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Neighbour manages to pollute the 2.4 ghz spectrum with his 120 IoT devices
- phendrenad2 5y agoThis neighbor must be some kind of tech reviewer or IoT QA engineer working from home. Would be cool to hear their story.
- Evidlo 5y agoThese responses bring back memories of Yahoo Answers.
- XorNot 5y agoWhat's really baffling is how this is a problem if he just wants to use his laptop or something? Like 5ghz is everywhere these days.
- silly-silly 5y agoNot everyone has 5ghz laptops.
- XorNot 5y agoAnd not all IoT is 5ghz. The spectrum is free to use, so I'm incredibly unsympathetic to him.
- SilverRed 5y agoGoing to be easier to buy a 5ghz usb than fix someone elses flooding.
- imhoguy 5y agoOr sometimes even nicer with replacement of PCIe/M.2 WiFi card.
- Havoc 5y agoTrue. Replacing the wireless card with a modern wifi 6 card is trivial and not particularly expensive either though.
- xvector 5y ago5Ghz doesn’t work well in a lot of houses. Weird geometry, thick walls, etc.
- bartvk 5y agoI live in an old, three story brick house from the 1930. It's small, 100 m² (1075 sq.ft.). The 5 GHz from my Airport Express can barely reach the kitchen. My solution is to put additional APs in the house, but with low transmit power. I use 25 mW personally. But then again, the chances that the neighbor will agree to this, are slim to none.
- tr1ll10nb1ll 5y agoOne of the comments is just borderline suspicious activity though. Anyway, hope you sort this out without having to nuke your neighbor's connection.
- throwaway8581 5y agoCrazy thought, but maybe communicate with them and try to work out a solution?
- devenblake 5y agoAnd lose the chance to rant about it on the Internet?!
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- silly-silly 5y agoI've had similar problems in my neighbourhood, I can't honestly find out who it is.. i kinda know the direction, and have tried talking to each of the units and everyone denies it is them.
- MikeTheGreat 5y agoFirst - that's definitely super frustrating and I'm sorry you're dealing with it. It's possible that the person who's causing the problem doesn't know they're the problem. Like, if the underlying cause of this problem is "not super techno-savvy" then they might not realize what they're doing :)
- lrvick 5y agoDrones are great for pinpoint WiFi mapping. :)
- TeMPOraL 5y agoSo is a Yagi antenna, and you can make the latter out of scrap :).
- kwyjobojoe 5y agoIf a neighbour asks you to turn off half your devices indefinitely so their network works better, what exactly are you supposed to do?
- stirlo 5y agoAll Tuya based devices are 2.4ghz only. Considering the scale of that ecosystem it's unsurprising this has occurred. I have around 40 devices in my home already...
- noodlesUK 5y agoSurely the solution with someone with that much kit is to turn the TX power wayyy down. I guess it depends how close your neighbours are too, and what kind of building they have.
- zoomablemind 5y ago> ... to turn the TX power wayyy down Exactly! That's what it was supposed to be. A wifi-neighborly approach - have your local coverage at minimum needed power and with lower pollution. Except that all wifi-devices would be factory configured at increasingly higher 'medium' power setting. I had fun with just the worst case scenario - 20m away is a glass condo tower right in front of my windows (the list of loud networks is endless), 100m away is a cell-tower. The RF interference from the cell tower so bad across all bands that I could hear it even in radio speakers. Yet, I still get steady browsing speads over my wifi (loud it is), just not practical NAS speeds, so wire does it.
- korethr 5y agoI actually tried coordinating an effort like this with my neighbors when I lived in an apartment complex. That effort very quickly died, for most neighbors not knowing much about their wifi other than that the box with blinking lights made the Internet go, and not a single stock firmware I encountered exposing a TX power setting anywhere in the configuration interface. Hopefully someone with that much kit would be the kind enthusiast who'd be running firmware that allows you to turn TX power below 100%, but it could just as likely be someone who really likes being able to set their light bulb color from their iPhone.
- nly 5y agoMany ISP provided modems (with built in WiFi) don't let you control this setting.
- KozmoNau7 5y agoI put up an AP at the other end of my apartment from where my router sits, chose non-overlapping 5GHz channels with no interference from neighbors, tuned the transmit power so the signal level from each sits at around -60dBm where they overlap, and got everything 2.4GHz-only either wired with ethernet or replaced. Now I just wish my neighbors would do the same, but I am not going to be the one to suggest it. If I fix up their networking, I will forever be on the hook if anything goes wrong or they face intermittent outages. Been there, done that, didn't even get a t-shirt. Unpaid network janitor is not something I need to add to my resume. Perhaps one could make work as a network tech for home users, but I feel like people either don't want to pay for it, or don't care because it's "good enough".
