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The Wi-Fi Revolution (2003)

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Re: The Wi-Fi Revolution (2003)

#31

Post by kjellsbells »

danbolt wrote: post #27

When my parents had a house built in the early 2000s, my father was adamant that Ethernet should be wired to every room. It seemed like a good way to future-proof the building for the 21st century at the time. The year we moved in, tweenage me asked about connecting my Nintendo DS to the internet in order to play Animal Crossing online. I wonder if we would have done the Ethernet again if he knew that Wi-Fi was going…

Even with wifi, big houses or tough RF environments need mesh units to get ubiquitous wifi coverage. And there, ethernet wired backhaul is far, far superior to wireless. So maybe your dad was prescient in a different way.

The issue with wiring your house for Ethernet is that 2003-era Cat5 that a random builder or DIYer grabs from Home Depot isn't going to carry nearly as much as the Cat6A cable you would want if you need the cable plant to have a chance of keeping up with network capacity growth. But that needs quality installation.

Re: The Wi-Fi Revolution (2003)

#32

Post by cortesoft »

oskarkk wrote: post #19
cortesoft wrote: post #12

I still find it strange how people use the word “WiFi” to mean internet. For so many young people today, WiFi IS the internet. They have never plugged in an Ethernet cable in their life. I still get frustrated by WiFi, though, and never use it for my computers unless I had no choice. So many devices these days, the performance is still subpar. Packet loss on the best connections cause so many performance degradations…

> I still find it strange how people use the word “WiFi” to mean internet. For so many young people today, WiFi IS the internet. I don't think that's the case, people don't call mobile internet "WiFi". In their minds "WiFi" probably means "home internet", so it's more like they call LAN "WiFi", because they have never used cable connection.

Yeah, that’s true. I even thought about that when I was typing my comment but wasn’t sure the best way to articulate the difference, but I think you are right with it being about home internet vs cellular.

Although I really think it is just used to mean “non-phone based internet”, rather than just home internet.

Re: The Wi-Fi Revolution (2003)

#33

Post by kstrauser »

kjellsbells wrote: post #28
kstrauser wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, how I wish. I have 3 Firewalla AP7s to get decent coverage through my house. Its lath and plaster walls may as well be lead lined. You could put a CT scanner in my living room and not notice a thing 2 rooms away.

Lath and plaster walls have a distressing tendency to be lined with chicken wire mesh which really damages your chances of any radio signal getting through. Pictures for anyone wondering what it looks like: https://www.civilengineermag.com/chicken-mesh-for-plaster/ Wired wifi mesh or Ethernet all over would be my prescription. You basically have Faraday cages in every room right now!

I’ve strung CAT 6e from one end of the house to the other to link 2 of them. The 3rd’s in a place not amenable to cabling without way more effort than I’m up for, but it’s close enough to one of them that they mesh alright.

Re: The Wi-Fi Revolution (2003)

#34

Post by CursedSilicon »

davisr wrote: post #7

And the FCC just so happened to approve the spectrum of frequencies that human bodies absorb, turning each Wi-Fi hotspot into surveillance spotlight, and each handheld device into a unique beacon. With everything we know about NSA's influence in other government agencies (like NIST), I think it's entirely reasonable to ask, "why 2.4 GHz?" But I've not seen anyone ask that question here. I'd also wonder whether NRO ha…

Unfortunately in the real world, truth is far less interesting than fantasy

Re: The Wi-Fi Revolution (2003)

#35

Post by zer00eyz »

danbolt wrote: post #27

When my parents had a house built in the early 2000s, my father was adamant that Ethernet should be wired to every room. It seemed like a good way to future-proof the building for the 21st century at the time. The year we moved in, tweenage me asked about connecting my Nintendo DS to the internet in order to play Animal Crossing online. I wonder if we would have done the Ethernet again if he knew that Wi-Fi was going…

> I wonder if we would have done the Ethernet again if he knew that Wi-Fi was going to become so common.

Today, if your wiring up a house you put ethernet drops everywhere.

POE is a thing, and it's getting more popular.

Cameras, blinds, MM wave... It's almost to the point where one should be putting a media box in every closet as a mini wiring hookup.

Re: The Wi-Fi Revolution (2003)

#36

Post by esseph »

Gigachad wrote: post #29
dkarl wrote: post #9

Side note, it's interesting how common it is for tech-savvy people to wire their homes for ethernet (more common now than 10-15 years ago) and how it is still common, or at least not rare, for people reliant on wi-fi to suffer from video streaming issues. The underlying technology keeps getting better, so maybe the improvements will outpace the growth in congestion at some point -- fingers crossed that makers of apps…

Is congestion still an issue? Seems to me like after the switch from 2.4ghz to 5ghz, congestion stopped being a problem since wifi hardly leaves your own home. Amusingly, in my apartment sitting on the balcony, shutting the glass door would cause a total loss of connection, while leaving it open resulted in a very strong connection. The future is probably just having multiple wifi APs wired up and then just running e…

> The future is probably just having multiple wifi APs wired up and then just running extremely fast but low range wifi.

