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Reasons to turn down the transmit power of your Wi-Fi (2017)
- fxbl0i 8y agoMany of those depend on all of your neighbours doing the same thing. They won't, so you'll be the loser. I don't want to be the loser.
- deweller 8y agoThis is a great example of a prisoner's dilemma problem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisoner%27s_dilemma
- the-dude 8y agoOr https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons ?
- gpuhacker 8y agoMore a tragedy of the commons. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
- throw0101a 8y agoPeople may want to look at the "Criticism" section of that article, as the commons wasn't as big of a tragedy as people think it was when Garrett Hardin popularized the notion: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons#Critici... Garrett Hardin was a (neo)Malthusian: >Hardin blamed the welfare state for allowing the tragedy of the commons; where the state provides for children and supports over-breeding as a fundamental human right, Malthusian catastrophe is inevitable. Hardin stated in his analysis of the tragedy of the commons that "Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all."[1]:1244 Environmental historians Joachim Radkau, Alfred Thomas Grove and Oliver Rackham criticized Hardin "as an American with no notion at all how Commons actually work".[8] >In addition, Hardin's pessimistic outlook was subsequently contradicted by Elinor Ostrom's later work on success of co-operative structures like the management of common land,[9] for which she shared the 2009 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Oliver E. Williamson. In contrast to Hardin, they stated neither commons or "Allmende" in the generic nor classical meaning are bound to fail; to the contrary "the wealth of the commons" has gained renewed interest in the scientific community.[10] Hardin's work was also criticized[11] as historically inaccurate in failing to account for the demographic transition, and for failing to distinguish between common property and open access resources.[12][13] >Despite the criticisms, the theory has nonetheless been influential.[14] * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garrett_Hardin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garrett_Hardin
- _Microft 8y agoThe meaning of commons is here as described in the last sentence of the first paragraph: In this modern economic context, commons is taken to mean any shared and unregulated resource such as atmosphere, oceans, rivers, fish stocks, roads and highways, or even an office refrigerator. ...or WiFi spectrum.
- kstenerud 8y agoHardin was concerned primarily with overpopulation and the welfare state. His intention was to demonstrate that the welfare state contributes to overpopulation, which will doom us all. The more general concept of "tragedy of the commons" outgrew his incorrect assumption, and so his original theory and its criticisms are of little consequence outside of a historical curiosity.
- FabHK 8y agoAren't they structurally the same, just that one is with 2 players, while the other is with N players?
- chapium 8y agoThe commons typically concerns a shared public resource. PD normally concerns a decision that affects 2 players in a direct and immediate way. In PD both parties see every outcome as an immediate consequence of their decision.
- kiallmacinnes 8y agoYou're right in that, your neighbours likely won't do the same thing... But you loose nothing by turning the AP power down to a level that covers the necessary area... In a sense, it's lose-lose, but you can choose the higher ground... All that said - if you have multiple APs, then you absolutely want to tune the power levels, or you're only making yourself a looser!
- jrs235 8y ago*Loser not looser, lose not loose. Lose/loser is to not winning as loose/looser is to not tight. This mistake is prevalent even among HNers. Sorry for being pedantic.
- enobrev 8y agoI've noticed this one quite a bit recently on HN and reddit. I'm seeing it far more often than "they're, there, and their" and "your and you're" mistakes, to the point where I wondered if it were something localized (like color / colour or aluminum / aluminium).
- lukecameron 8y agoOne that I've noticed everywhere throughout the tech community is "it's" instead of "its". It seems unrelated to whether the article author is from a majority-English speaking country. And I see it on the blogs of companies big enough that I would assume proof read all of their posts. It sticks out like a sore thumb to me because my brain reads it as "it is", which does not fit.
- enobrev 8y agoI've also learned to read contractions in their extracted form in order to help me when editing. It's a similar trick to remembering spelling versions of every word, like "Wed-nes-day", or "Col-o-nel". Sometimes I think it's more bothersome than it's worth. I could really use my own environment variables for `IGNORE_GRAMMAR` and `IGNORE_SPELLING`.
- bluGill 8y agoIf you have two access points though it helps you.