- walrus01 5y agoYou should see 2.4 GHz noise floor when viewed from a spectrum analyzer in a densely populated, 5-floor, wood framed condo/apartment in a major urban area. Prototypical example would be some place in south lake union seattle. https://archive.curbed.com/2018/12/4/18125536/real-estate-modern-apartment-architecture https://archive.curbed.com/2018/12/4/18125536/real-estate-mo... https://crosscut.com/2015/04/the-new-seattle-where-everything-looks-the-same https://crosscut.com/2015/04/the-new-seattle-where-everythin... a "one plus five" looks like this, structurally: https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DZ2BLyticQE/VRMjELb1DYI/AAAAAAAAXHI/ic2uYMsuUhc/s1600/IMG_9409.JPG https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DZ2BLyticQE/VRMjELb1DYI/AAAAAAAAX... Since 2.4 GHz goes through wood fairly effectively to moderate distances, it's a total half duplex CSMA hell... One possible mitigation if you have older 2.4 GHz only devices is to run your own wifi on a 20 MHz channel, sacrificing throughput for better SNR. As channel sizes get narrower it cuts through the noise floor a little bit better. And of course to use your own choice of the cleanest 5.x GHz channel for everything you care about.
- Lammy 5y agoThey propagate signal about as well as they propagate fire
- foota 5y agoMy understanding is that wood structures compare similarly to others in a fire: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF01095562 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF01095562
- Lammy 5y agoIt's not just the material but the arrangement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-plus-five#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-plus-five#Criticism e: The study you linked is also a decade older than the type of construction we're talking about :)
- manuel_w 5y agoFun fact: Wooden doors propagate fire less then metal doors. That's because metal doors just heat up and set what's behind the door on fire, while wooden doors consume the heat. The opposite side of the doors stays cooler than a metal door would.
- xvector 5y agoI wish Zigbee didn’t pollute the WiFi frequency space either. Looks like Z-Wave is my only option, despite it being an inferior, closed protocol. It looks like the home automation community prefers Z-Wave for critical, high availability devices for this reason.
- ashneo76 5y agoIt is "open" now. Except the certification process is centralized which gives better ux compared to zigbee http://embedded-computing.com/articles/z-wave-opens-up-as-smart-home-connectivity-battle-closes-in/ http://embedded-computing.com/articles/z-wave-opens-up-as-sm...
- motiejus 5y agoYou may want to consider mqtt-based devices like tasmota or shelly, if you prefer off-the-shelf products. I have a few dozen stock shellies in my apt., all controlled via mqtt. All of them are disconnected from the internet. Works well.
- meepmorp 5y agoWhat does mqtt have to do with 2.4GHz spectrum congestion?
- motiejus 5y agoIt has with proprietary protocols :)
- meepmorp 5y agoZigBee isn’t proprietary, It’s an open standard on top of 802.14.5. MQTT is for command and response dispatch; communication with the devices still takes place over a network like e.g., ZWave, ZigBee, WiFi. The problem is that 2.4GHz is noisy as fuck, regardless of who’s making the noise or how. ZWave is only better because they use 900MHz.
- 5y ago
- perryizgr8 5y agoI am willing to cede the entire 2.4GHz spectrum to IoT devices. We can use 5GHz and 6GHz for full-fat internet devices (TV, laptop, phone). This is what I've done at my home.
- otabdeveloper4 5y agoGood idea, but 5Ghz doesn't work for many building materials. I had to go back to 2.4 to get reception further than 1 meter from the AP.
- perryizgr8 5y agoA single AP is useless with 5GHz. You should look into mesh systems, and try to get one with a wired backhaul for even better coverage. I splurged a bit on my mesh, but I'm glad I did. I have never experienced Wifi coverage so good in my life.
- dfoxinator 5y agoSame thing happens in my apartment, so much congestion it's ridic.
- crmrc114 5y agoI have over 80 IOT devices and three aps. I also live in the middle of nowhere. That being said, I like how all the commenters just go straight to de-auth attacks. The proper solution is to get up knock on the door and talk to them about their signals, ask if they can clear one channel for you. Work with them. OR just you know, buy a router made in the last five years that supports decent 5ghz range and mount it up high.
