Does our “need for speed” make our wi-fi suck? • Hacker News Board

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

#201

Post by varenc » Sat, Oct 11, 2025, 5:38 AM UTC

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.

Old Victorians in SF will sometimes have lathe and plaster walls (the 'wet wall' that drywall replaced). Lathe and plaster walls often have chicken wire in them that degrade wifi more than regular drywall will.

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

#202

Post by varenc » Sat, Oct 11, 2025, 5:39 AM UTC

esseph wrote: post #90

avree wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, Unifi only supports DFS channels (which is the only real way for 'each device to have its own wifi channel in a crowded area) on some of their models.

What unifi AP doesn't support DFS? Sometimes DFS certification comes after general device approval, but I'm not aware of any that just flat out doesn't support it. It supported it 10+ years ago.

Yea I've had all sorts of UniFi gear and have never seen an access point that only works on DFS channels. That'd make no sense and their admin software actively discourages DFS channel selection.

I'd guess OP might be trying to use 160mhz channel width on 5ghz band, which will only work on DFS channels though. I wouldn't recommend 160mhz channel width unless you have a very quiet RF environment and peak speed is very important to you. Also I've found it hard to get clients to actually use the full 160mhz width on a network configured this way.

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

#203

Post by drnick1 » Sat, Oct 11, 2025, 5:42 AM UTC

whatevaa wrote: post #180

drnick1 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but unlike TVs, my phone runs free software (Graphene) and is free of the spyware "smart" TVs are known for.

Most people don't run Graphene so point stands.

Most people don't know that Big Tech is extracting data from them on a massive scale. It's up to us, the "tech people," to educate the people and show them alternatives like Graphene. As for the TV, my advice is not to connect it to the internet. If you need to stream something, hook up a laptop or dedicated device to the TV.

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

#204

Post by ssl-3 » Sat, Oct 11, 2025, 5:43 AM UTC

sidewndr46 wrote: post #77

GeorgeTirebiter wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mu-MIMO would help. The real problem is that energy between a unit and an AP is not in a pencil-thin RF laser-beam --- it is spread out. Other nodes hear that energy, and back off. If we had better control of point-to-point links, then you could have plenty of bandwidth. It's not as if the photon field cannot hold them all. When we broadcast in all directions, we waste energy, and we cause unnecessary interference to…

it was quite a while back but I read some press release about a manufacturer that would make an access point that had mechanically steered directional antennas. Unfortunately I don't think it ever made it to market.

That can help in one direction, but networks are bi-directional.

No matter how fancy and directive the antenna arrangement may be at the access point end, the other devices that use this access point will be using whatever they have for antennas.

The access point may be able to produce and/or receive one or many signals with arbitrarily-aimed, laser-like precision, but the client devices will still tend to radiate mostly-omnidirectionally -- to the access point, to eachother, and to the rest of the world around them.

The client devices will still hear eachother just fine and will back off when another one nearby is transmitting. The access point cannot help with this, no matter how fanciful it may be.

(Waiting for a clear-enough channel before transmitting is part of the 802.11 specification. That's the Carrier Sense part of CSMA/CA.)

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

#205

Post by BonoboIO » Sat, Oct 11, 2025, 5:45 AM UTC

ttshaw1 wrote: post #25

I don't get what the point of the article is. Is the takeaway that I should lower the channel width in my home? How many WAPs would I need to be running for that to matter? I'd argue it's more important to get everyone to turn down TX power in cases where your neighbors in an apartment building are conflicting. And that's never going to happen, so just conform to the legal limit and your SNR should be fine. Anything…

Everytime I have questions about Wi-Fi I search for this distinctive site wiisfi.com … I should bookmark this.

The best Ressource out there. Period.

