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This ^. It's really hard to believe in the theory that the WiFi bands are poorly regulated and all the routers are shouting at each other and fill the spectrum

This ^. It's really hard to believe in the theory that the WiFi bands are poorly regulated and all the routers are shouting at each other and fill the spectrum, when your routers can barely reach through 2-3 rooms and 1 floor, with no nearby stations to blame for interference. The issue is obviously the transmit power which is already set so low (while perhaps being on the maximum allowed settings) that the reach is already a couple of rooms. How much more weak could it even get? To only reach within one room? What would be the point of WiFi then?

wtallis 6y ago
The radius at which your WiFi AP causes interference with other networks is larger than the useful radius at which your client devices can maintain a decently fast connection speed. And for many APs with poor management of airtime, having a client device on the fringe of your coverage area can cause your router and that client device to both waste a disproportionate amount of airtime shouting at full TX power and a low data rate, maximizing the amount of interference you're causing to anyone else trying to make use of that channel.
- Erlich_Bachman 6y ago
  Yes but what is your proposed alternative? It is still the lowest possible amount of interference in terms of tx power. If you decreased it the WiFi would not even be useful (if it would only work within a single room)...
  - wtallis 6y ago
    Your claim that WiFi "can barely reach through 2-3 rooms and 1 floor, with no nearby stations to blame for interference" is simply not believable, when it's easily demonstrated that WiFi can cover a whole house and a good sized yard in a truly quiet RF environment. Without interference, covering a single apartment is no trouble at all unless the building materials for interior walls were maliciously chosen. I think you're simply misidentifying the cause of your connectivity issues, and blaming low transmit power when your real issue is that you have far more competing traffic on the 2.4GHz band than you think, and thus a shortage of quiet airtime. And lowering transmit power of everything (preferably done automatically and adaptively on a per-device basis) is the solution to the latter problem, while using higher transmit powers on everything can only make the latter problem much worse.
    - arpa 6y ago
      The materials involved also matter. You need significantly more power to get through concrete than you would need to get through paper.

wtallis 6y ago

The radius at which your WiFi AP causes interference with other networks is larger than the useful radius at which your client devices can maintain a decently fast connection speed. And for many APs with poor management of airtime, having a client device on the fringe of your coverage area can cause your router and that client device to both waste a disproportionate amount of airtime shouting at full TX power and a low data rate, maximizing the amount of interference you're causing to anyone else trying to make use of that channel.

Erlich_Bachman 6y ago
Yes but what is your proposed alternative? It is still the lowest possible amount of interference in terms of tx power. If you decreased it the WiFi would not even be useful (if it would only work within a single room)...
- wtallis 6y ago
  Your claim that WiFi "can barely reach through 2-3 rooms and 1 floor, with no nearby stations to blame for interference" is simply not believable, when it's easily demonstrated that WiFi can cover a whole house and a good sized yard in a truly quiet RF environment. Without interference, covering a single apartment is no trouble at all unless the building materials for interior walls were maliciously chosen. I think you're simply misidentifying the cause of your connectivity issues, and blaming low transmit power when your real issue is that you have far more competing traffic on the 2.4GHz band than you think, and thus a shortage of quiet airtime. And lowering transmit power of everything (preferably done automatically and adaptively on a per-device basis) is the solution to the latter problem, while using higher transmit powers on everything can only make the latter problem much worse.
  - arpa 6y ago
    The materials involved also matter. You need significantly more power to get through concrete than you would need to get through paper.