- gnarbarian 5y agoTalk to your neighbor!?! What is this 1950?
- k3liutZu 5y ago> What year is this, 2019?
- walrus01 5y agoOn the other hand, somebody so uninformed on the fundamentals of half-duplex wifi that they would choose to use mesh network extenders everywhere all on the same channel, is a person that I would rate as highly unlikely to listen to a logically reasoned technical explanation.
- recursive 5y ago> so uninformed on the fundamentals of the FCC part 15 that ... You mean... basically everyone?
- IntelMiner 5y agoMany years ago I lived in an apartment complex mostly populated by Comcast employees, with those horrid Comcast modems that broadcast two 2.4Ghz AP's a piece (Yours and the "xfinitywifi" hotspot) My laptop picked up about 140 AP's from the couch. I could copy files from my NAS over Wi-Fi at a blistering 6KB/s! Sometimes bursting to 25KB/s
- bscphil 5y agoThat's kind of surprising, actually, I'd expect a bunch of techy types to be running their own routers or at least to have manually configured their router. At least, assuming everyone in the building has Comcast as an ISP, I'd expect the number of xfinitywifi APs to be inversely related to the number of Comcast employees who live there.
- IntelMiner 5y agoIt was next to a large call centre so "techy types" is pushing it for most of them Indeed they were surprised I DIDN'T want a Comcast modem, instead opting for a Surfboard/PFsense combo setup
- billh 5y agoI'm a techie type and have one of those comcast modems. I also have a descent Ubiquiti setup that rides behind it, but I'm kind of shoehorned into using their provided modem or alternatively paying for a modem myself and then paying another $35/month for "unlimited data" (Really crappy comcast policy but that's beside the point). Long story short, this modem will reset itself and require me to not only become aware that it's once again broadcasting the "xfinitywifi" hotspot, but to also redownload the xfinity app, configure the app with my information and try to remember where they buried the setting to disable this "feature". After disabling it somehow takes up to 24 hours to actually happen....
- tzs 5y agoHave you taken into account that if you own your own modem, you aren't paying Comcast's monthly modem rental fee? In most areas, the modem rental is $14/month. Adding unlimited is $11/month, for a total of $25/month. In most areas, adding unlimited to your own modem is $30/month. Thus, in most areas, switching to your own modem with unlimited costs $5/month more.
- samus 5y agoSo... what about jamming back? The 2.4GHz spectrum is pretty much unusable anyways.
- XorNot 5y agoDeliberately jamming the channel is an FCC violation. The FCC is very effective at coming down like a ton of bricks on people who mess with the spectrum.
- ShroudedNight 5y agoDoes it become deliberate if one is informed of the effect ones devices are having on said spectrum?
- hvidgaard 5y agoThey have plausible deniability because they just set up "an IoT home". There is no plausible deniability at all if you jam the spectrum.
- guitarbill 5y ago... unless you do it by also setting up "an IoT home". of course, that's probably more expensive than 5Ghz hardware or de-auth.
- hvidgaard 5y agoIt's more pain than the alternative. You're going to spend more money and effort doing it, than just create a new 5GHz network with proper APs.
- ShroudedNight 5y agoThe intent of my original question, hamfisted as it was, was if the neighbour is informed of the negative effects their IoT swarm causes other users, do they then incur a legal duty to change their set-up / behaviour such that they would no longer do so?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- fouc 5y agoPerhaps in scenarios like this, people will need to be responsible for putting up a basic faraday fence around their property in order to prevent polluting the neighbourhood with their radiation.
- irrational 5y agoI wonder how effective ICF construction is in blocking signals (both incoming and outgoing)? With the high price of lumber right now, maybe more people will opt for ICF which might help with this problem if enough people adopt it.
- procombo 5y agoI love ICF, but concrete alone doesn't block radio very well at all. Best to go with steel studs -- it's found in all modern commercial buildings where I live. Use steel joists between floors and a metal roof and you've got yourself a building full of tenants who have great wifi, but terrible 4g cellular. https://www.scafco.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/iphone-backup2-22-010.jpg https://www.scafco.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/iphone-bac...
- irrational 5y agoInteresting, thanks for the reply. I was thinking the rebar and metal straps might act to block signals, but I guess not.
