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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?

#241

Post by b3lvedere »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #3
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…

> 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…

When i bought my house i was very pleasantly surprised the previous owners had installed pvc pipes from corner to corner (so at least three connnections per corner) when they installed floor heating. It made installing ethernet and speaker cables everywhere i needed so much easier. Should i ever require more than 1Gbit i could easily replace it for fast fiber cables.

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

#242

Post by chrismorgan »

gnabgib wrote: post #46
725686 wrote: post #36

"The average US household has 21 Wi-Fi devices"... wtf?

Doesn't take long to add up. Family of 4 - every phone, including prior generation which might be off in a draw: 3-8 Router, and extenders (multi floor house): 1-4 Chromecast|Sonos|Apple speaker/Chromecast|google|firestick|roku|apple TV/smart speaker/hifi receiver/eaves dropping devices: 2-10 Smart doorbell/light switch/temperature sensor/weather station/co2|co detector/flood detector/bulb/led strip/led light/nanolea…

The numbers still feel pretty outlandish to me.

The biggest factor in your count, and I think it is the one with the highest ceiling, is smart devices. Trouble is, even by sources like https://www.consumeraffairs.com/homeowners/average-number-of..., around half of all households still have zero, and the average household has only 2.6 people.

In this thread (from its root), we have various users defending the reasonableness of the numbers, some providing numbers in their own houses: 10, 11, 14, 17, 19, 23, 28, 34, over 50, 60+. Averaging, I’ll say, about 27, and that’s with two pretty big outliers—if you excluded them (maybe reasonable, maybe not), you’d be down to 19.5. And these sorts of users are already likely to be above-average, it’s the nature of HN, compounded by them being the ones commenting (confirmation bias). Yet already (with the fiddling of removing what I’m calling outliers) they’re under the claimed average. And for each one of them, there’s another household with zero smart home devices; and the 20% of the population with no broadband are, I imagine, effectively using zero wifi devices, though discounting in this way is a little too simplistic. However you look at it, the average will drop quite a bit. In fact, if you return to the original 27 and simplify the portion of the population without smart home devices to a 30% zero rate (mildly arbitrary, but I think reasonable enough as a starting point) and let the other 70% be average… your 27 has dropped to about 19. In order to reach the 21 across the population, you’d need to establish these HN users, defenders of high wifi device counts, to be below average users of wifi devices, which is implausible.

If the number was 10, I’d consider it plausible, though honestly I’d still expect the number to be lower. But I think my reasoning backs up my initial feeling that 21 is pretty outlandish for your national average. I’d like to see Deloitte Insights’ methodology; I reckon it’s a furphy. I bet it’s come from some grossly misleading survey data, or from sales figures of devices that are wifi-capable even though half of them never get used that way, or from terrible sampling bias (surveys are notorious for that), or something like that. Wouldn’t be the first wildly wrong or grossly misleading result one of those sorts of companies have published.

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

#243

Post by hopelite »

silversmith wrote: post #193
godelski wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'l…

There are times I do envy people living in stick houses with hollow walls.

Molding is your friend to create and hide channels, and it will make your place look more sophisticated than just the cube cave it is, my cave man friend.

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

#244

Post by kllrnohj »

dpark wrote: post #158
kiwijamo wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No video streams out there uses over 100mbits so makes sense.

I’ve read that 8k streams can exceed 100mbps. I have not dig very far into that though since I don’t have an 8k tv or any 8k sources.

Streaming services are extremely compressed. Netflix only recommendeds 15mbps for 4k, even. A naive straight quadrupling of that for 8k is only 60mbps, and in reality they'll just dial up the compression anyway and probably use a 30mbps stream.

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

#245

Post by izacus »

molszanski wrote: post #94
BadBadJellyBean wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Try Powerline. This €40 device will turn your electrical sockets into an 100-500 mbps Ethernet cable. Simple and efficient. Just check if sockets you want to connect are on the same circuit breaker. If yes, chances are really high it would work very well. I’ve connected a switch and a second access point with mine. Also I think they work best if there fewer of them on the same circuit. But not sure. Check first.

Powerline almost never comes close to performance of wifi in the same conditions.

It's literally wifi just over an even worse medium.

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

#246

Post by stacktraceyo »

arcanemachiner wrote: post #105
stacktraceyo wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I could have multiple modems coming into the house using the same provided cable. Why’s that not possible? When I was younger I went and bought a new modem so I could play halo on my Xbox in another room than where my parents had the original modem. Found out then I’d need to pay for each modem.

If you're not sure what a router is, you should probably look that up, because it sounds like you want another router.

I know what a router is lol. I just was wondering what are the available options to use all the coax connections already in the house so I could connect everything via Ethernet , if you wanted to avoid running Ethernet through the walls or don’t want Ethernet cables visible

When I was younger and before WiFi was a thing I naively thought I’d just plug in a new modem.

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

#247

Post by stacktraceyo »

sokoloff wrote: post #120
stacktraceyo wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I could have multiple modems coming into the house using the same provided cable. Why’s that not possible? When I was younger I went and bought a new modem so I could play halo on my Xbox in another room than where my parents had the original modem. Found out then I’d need to pay for each modem.

If you have coax, look into MoCA. I have one attic device on a MoCA connection and it runs very well.

How does the age of the copper affect performance. Will look into it thanks.

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

#248

Post by sahruum9 »

Tenemo wrote: post #216
chrneu wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He said SF with neighbors so I'm assuming condo/apartment. Probably less than 2000sq feet would be my guess. 5 aps for 60 devices is hilarious. I have over 120 devices running off 2 APs without issue. lol

You have 120 wifi-connected devices at home?? What kind of devices? 100 smart light bulbs or something like that? I'm just curious – I'm a relatively techy person and I have maybe 15 devices on my whole home network.

A smart home will definitely run those numbers up. I have about 60 WiFi devices and another 45 Zigbee devices and I'm only about halfway done with the house.

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

#249

Post by numpad0 »

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

Everyone gets one cord coming into the house and into the "master" router. You then branch it out to things you own through switches. The suggestion isn't to pay for multiple internets for each of your equipments.

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

#250

Post by everdrive »

Wifi sucks in general. You ever get on a video call and someone has starts talking like a robot? And then, out of pure superstition they start walking around their house hoping to "find" the better reception? And it never really works, but they keep trying it anyhow, and then they either say "maybe I need a better internet" or "but I have full bars." No information is really given to a normal (or in some cases, even technical users) which would allow them to actually correctly diagnose their problem. So like Skinner's pigeons, they just keep playing their ritual even though it has no effect.
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