- FabHK 8y ago1. The author goes to great length to explain that there is basically no downside, only upside to it. 2. The correct answer in the Prisoner's Dilemma is to cooperate, in my opinion.
- greycol 8y agoI love this[1] website which illustrates some of the nuances of the prisoners dilemma in a quite frankly great way. In fact I've deleted the rest of my post as I believe the website does a much better job of explaining how the correct answer to the prisoners dilemma changes depending on how the population behaves and how often they make mistakes. [1] https://ncase.me/trust/ https://ncase.me/trust/
- Baeocystin 8y agoThat is a really neat site. Thanks for sharing it.
- andai 8y agoI've seen some videos of people blocking wifi signals (both ways) with a cheap metal mesh. If you don't own the place you can put it on the inside. Only real issue is the image: it's like a tinfoil hat for your house! But you could put something more aesthetic over it again :) eg. embedding it in the wallpaper.
- snarf21 8y agoExactly, and they all have the crappy Comcast combo which advertises the extra XFINITY AP that I don't think you can turn off. As a Comcast customer, I have NEVER been able to connect to that and get data. 2.4 ghz is a sh!tshow and everyone is just spamming it with more and more noise.
- organsnyder 8y agoI've actually had pretty decent luck getting connectivity on the Xfinity networks. If my phone was better at quick handoffs between wifi and LTE while moving, it would be quite helpful in lowering my mobile data usage.
- ac29 8y agoYou can get it turned off by contacting customer service.
- baking 8y agoDon't pay the $10 monthly fee to rent a Comcast cable modem and instead buy your own cable modem and router for $110. Side benefit: no extraneous Xfinity AP clogging up your precious wifi bandwidth.
- snarf21 8y agoYeah, I don't but literally all the neighbors do.
- maeln 8y agoIn a residential building with no central authority on how AP are distributed, it seems to be a impossible task. I don't see myself explaining this kind of technical stuff to my neighbors and going door by door configuring each of their AP. But this is a very good reminder for people who set up wireless network at events, schools, ... My school had huge thick concrete wall that basically killed any Wi-Fi signal. But for some reason, instead of having more cheap AP distributed more evenly, the guys handling it insisted on putting 1-2 big expensive AP in each building, which meant that the Wi-Fi was unusable in most of the classroom. Not really cleaver when most of your classes require you to be connected to the internet.
- linsomniac 8y agoLess an issue with 5 GHz, because drywall does a fairly effective job of blocking signal. Not entirely, but quite a lot. Which is why I have 4 mesh APs in our 1700 sqft house: One in each of the rooms where we use wireless most, and one in the middle. We went from having spotty Internet to it being really solid. I think we have some neighbors that have devices that interfere with 2.4G (cordless phone? Microwave? Baby monitor?)
- aivisol 8y ago> The bidirectional connection is symmetrical. It doesn’t matter if the AP has a better antenna or is located higher up. The antennas and amplifiers work symmetrically in both directions. It does matter if antenna is located higher up. This will allow it to pickup weaker signal from clients. Better antenna is also probably more sensitive.
- abstractbarista 8y agoA good point. If your antenna has more gain with respect to some client, you can both: 1) Hear them better 2) Yell at them louder (While holding all else equal like transmit power, line loss in the coax...)
- superice 8y agoYeah, that sticks out like a sore thumb in an otherwise accurate article. Antennas have a certain radiation pattern for transmitting, but there is also improved reception in the directions it radiates strongly in. With wifi, there is usually little you can do since you probably want a spherical radiation pattern, which prevents you from getting any significant gain over a perfect isotropic radiator, but that's a different story.
- muxator 8y agoSpherical -> Toroidal
- ragebol 8y agoProbably also giver you higher probability to have line-of-sight, especially in a crowd. Less walking bags of absorbent human bags of water in the way.
- aivisol 8y agoExacty, that is why we have cell towers, not streetside cabinets. Both indoors and outdoors people and other obstacles try to clutter around ground/floor level more.
- 8y ago
- jnty 8y agoThe roaming point is very interesting - I do have a problem with devices 'hanging on' to the wrong AP in my home. I'm gonna try it!