Well, what if you want wifi in your garden? Maybe you own a few acres of property and you want wifi for a wedding? Now you actually have to do a minor bit of planning. Supported wifi versions, max EIRP, range, modulation rate, throughput, XPIC, coverage area, frequency, beamwidth, MU-MIMO, does the frequency require prior coordination with any government entity, etc.

I'm just giving a different use-case on the other end of the spectrum, to be fair. I agree 100% with your analysis however, we're going to mmwave frequency ranges with small but many APs. Massive Multi User MIMO, etc.

Re: The Wi-Fi Revolution (2003)

#37

Post by esseph »

kjellsbells wrote: post #28
kstrauser wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, how I wish. I have 3 Firewalla AP7s to get decent coverage through my house. Its lath and plaster walls may as well be lead lined. You could put a CT scanner in my living room and not notice a thing 2 rooms away.

Lath and plaster walls have a distressing tendency to be lined with chicken wire mesh which really damages your chances of any radio signal getting through. Pictures for anyone wondering what it looks like: https://www.civilengineermag.com/chicken-mesh-for-plaster/ Wired wifi mesh or Ethernet all over would be my prescription. You basically have Faraday cages in every room right now!

Ethernet/fiber is far better in that scenario. You may even have better luck using existing coax and moca adapters than wifi in those scenarios.

Re: The Wi-Fi Revolution (2003)

#38

Post by mvkg »

Gigachad wrote: post #29
dkarl wrote: post #9

Side note, it's interesting how common it is for tech-savvy people to wire their homes for ethernet (more common now than 10-15 years ago) and how it is still common, or at least not rare, for people reliant on wi-fi to suffer from video streaming issues. The underlying technology keeps getting better, so maybe the improvements will outpace the growth in congestion at some point -- fingers crossed that makers of apps…

Is congestion still an issue? Seems to me like after the switch from 2.4ghz to 5ghz, congestion stopped being a problem since wifi hardly leaves your own home. Amusingly, in my apartment sitting on the balcony, shutting the glass door would cause a total loss of connection, while leaving it open resulted in a very strong connection. The future is probably just having multiple wifi APs wired up and then just running e…

5GHz certainly helps, but congestion/co-channel interference can still be an issue in high density environments, especially in a multi-user environment like an apartment complex where nothing is coordinated. The addition of 6GHz will help alleviate this problem too, but a lot of consumer gear seems to default to the widest channels possible.

Also, your glass door probably has Low-E glass which has a metallic coating.

> The future is probably just having multiple wifi APs wired up and then just running extremely fast but low range wifi.

This is somewhat the case, but it is limited. For example, in 5GHz there are 21x 20MHz channels available. In a highly dense environment, this can support roughly 30x devices per channel well and 50x devices per channel with some degradation.

Limiting the TX power on an AP can help, but it's not a panacea since clients always transmit their control frames at their default power (usually ~15dBm). There have been some improvements to this in .11ax, but depending on the spatial organization of the devices, it can only do so much.

Re: The Wi-Fi Revolution (2003)

#39

Post by zenoprax »

oskarkk wrote: post #19
cortesoft wrote: post #12

I still find it strange how people use the word “WiFi” to mean internet. For so many young people today, WiFi IS the internet. They have never plugged in an Ethernet cable in their life. I still get frustrated by WiFi, though, and never use it for my computers unless I had no choice. So many devices these days, the performance is still subpar. Packet loss on the best connections cause so many performance degradations…

> I still find it strange how people use the word “WiFi” to mean internet. For so many young people today, WiFi IS the internet. I don't think that's the case, people don't call mobile internet "WiFi". In their minds "WiFi" probably means "home internet", so it's more like they call LAN "WiFi", because they have never used cable connection.

I think if you're not "on Wifi" then you're "on data" (or perhaps "on 5G" if it's a social status thing). If one were to connect via Starlink then it would still be correct to say you were on Wifi I think but if you could hook up ethernet directly... I think most of us would say you're now "on satellite"?

I didn't even consider that the newest iPhones can connect to satellites directly.

Re: The Wi-Fi Revolution (2003)

#40

Post by sekh60 »

oskarkk wrote: post #19
cortesoft wrote: post #12

I still find it strange how people use the word “WiFi” to mean internet. For so many young people today, WiFi IS the internet. They have never plugged in an Ethernet cable in their life. I still get frustrated by WiFi, though, and never use it for my computers unless I had no choice. So many devices these days, the performance is still subpar. Packet loss on the best connections cause so many performance degradations…

> I still find it strange how people use the word “WiFi” to mean internet. For so many young people today, WiFi IS the internet. I don't think that's the case, people don't call mobile internet "WiFi". In their minds "WiFi" probably means "home internet", so it's more like they call LAN "WiFi", because they have never used cable connection.

I have a friend who, no matter how many times I have explained it, calls her Internet connection WiFi. I was really confused at first when she said she pays for Wi-Fi. She's 27.
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