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

#206

Post by varenc » Sat, Oct 11, 2025, 5:45 AM UTC

ttshaw1 wrote: post #25

I don't get what the point of the article is. Is the takeaway that I should lower the channel width in my home? How many WAPs would I need to be running for that to matter? I'd argue it's more important to get everyone to turn down TX power in cases where your neighbors in an apartment building are conflicting. And that's never going to happen, so just conform to the legal limit and your SNR should be fine. Anything…

The takeaway is that you'll probably experience more reliable wifi if you turn your 5ghz channel width down to 40mhz and especially make sure your 2.4ghz width is 20mhz not 40mhz. As noted, you can't do anything about the neighbors, but making these changes can improve your reliability. And I think the larger takeaway is that if manufacturers just defaulted to 40mhz 5ghz width, like enterprise equipment does, wifi would be better for everyone. But if your wifi works great then no need.

Also that's an amazing resource, thanks for linking.

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

#207

Post by varenc » Sat, Oct 11, 2025, 5:50 AM UTC

Apple has a draft specification for a better way of measuring network quality than just doing speed tests: https://github.com/network-quality/goresponsiveness

Their `networkQuality` implementation is on the CLI for any Mac recently updated. It's pretty interesting and I've found it to be very good at predicting which networks will be theoretically fast, but feel unreliable and laggy, and which ones will feel snappy and fast. It measures Round-trips Per Minute under idle and load condition. It's a much better predictor of how fast casual browsing will be than a speed test.

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

#208

Post by inkyoto » Sat, Oct 11, 2025, 5:50 AM UTC

drnick1 wrote: post #160

chrneu wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely. Your IoT devices should be on their own 2.4ghz network running on a specific channel to isolate them. You should also firewall these devices pretty heavily on their own router. The only devices on wifi should be cell phones and laptops if they can't be plugged in. Everything else, including TVs, should be ethernet. When I moved into my last house with roommates their network was gaaarbage cuz everything w…

My advice would be NOT to connect any kind of TV to the Internet. They have microphones and sometimes cameras, and are a huge privacy risk.

If one must forgo the comfort of complete isolation from the vulgarities of contemporary media and visual indulgence – an unwise choice, yet one that many appear compelled to make – then prudence demands mitigation rather than surrender.

A measured compromise would entail the meticulous profiling of the TV’s network traffic, followed by the imposition of complete blocking at the DNS level (via Pi-hole, NextDNS and alike) first, whilst blacklisting the outgoing CIDR's on the router itself at the same time.

This course of action shall not eliminate the privacy invasion risk in its entirety – for a mere firmware update may well redirect the TV traffic to novel hosts – yet it shall transform a reckless exposure into a calculated and therefore manageable risk.

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

#209

Post by toast0 » Sat, Oct 11, 2025, 5:52 AM UTC

protocolture wrote: post #144

paulddraper wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Where I live we have what seems like an unusual amount of fiber cuts... whenever the cable company or the phone company fiber is cut, at least one of the major wireless networks is offline too; maybe calls work, but data doesn't. They could potentially restore service through wireless backhaul, but they don't. They also rely on utility power and utility power outages longer than about 4 hours mean towers are going to turn off.

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

#210

Post by toast0 » Sat, Oct 11, 2025, 5:57 AM UTC

dpark wrote: post #59

jeffbee wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is not any meaningful sense in which 2.5gb ethernet is "standard". There are no TVs with 2.5gb ethernet ports. Or even 1gb ports. Yet they all have WiFi 5 or better.

In practical terms, WiFi 5 is slower than 1gb Ethernet. It is bizarre that they are putting 100mbps Ethernet ports on TVs though.

> It is bizarre that they are putting 100mbps Ethernet ports on TVs though.

It's not that bizarre. About the only media one might have access to that is above 100mbps is 4k blu-ray rips which can hit peaks above 100m; but TVs don't really cater to that. They're really trying to be your conduit to commercial streaming services which do not encode at that high of a bitrate (and even if they did, would gracefully degrade to 100Mbps). And then you can save on transformers for the two pairs that are unused for 100base-tx.