- kiallmacinnes 8y agoAnother few possibilities for this which were not mentioned in the article: * Check that all your APs are broadcasting the same name. No devices I know of will naturally roam to an AP with a different name. * Check that all your APs are broadcasting identical security features (e.g. WPA1, WPA2, WPA1 or WPA2 .. as well as the encryption methods like TKIP, AES/CCMP, etc). Many devices will check these too, and roam only to matching APs.
- throwmeback 8y agoSome devices also have a AP priority list, it's worth checking out if they can be modified (e.g. like on macOS).
- jnty 8y agoYeah, same name and security (otherwise it would presumably never work.) The problem is the in-between area where there's bad reception for one and good reception for another.
- gsich 8y agoThere are protocols for roaming, like 802.11k, 11r and 11v.
- aequitas 8y agoI've heard at tech conferences like CCC instead of using a few big powerful AP's at central and high locations, they put lower power units in between the audience's seats. Humans, as water bags, are good at dampening signals. So you end up with a lot of small networks cells with high throughput, that don't interfere with each other. Compared to the few big central cells where thousands of devices are fighting for the same frequency slots.
- oneowl 8y agoYep I think this is a very good idea too. It is a way of reusing existing spectrum space. Besides small cell networks use low powers and being portable they can deployed on demand. In fact small cell networks might be how the networks are deployed in future. Website below has some interesting research on this topic https://www.smallcellforum.org/ https://www.smallcellforum.org/
- dontbenebby 8y agoVery interesting work. One unintended side effect of this is that tracking becomes incredibly precise. Well, to be fair wifi tracking was already fairly precise but soon cellular tracking will have similar granularity: https://www.fastcompany.com/90314058/5g-means-youll-have-to-say-goodbye-to-your-location-privacy https://www.fastcompany.com/90314058/5g-means-youll-have-to-...
- cogman10 8y agoIt is exactly how networks are being deployed. 5G's biggest advance is short range high speed data transmission at high frequencies. Network operators are going to end up deploying tons of tiny cell transmitters throughout cities. The biggest catch is getting the backbone in place to service all those tiny towers.
- stefan_ 8y agoIf I remember correctly from CCC, they had APs hanging from the ceiling on PoE cables.
- rb808 8y agoBest thing I did was wire my house with cat6, so my TV, computer, server, security cam, nas and printer are all wired. Its so worth the effort. Wifi is now for a rarely used laptop and phones.
- sergius 8y agoDon't forget Ethernet over Power... works great on some houses and you don't need to lay out cables. But if you can nothing beats wiring the hole house.
- josteink 8y agoIn my experience this works worse in newer houses with modern (more complex, less transparent) electrical systems, and at best you get sub-WiFi speeds. You have little to lose by trying, but there’s no guarantee it will work at all, even less work well.
- gameswithgo 8y agoIt has improved a lot in the last few years, in case your experience was from a few years ago.
- PaulHoule 8y agoI have a very old house and it works well for me. I think you do best to have just two stations in a powerline network situation because the contention and overhead of contention control is much less. (Compare that to gigabit ethernet which is full duplex and switched so there is little or no contention) You can connect a "distant" powerline NIC to an ethernet switch and plug multiple devices into that if they are close together, that works better than plugging in multiple powerline NICs. Unfortunately new houses have circuit breakers that detect broadband noise caused by arcing. These are good for catching fires early, but will blow if you use powerline NICs.
- mcguire 8y agoI have an older house that has been expanded several times, with some rather amateurish wiring. One outlet works, the one next to it doesn't. Slow speed, interruptions that require resets... Google wifi pucks work much better, in spite of the cinder block walls.
- alimbada 8y agoCan't this be fixed with smarter software in the AP that can: * Dynamically adjust the power level to match the furthest client * Boost the power level on an interval to check if there are clients further away waiting to connect Additionally, what do mesh Wi-Fi networks do when clients are holding onto a connection? Are they smart enough to know that another node has a stronger signal to the client and trigger a disconnect from the clients' current node so that the it can associate with the stronger node?