- topspin 5y agoWi-Fi 6E would solve this for you. 1,200 MHz of bandwidth is now available at 6 GHz. Wi-Fi 6E routers exist now. Here[1] are some devices that are Wi-Fi 6E capable. It's an expensive, possibly inconvenient solution, but from the perspective of RF spectrum it has a high probability of success; your 2.4 GHz neighbor is unlikely to appear at 6 GHz for some time, and even then the reduced 'range' of 6 GHz will work in your favor. 1. https://www.cnet.com/home/internet/wi-fi-6-devices-top-compatible-phones-laptops-gadgets-routers-thus-far/ https://www.cnet.com/home/internet/wi-fi-6-devices-top-compa... (the distinction between 6 and 6E is crucial; you want 6E)
- techrat 5y agoWe're currently running into the same problem now with 6E as we had with 5Ghz. All of those dinky cheap shit little IoT devices DON'T USE IT. They're all on 2.4Ghz. 5Ghz promised more spectrum and more usability and mostly gave that to us. Not quite as good range but it's great... IF we replaced everything we had that used 2.4Ghz. We're still waiting for legacy devices to die... and new devices to stop using 2.4Ghz before that can happen. And now you're suggesting 6E? Gonna take a while.
- Havoc 5y agoYou don't need everything on 6E to benefit. Just your main devices and router
- techrat 5y agoGenerally, the 2.4Ghz problem affects everyone and everything. 11 channels, only 3 usable without overlap, that's before you consider other peoples' routers AND other unlicensed equipment on the same spectrum that isn't even wifi... I have had issues with my smart switches not responding at certain times of the day because of the interference... and what i described before still remains: 5Ghz doesn't have as nice of a range and I'm not exactly up for the idea of chucking out what I have just to buy it again for 5Ghz or 6E.
- 5y ago
- speedgoose 5y agoMy hundreds of neighbors and I pollute the 2.4ghz spectrum with all kind of devices. If you want a descent speed, use another spectrum like 5 or 6Ghz.
- throwaway888abc 5y agoBuy bigger antenna - make yours bigger than theirs! :)
- agogdog 5y agoThis guy seems overly angry and judgemental about something he could just talk to his neighbor about. Also seems like some minor changes could avoid the issue entirely. I live in a large building amongst other large buildings and depending on which way the wind is blowing I can see over 100 wifi access points, not to mention devices.
- bosswipe 5y agoAll of us fighting over tiny slivers of bandwidth while telecom monopolies gobble up giant chunks of spectrum. The amount of value generated by the tiny unlicensed spectrum dwarfs the value that "5G" could possibly ever generate for society. Our public resources have been stolen, again.
- parineum 5y agoI assume you're walking the walk with your edge network flip phone, right?
- msh 5y agoIts more or less fixed when wifi 6E is rolled out. That gives a massive amount of spectrum.
- bosswipe 5y agoNice! I wasn't aware of this new unlicensed spectrum. It will take years to become widely available but it's great news.
- totallyabstract 5y agoIt will be interesting see if the next waves of wifi products solve this. For Wifi 6 and Halow there's a new feature called 'target wake time' that will let these devices sleep (and not pollute spectrum) for longer. Wifi 6 also brings OFDMA which will let stations use much less of the channel at a time (instead of a 20MHZ+ chunk they can just use 2MHZ while other stations use the rest). 2.4GHz being stuck on old Wifi 4 (or worse) devices hasn't helped the situation.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- adriancr 5y agoSo, pick a band, 20mhz, set power to max allowable by country and pollute yourself as well. Go for 3/9 or something in between which would get noise but not significant. You'd be doing more damage yourself, 120 IoT devices would be kind of fragile if noise is introduced.
- KingMachiavelli 5y agoMy apartment had so many issues/complaints they just had the local ISP install AP access points in each apartment. It's one network but has VLAN segmentation and per apartment PSK. This way routers are way smarter at time sharing and power levels for 2.5Ghz are very low plus you can roam anywhere in the complex. Of course I run my own network and do those steps my self. (they were nice enough to give me a port with a public IP). Ethernet is still king for many critical but WiFi seems great despite there still being 35+ SSIDs around. TBH most SSIDs you see have so little traffic 90% of the time so I can't imagine they would decrease the SNR that much (e.g. printer setup networks...) My guess is their neighbor in this case does have a lot of traffic besides the IOT. # of devices and heavy usage just tend to corelate for obvious reasons.
- londons_explore 5y agoZero traffic networks do put a bunch of congestion load on the network, because the various Auth/advert frames are transmitted at 1Mbps with very legacy modulation and framing. That ends up using a lot of channel time.
- r1ch 5y agoOne of the first things everyone should do on a new network setup is disable 802.11b, this raises the minimum modulation in beacons from 1mbps to 6mbps which helps a little.
