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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?

#181

Post by yardstick »

m463 wrote: post #143
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 wa…

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

Sonos has its issues, but I do need to point out that their subs (and the rest) all have Ethernet ports in addition to WiFi.

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

#183

Post by [deleted] »

m463 wrote: post #143
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 wa…

[deleted]

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

#184

Post by hansvm »

rbranson wrote: post #75
xmprt wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not super familiar with SF construction materials but I wonder if that plays a part in it too? If your neighbors are separated by concrete walls then you're probably getting less interference from them than you'd think and your mesh might actually work better(?)... but what do I know since I'm no networking engineer.

It's all wood construction, originally stick victorians with 2x4 exterior walls. My "loudest" neighbor is being picked up on 80MHz at -47 dBm.

Man, at times in my life I would've killed to get a -47 dBm or better signal.

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

#185

Post by amluto »

bobmcnamara wrote: post #167
amluto wrote: post #138

I wish the Wi-Fi developers would put some serious effort into improving range and contention. Forgot 40 MHz vs 80 MHz — how about some 5 MHz channels? How about some modulations designed to work at low received power and/or low SNR? How about improving the stack to get better performance when a device has mediocre signal quality to multiple APs at the same time? There are are these cool new features like MLO, but ma…

IEEE 802.11af old TV band IEEE 802.11ah 900Ish IEEE 802.11ax(WiFi6): traditional channels can be subdivided between 26 and 2x996 resource units according to need(effectively a 2MHz channel at the low end). This means multiple devices can be transmitted to within the same transmit opportunity. > How about some modulations designed to work at low received power and/or low SNR? 802.11(og), 1 & 2 Mbps.

And do those ax resource units work, in practice, in a way that allows two APs that are moderately close to each other to coexist efficiently within the same 20MHz channel? Preferably even if they’re from different vendors and even if the users are not experts?

> 802.11(og), 1 & 2 Mbps

I’m a little vague on the details, but those are rather old and I don’t think there is anything that low-rate in the current MCS table. Do they actually work well? Do they support modern advancements like LDPC?

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

#187

Post by bornfreddy »

bobbiechen wrote: post #29
kulahan wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

brb ima turn on my microwave halfway through your transfer

To this day I expect my wifi to drop whenever I hear a microwave, thanks to the one in my parents house: https://digitalseams.com/blog/microwave-ovens-wi-fi-and-http

Shouldn't such microwaves be decommissioned? I would assume that microwaves that are not properly shielded are dangerous to people in their vicinity?

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

#188

Post by XorNot »

Neywiny wrote: post #116
XorNot wrote: post #114

In the IoT space I really wish an "ESP for power line Ethernet" existed these days. I have 50+ ESP based devices on WiFi and while low bandwidth (and their own SSID) I really wish there were affordable options that they could be "wired" for comms (since they mostly control mains appliances, but the rules and considerations for mixing data and mains in one package are prohibitively expensive).

Have you considered 1 WiFi device and 49 sub-ghz devices?

The point isn't wifi contention per se (it's working fine) - it's that having home automation depend on wireless signals at all is both a vulnerability, and feels silly when all those devices have hard wired power.

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

#189

Post by Marsymars »

rbranson wrote: post #64
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…

> It's a much better answer to hook up everything on Ethernet that you possibly can than it is to follow the more traveled route of more channels and more congestion with mesh Wi-Fi. Certainly this is the brute-force way to do it and can work if you can run enough UTP everywhere. As a counterexample, I went all-in on WiFi and have 5 access points with dedicated backhauls. This is in SF too, so neighbors are right up…

FWIW you don't need POE Eero devices for a wired backhaul, all of their devices has support it.

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

#190

Post by Marsymars »

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…

I use a DECT VoIP phone for most of my phone calls. It's great!
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