- josteink 8y agoI’m no expert on these matters, but WiFi roaming is covered by 802.11r and WiFi-meshes by 802.11s. I assume these specs include mandated behavior in both the APs and the clients.
- admax88q 8y agoTraditionally roaming is left to the client device and most implementations are so bad that they won't give up on an old AP so long as they're seeing beacons every year or so. Who cares that I haven't successfully received a packet in the last hour, it's sure better than the 2 second interruption we'll get if we tried to switch. I'm only mildly bitter at the useless roaming behaviour of most clients. Turning transmit power down doesn't really help either. Some clients will roam better but other clients at the edge of the coverage now have no coverage.
- josteink 8y agoUsing software on my smartphone I can observe that it changes AP it associates with as I walk around the house where I have a “traditional” 802.11r WiFi network with common wired backend. No new DHCP is triggered either. So it may not be perfect, but it can’t be that bad.
- jtmarl1n 8y agoWhat do you use to verify which AP your device is connected to? I've not found a convenient way to do this for testing.
- AFascistWorld 8y agoJust use 5G mode.
- zamadatix 8y agoIn a suburb sure but apartment 5 is often more crowded than suburb 2.4.I can't wait for 6 to open up...
- AFascistWorld 8y agoI can't fathom the situation you described since 5.8GHz has far more unoverlapped channels instead of just 3.
- baking 8y agoHe said "apartment 5 is often more crowded than suburb 2.4" 2.4 is unusable in an apartment building because the range is so great. I live in a 3 unit so I am happy with my 5 Ghz but in a very dense building I could see problems.
- oneowl 8y ago2.4ghz also has 3 non overlapping channels (iirc). Most people use the default channel of their WiFi so if you choose a different channel you can get a better signal at a lower power. Edit If you want low coverage area it would also not be such a bad idea to use the 5ghz frequency if your router supports it. Much less crowded shorter range by default and higher speeds
- rzwitserloot 8y agoWiFi routers will hop to less congested channels automatically these days; the odds that your neighbourhood has lots of WiFi base stations you can see, but there is still a frequency that's almost entirely free is _very_ low.
- oneowl 8y agoYou are correct. Most router these days select channels automatically. But the automatic channel selection is not very accurate in my personal observation as well as that of a few others on the internet [1]. Wish it were better though. I feel that there are numerous problems in automating the channel selection 1. We have to make sure that this happens without any downtime otherwise there is poor QOS. If the router has to reboot to choose a channel you're out of internet for about 5-10 minutes. It can be very frustrating if it happens often. 2. As if that was not enough you have to draw extra power to scan nearby access points and constantly react to the changing signals. (This would also defeat the point of using low power signals) In my opinion it is better to tune the routers manually than to set it on automatic channel selection. > the odds that your [...] is _very_ low Yes unfortunately that is true. There is little we can do about it. But there is one redeeming factor. As per my understanding interference depends not only on the base access point but also on the client. In other words the channels will deteriorate if the communication link that is the pairing of client with the access point interferes with the signals of another access point. On low ranges you can create mini line of sight networks that will happily co exist with any number of signals. Example wifi on laptop working with bluetooth mouse. [Router] --------- [laptop] | | [mouse] It is not such a good example because signals at such a small distance are strong enough to overcome any interference but the principle stands in other conditions as well. [1]https://superuser.com/questions/1311149/why-do-wifi-routers-do-such-a-bad-job-of-channel-selection https://superuser.com/questions/1311149/why-do-wifi-routers-...
- otterpro 8y agoI was just thinking about this. My idea was to have the power low enough so that WIFI is restricted to a very small area of the house. It would be like a smoking area, except it would be for WIFI usage. For personal application, I wanted to create a WIFI-free zone for the family in the living room and other common area, so that we're less distracted, while we have WIFI in the other parts of the house. Of course, we still get 4G signal, but it is very weak where I live, and we are also on pre-pay plan on Tracfone so we are discouraged from using data on 4G.
- zoobab 8y agoI tried to explain to Battlemeshers that they should tune down their radios to 1dbm. They kept the settings to "auto" or to 18dbm.