- ShroudedNight 5y agoI've ruminated over 2.4Ghz spectrum contention for a long time now, and, while I claim nothing more than ignorance on the physical side of things, it's not obvious to me why we have moved to bonding ever larger blocks of that frequency allocation together when from my experience, contention has been an issue for 15 years. As far as I can tell, most applications of ambient connectivity are fairly low throughput: push notifications, MQTT, and whatnot. The 'original' 5Mhz channels should be more than adequate.
- londons_explore 5y agoFrom a theoretical perspective, using double the bandwidth and half the transmittion time causes the same congestion, as long as everyone is using the same strategy.
- mhandley 5y agoThat's not quite true with CSMA-CA. The minimum medium aquisition time is effectively a constant, no matter the bandwidth. Wider channels mean you've got the same duration of deadtime across more channel bandwidth for each transmission. In fact it's worse than that - wider channels mean more senders compete during each medium aquisition, so collisions are more likely, further reducing capacity. The use of AMPDUs in 802.11n (and later) goes some way to mitigating this, but our measurements show it doesn't do a great job in practice with many workloads. In the end, if things are really congested, you'll get more total capacity with narrow channels, at the expense of not being able to burst at high bitrates when things are quiet.
- londons_explore 5y ago> he minimum medium acquisition time is effectively a constant, But from a theoretical point of view, it need not be.
- mhandley 5y agoWell, if you want to argue from a theoretical point of view, the fundamental constant determining the CSMA-CA slot length is the speed of light within reception range, which is effectively constant, and the requirement to demodulate the carrier signal to perform carrier sense, which also has a fundamental time constant related to carrier frequency. Of course DIFS in 802.11 is much larger than that fundamental limit, because carrier sense needs to implemented in real low-power hardware.
- dschuetz 5y ago"The future is wireless" ends right about here.
- artiscode 5y agoReading the comments under the article made me think when I'll become the bad neighbour and suffer from deauth attacks without knowing it. I have two AP's and 3 SSID's, one 2.4ghz for my 15 IoT devices, a 5Ghz using the same network, and a separate 5Ghz for "serious" devices that I use only for work. However I live in an apartment building and I have both most devices and SSID's. I've pondered before whether I am causing inconvenience to someone and how to solve it if complaints ever arise.
- sgtnoodle 5y agoIf you want to be a good neighbor, disable support for "legacy" rates in your access points. The periodic beacon frames are transmitted at the slowest supported rate so that the least capable client devices can receive them. For 802.11b, that means something like 1Mbps. At such a low rate, the beacon frames consume a non-trivial amount of bandwidth. Each access point you see could be consuming over 3% of the channel. Turning off 802.11b/g support (if you can) will significantly reduce the cost of each access point broadcasting. If you're really nice you could decrease the frequency of beacons, but that's not really worth it due to buggy clients sometimes not coping well. The channels around my house are so busy that in order to make wifi reliable, I have three access points, each one on its own non-overlapping 20Mhz 2.4Ghz channel. Two of them listen in on 80Mhz 5.8Ghz as well. I have them all set to the same SSID, so that my devices just choose whatever they think has the best signal strength. I also ran cat6 to my TV and desktop so that they don't need to go over wifi. I disabled 802.11b/g on all but one of them to keep the amount of overhead down from all the beacon frames. This is why the Comcast SSIDs everywhere are so annoying. They make the spectrum tangibly worse just by existing. Same thing for wifi printers that broadcast their own AP. Something like 30 APs sending beacon frames is enough to completely trash 20Mhz of 2.4Ghz.
- Sebb767 5y agoIt's not exactly on-topic, but why does all IoT stuff use 2.4Ghz? Basically every router has 5Ghz nowadays, even the cheap ISP ones, and spectrum pollution is an obvious problem. Is there any reason to prefer 2.4Ghz or to avoid supporting both?
- fogihujy 5y agoBecause there's a shitload of cheap surplus 2.4 GHz parts in stock now that everyone wants 5 GHz capability? Also, many people have really, really crappy routers, walls that 5 GHz signals have issues penetrating, and so on.
- TeMPOraL 5y agoESP8266. Good news: everyone can have a cheap Wi-Fi chip to put in their project. Bad news: everyone can have a cheap Wi-Fi chip to put in their project.
