wrote: post #2

I did some experimentation with UniFi hubs and came to the conclusion that if you can give each device its own WiFi channel that would be ideal -- contention is that bad and often an uncontended channel with otherwise poor characteristics will beat a contended channel that otherwise looks good. The other bit of advice that is buried in there that no-one wants to hear for residences is the best way to speed up your Wi…

I wish I could put Ethernet everywhere but I live in a German apartment in a German house and here walls are massive and made out of brick and concrete. Routing cables through this without it being a massive eyesore is pretty hard.

Oh, one more idea. You can use existing coax cables (tv cable) via adapters to get 1-2 reliable gbps over cable. For e.g. a switch with an additional access point
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