- amiga-workbench 8y agoI've got 4 Unifi AP's spread around the office and turning the transmit power down has solved the issue of clingy MacBooks not migrating to the closest AP as people move between rooms.
- linsomniac 8y agoThis is what I did when running the WiFi at PyCon. For 5GHz we generally had enough channels that we could run higher power, but for 2.4GHz I would run it on the lowest power settings. I'd also set the APs on the tables, rather than trying to elevate them, so that the bodies would limit propagation. Whenever someone asked, which happened at least a couple times each conference, I explained it like this: Imagine you have 10 groups in the ballroom all trying to have discussions. Turning the power up is like giving each group a bullhorn: the whole room becomes a noisy mess. Lower power is like each group gathering close and talking at normal volume. It worked well, mostly because the venue-provided wireless at the time were all trying the "few, big AP" solution. More details are in a series of blog posts I did, starting with: https://www.tummy.com/articles/pycon2007-network/ https://www.tummy.com/articles/pycon2007-network/
- noobermin 8y agoRandom question then. In your experience, do people who set up the conference halls the nation over understand physics (geometry and logic, really).
- 420codebro 8y agoProbably not at the level you are thinking. They bring in consultants for this stuff. You can be assured any new building had extensive wireless analysis / site surveys done to maximize coverage.
- poorman 8y agoSomeone should create an app that detects wifi APs that are transmitting at high power so you can track them down. It would be super useful for someone like me where there are dozens of different APs in an apartment building all competing with each other. Then I could kindly go to my neighbor and ask/assist them in turning theirs down.
- mises 8y agoI've used this one before, and it does a good job: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.farproc.wifi.analyzer&hl=en_US https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.farproc.wi... It's great for finding unused channels for your AP.
- purplezooey 8y agoBut my neighbor is a jackass that reports my garbage cans to the HOA all the time. I ain't turning down shiiiat.
- OrgNet 8y agoIf you are in a HOA, you have bigger fish to fry
- magduf 8y agoFight fire with fire: report him for trivial stuff, or even for things you did via sabotage.
- jimmaswell 8y agoYou couldn't pay me enough to live in an HoA. They should be illegal. Land is scarce enough already without those mobs ruining so much of it. If my neighbor wants to cover their lawn in rusted cars and paint their house pink so be it. I've heard if you install a giant ham radio tower they're not legally allowed to do anything about it. Any little bit of sticking it to those organizations is a good thing.
- mises 8y agoA good reason why, at least in Houston, is no zoning. I had a friend who had every area outside the HOA taken over and covered with office buildings, apartment complexes, etc. by stupid MetroNational. There's now a very abrupt line between the all residential pocket and the towers, mall, etc.
- drewg123 8y agoWhat about all the wifi direct printers? Inside my house, on 1/3 of an acre (so not up against neighbors), the strongest 2.4GHz signals I see are from 2-3 HP printers in houses around me. This includes my own 2 Ubiquity APs that are inside my house. I even noticed that I have a device screaming on 5GHz .. an Nvidia Shield. AFAICT, I cannot turn that off, even if I disable wifi. I hate wifi direct.
- MayeulC 8y agoTry ripping the Wi-Fi module out, if you're certain you won't need it. I wish we had free software on those...
- shittyadmin 8y agoThe Shield uses WiFi Direct to connect to controllers, so it'd pretty much kill the point of the device if you were to fully disable WiFi Direct on it.
- drewg123 8y agoThe game controller is in a drawer.. I use a BT Harmony remote to control it. So I could not care less if the controller didn't work.
- zippergz 8y agoThese printers are a bane of my wifi existence too. I live in a suburban neighborhood with overall very little 2.4GHz interference, but there are three HP printers in range which seem to absolutely BLAST their signals.
- bluedino 8y agoI once worked somewhere that purchased an individual printer for every user. Talk about a nightmare in costs and consumables. The idea was people would gather around shared workgroup copiers/printers like a watercooler and waste time. Anyways, having hundreds of these in an office lead to some interesting WiFi scans.
