Wireless Networking → 802.eleventy what? A deep dive into why Wi-Fi kind of sucks

quote:

---

The good news is that it doesn't have to suck, if you build it out properly.

---

»arstechnica.com/informat ··· f-sucks/

quote:

---

Testing Wi-Fi is a mess.

---

The TL;DR version of this... and why I laugh and die alittle inside everytime someone posts on
DSLR saying "My speeds suck over wifi! What gives?" or "I need more range on my wifi!"

Regards

And generally why I and many others always recommend wired wherever possible. Desktop PC's should NEVER need to rely on Wifi as a permanent connection. In my own house everything is wired down except for the strictly mobile devices. Meaning laptops and phones. And they generally aren't bandwidth hungry 90% of the time.

Heck, go pick up a Powerline adapter set if you can't string Cat5/6. I would have never suggested these before but after my brother started using them in his house and getting a feel for them personally, they've gotten pretty good. You certainly won't get full gigabit but it will be stable and reliable.

My biggest gripe of all concerning Wifi essentially boils down to all consumer focused hardware having auto selection algorithims and user selectable settings open with the ability to break core co-existence rules that should be forced by default. Primarily 2.4Ghz channels and allowing selections other than 1, 6, and 11. We're dealing with a vast majority of idiots and the dangerous ones are those that go in and 'tweak' things. A lot of settings that are able to cause issues with co-existence with other gear needs to be heavily restricted. Tx power should have some mechanism provided out of the box to easily measure your house and adjust to your specific scenario. Smartphone app that will constantly communicate what signal it sees to the router? If not used, default to something like 50% output.

And then you have consumer focused hardware that is built down to a price and just barely meets expectations.

Just a note that the Ars Technica article was also mentioned in today's (March 6) Monday Morning Links on the DSL Reports home page.

When said device can hit 500mbps+ consistently via WiFi and nothing faster is needed and there is no issue of disconnections why bother?

Now if you can't get the speed you need or the reliability you need sure. But to say as a blanket statement always wire a desktop seems short sighted.

Just saying.

EDIT: minor typo

That's a difficult constraint to reach on a "Desktop" PC. The one I use at work doesn't even have a WiFi card. Even uf that you can do that (my MBP has 3x3 and can do 600Mbs) only one device at a time per AP can achieve that rate. All my wired devices can get maximum performance simultaneously (700-900 depending on the device) given an equal number of sources or sinks.

More and more desktops are coming with WiFi, even AC wifi.That would fall under the "if you can't get the speed you need or the reliability you need sure." part, but if you dont need multiple devices on WiFi hitting 500mbps again why waste time/money/effort running a wire.

The comments on that article are hilarious. A bunch of propeller heads arguing the arcane, oblivious to the obvious.

Par for the course on their forums

I've got good quality kit deployed but I've never seen a network where there wasn't a clear difference in speed and ping (both overall latency and jitter) between wired Ethernet and wireless. My vote is for mobile devices only. I even mostly run my laptops hardwired.

Good for you, but you are missing my point.In the case i talking about said system can get 500mbps, sure it could get a gig if wired, dosnt need it, sure it could go from 1-5 maybe 10ms pings its seeing to the gateway down to a solid 1ms, but again dosn't effect whats it doing, it has no reliability issue with said connection, so again why spend the money and time and effort to run a cable to the device when there would be no notable benefit.

And that's my point, not EVERY device really needs a wired connection. and it is stupid to suggest without taking into account of what that device is doing or the environment its in.

OTOH, some of us are very old school. I come from a background where I supported the old DoD TEMPEST program. When your training/instinct is to block all RF emissions, then using WiFi unless there is no other choice is unthinkable.

When I first started using Ethernet in my own office, I originally used RG-58 coax (as did many of my clients at the time), and the next step when I upgraded to 100mbps was shielded cat5 (I relented and used unshielded cat5e in my current office). Old habits die hard.

FWIW, I still have several of these in a box in my workshop:

Would make a great addition to your shadow box

WiFi is awesome.

That said I have a policy of when possible any stationary device gets hard wired. Not just for speed or security but also frees up wireless bandwidth for things that do move about.