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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

#21

Post by nerdbaggy »

grk wrote: post #20
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…

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.

It really depends on the phone and the AP.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202628

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

#22

Post by cmsimike »

grk wrote: post #20
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…

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.

I believe it is the responsibility of the client to correctly roam between similarly named APs. I vaguely recall reading into this when I read that my unifi AP didn't support roaming. I could be mistaken though!

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

#23

Post by lawry »

nerdbaggy wrote: post #21
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.

It really depends on the phone and the AP. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202628

I thought you could use aggressive approaches by letting the AP's just kick the device off the AP so it's forced to join a better one?

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

#25

Post by grk »

nerdbaggy wrote: post #21
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.

It really depends on the phone and the AP. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202628

Thanks, that link is very informative.

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

#26

Post by willidiots »

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?

An unfortunate side effect of being in the industry is that I constantly have a surplus of enterprise-grade hardware at home. It's been a while since I looked at consumer hardware. Apple's Airports were solid, but have been discontinued. I've used both of the OnHubs and both were performant / stable. I've heard generally good things about Google's new Wi-Fi pucks, and Netgear's nighthawk series.

5G is the better of the two bands - it gives you many more channels and there's generally less interference. That sounds like something particular to your environment.

If you have a Mac, I recommend installing Wi-Fi signal (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wifi-signal/id525912054?mt=1...) - it gives you much greater insight into what's happening on the air. I'd start by installing something like that, and monitoring for correlation with your drops - what else happens when your connection drops? Does the SNR drop? Does the AP change channels? etc.

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

#27

Post by dijit »

emodendroket wrote: post #15
VeejayRampay wrote: post #8

Wifi sucks because Ethernet is still better in all aspects but mobility to this day.

Wow, it's better "in all aspects but mobility"? You're kidding. You may as well complain that batteries suck because the only advantage they have over just plugging something in is portability.

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.

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

#28

Post by kalleboo »

emodendroket wrote: post #12
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 splurged on one of the expensive tri-band routers and honestly now the wireless is good enough that I don't care.

My wifi is fine between one wireless device and a wired device, but if I'm say, using my laptop to beam a video off my NAS onto my TV, it all breaks down.

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

#29

Post by willidiots »

grk wrote: post #20
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…

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.

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 users onto the same subnet consistently (otherwise you'll need to re-IP after roaming).

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

#30

Post by Filligree »

mckoss wrote: post #6
Filligree wrote: post #3

This article is all about unwrapping the marketing copy and explaining why it sucks. That's still valuable, but I was hoping for a more technical view on it. Anyone have an article that explains why the systems are as limited as they are?

Read more (page 2) - there is a considerable discussion of channel congestion and interference due to over powered zones and large number of devices.

I did. It's still fairly superficial, and not the focus of the article.

What I'm looking for is e.g. an explanation of how MIMO works, or why explicit timeslots were considered useful for 802.11n but not 11b.

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