- 8y ago
- nautilus12 8y agoAren't there also possible health considerations with running 5G as well? I feel like there is some preliminary data that its not good to be sitting in a bath of 5G all day long. Can someone comment?
- justatdotin 8y agomaybe? but first I'd like to identify the mode of harm. How would this low-energy, non-ionising radiation present a biological impact? The theories I've heard (induced currents in the dna base stack? magnetic stimulation of cryptochrome that modulates intracellular reactive oxygen species?) describe very rare, unlikely and low (negligible?) impact. I am open to the theory of hypersensitivity, however I've never found anyone who suffers it.
- woetoh 8y agohttps://europaem.eu/attachments/article/131/2018-04_EU-EMF2018-5US.pdf https://europaem.eu/attachments/article/131/2018-04_EU-EMF20... These studies indicate a mechanism of EMF stimulation on voltage-gated ca++ channels. Personally, I've never noticed issues with RF-EMF until I tested my sleep using the oura ring. WiFi didn't seem to bother my sleep but shutting off the power to my bedroom at the breaker improved my sleep tremendously. Even if their effects on sleep are small, the negative, non-linear health impact of sleep loss is significant...to me. Maybe in 20 years we'll view EMFs akin to cigarettes, maybe not. I'm not wearing a tinfoil hat just yet but it has changed the way I intreact with these non-native frequencies. It seems prudent to take simple precautions like avoiding microwave use, utilizing airplane mode and turning off/unplugging appliances, lights and WiFi when not in use.
- mises 8y agoI'm not sure, but it's worth noting that we will all be exposed to much higher levels than anyone dealt with in the past. It's possible we just haven't had enough non-ionizing radiation to notice it, but a lifetime of exposure to 5G could cause heretofore unknown problems.
- korethr 8y agoWhile I generally agree with this article, and turned down the transmit power on my AP in my apartment to be neighborly, coordinating this across the many APs present in a residential area is tricky. In my experience, many of your neighbors are going to be running either the stock AP provided by the ISP, or some "gaming class" thing that advertises very optimistic speeds. In either case, you're going to be fighting with stock firmware. And it seems to me that the stock firmware of most consumer-grade APs doesn't expose options like channel assignment or Tx power, not even behind a secret advanced settings page with a big scary "You will void your warranty" header. To compare the stock firmware on most consumer-grade APs to a dumpster fire is to commit a gross and unjustifiable insult to dumpster fires. When I tried to coordinate better channel assignment and transmit power with my neighbors in my apartment complex, the effort very quickly died for the reasons above. Most neighbors didn't know or care about the settings on the magic box that made their Netflix or Xbox work, and even if they did, the config options simply weren't there. I wish there were more I could do to change this situation. As it is, all I can do is vote with my wallet and buy less horrible brands like Ubquiti, where advanced options like channel assignment and Tx power are available to me if I want them.
- mikelward 8y agoI get a higher signal strength from my neighbor's Xfinity/Pegatron than my own access point on max power.
- anonu 8y agoAnother solution for the 2.4GHz range and if you have a slightly more advanced router: switch to channels 12 and 13 in low-powered mode. In the US you'll be operating on channels that I would suspect 99% of APs don't operate in by default. Channel 14 is only allowed in Japan - illegal in USA.
- sytelus 8y agoThe article proposes reasons such as interference and generally being nice to neighbours. I actually do this just to reduce RF radiation at microwave frequency in my environment due to potential long term health consequences. Research on this has lot of contradiction with most governments saying there is no impact but some saying there is adverse health effects due to long term RF exposure. Why to take chance when you don't have to?
- devonkim 8y agoDecades into the future I will be an old man screaming that wireless will never replace wired networking while some insane people have come up with real-world 10 Gbps wi-fi connections. The realities of wireless communications don't seem to have changed much since the early days of wi-fi at 802.11b and prior and while wired networking has somewhat hit a wall for consumers in the datacenter it's still kicking ass and taking names at 400 Gbps and software is among the bigger limitations than the hardware.
- tehsauce 8y ago"It doesn’t matter if the AP has a better antenna or is located higher up." Why is this?
- musicale 8y agoYes, please do this!