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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?

#31
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Eh flat Ethernet cables can easily be snaked all over with adhesive clips, and if you color match cable/clips/walls, it doesn’t look bad.

Visiting museum ships also showed me you can sometimes route cables over living and working spaces.

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

#32
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Eh flat Ethernet cables can easily be snaked all over with adhesive clips, and if you color match cable/clips/walls, it doesn’t look bad.

This is what I did. Takes minimal effort and then you never have to worry about it again.

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

#33
post #7

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…

Ethernet pretty much sucks and has not improved substantially in consumer devices since the previous century. It also has pretty severe idle power consumption consequences for PCs, unless you are an expert who goes around fixing that.

even with 1Gbit/s ethernet, measure latency. It will be smaller and more predictable than any wifi you can have.

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

#34
post #7

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…

Ethernet pretty much sucks and has not improved substantially in consumer devices since the previous century. It also has pretty severe idle power consumption consequences for PCs, unless you are an expert who goes around fixing that.

>Ethernet [...] has not improved substantially in consumer devices since the previous century.

We've gone from 100 Mbps being standard consumer level to 2.5 or 10 Gbps being standard now. That sounds substantial to me.

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

#35

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

Ethernet cables can be as long as 100meters, long enough to snake around most any apartment. Add on a few rugs to cover over where they'd be tripping hazards and you're all set.

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

#37

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

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 other receivers.

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

#38

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…

yes, and... convenience says 'use WiFi'. No wires! I've said, if it moves - wireless. If it doesn't -- wired. Counterexamples that 'work': AM / FM / TV / Paging big transmitters to simple/cheap receivers. For the 1-way case, that works. But for 2-way....
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