- fomine3 5y agoIoT devices (except something like NVR cameras) uses very little bandwidth and little time, so why you need 5GHz? 2.4GHz is better for range, all AP/Client supports same frequency on worldwide, cheap, and so on. I suspect that there are few reason to implement both 5GHz and 2.4GHz for IoT devices. Supporting all 5GHz band would increase cost. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_WLAN_channels#5_GHz_(802.11a/h/j/n/ac/ax) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_WLAN_channels#5_GHz_(8...
- jfim 5y agoBecause ESP8266 and ESP32 chips are really cheap, and they only do 2.4GHz.
- zejn 5y agoYes. 1) 5GHz modules are more expensive. 2) 2.4GHz has channels 1 - 11 globally, with 12 and 13 in some countries. 5GHz only has channels 32 - 48 globally. Depending on country of distribution it then can support other channels too, but which channels are legal varies significantly. To support those, you need to know which regulatory area you are distributing to. So - additionally to HW being more expensive, you have to have different SKU for different regulatory areas, meaning production runs of different hw - more costs added. Limiting yourself to channels 32 - 48 to claim 5GHz compatibility will just cause you support pain & public image when people will complain your device does not really work with 5GHz. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_WLAN_channels#5_GHz_(802.11a/h/j/n/ac/ax) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_WLAN_channels#5_GHz_(8...
- c12 5y agoI never really understood why IoT devices don't communicate via the power cable; at a guess it's because the hardware needed is too bulky or more expensive than wifi.
- varjag 5y agoDo you really want your sink leakage sensor be connected to mains?
- renewiltord 5y agoNo, but I also have a lamp, and I don't mind my smart lamp connected to mains.
- varjag 5y agoJust doing quick mental accounting of my devices: leak sensor, a few door and window sensors, ceiling mounted monoxide and fire detectors, a motion detector… none of that I'd really want to run the mains to. And seriously, if I had to run cable to those I'd rather much have 2-wire Ethernet with PoE. The fridge, washer and dryer have integrated IoT but there'd be little point running just these over power lines.
- aembleton 5y agoWhat information can you get from your IoT fridge? Does it have a webcam inside it so you can see what you have?
- lmilcin 5y agoI live in a densely populated area. I see 250 distinct SSIDs belonging to about as many APs. 2.4GHz is basically unusable. People try to increase power of their emitters (I see some weird devices that emit way more power than they should legally be able to), but this is only making the problem worse. Our flat is top of the building, we can assume middle is even worse. We use 5GHz for our WiFi needs which does not penetrate through walls as readily which means we only see 3 other APs.
- DoubleGlazing 5y agoDepending on where you live, this could be something you could report to your local radio spectrum regulator. Usually there are regulations that state your radio devices can't interfere with someone else's. It doesn't matter if they are off-the-shelf type approved devices, you still have to operate them responsibly. I live in Ireland and there are have a few cases where the local regulator ComReg has intervened when someones wireless networks and devices affected others.
- lxgr 5y agoI doubt this would get anywhere. Usage of the spectrum as designed is not "interfering", and fairness at the physical layer/medium access level works at the per-device, not the per-household or per-person level. There isn't even a requirement for "802.11-like fairness" on 2.4 GHz, which makes legacy analog wireless headphones that blast the entire spectrum without any listen-before-send policy as legitimate to use as a state of the art 802.11ax device. I wonder if a dedicated "Wi-Fi only" chunk of spectrum would make sense, but it's not like such rules couldn't be bent by having multiple access points and spreading traffic over these as well.
- FinlayDaG33k 5y agoHii all, the original poster of the devrant thread here (made an account sjust for you guys). I've read some of your comments and wanted to address some things. I've seen people tell me to get a 5GHz capable AP and a dongle. But this shouldn't be needed. I already own a hAP AC3 (MikroTik) but to the way our house is built (it's pretty much all solid brick between each room), 5GHz doesn't go that far, so I'd need to buy an AP for pretty much every room. When sitting behind my desk (about 2M from my AP), everything is fine and dandy but when I leave the room, 5GHz basically dies. Next, I saw people recommend "working it out with my neighbours" by having them turn down the power or use cables to hook up all the APs (I even offered to pay for all the cabling myself), but they are not willing to do so. And just saying "Would you stop using all this smarthome junk so we can have a decently working wifi" also isn't really gonna cut it for them. And finally, I saw a comment or two to just jam the living shit out of it, but well... I'd rather not get my own ass into legal trouble for this.
- unionpivo 5y agoMikrotik, has great support for mesh networks and managing multiple AP, if you want to go that route. (and combine 2g with 5g) Another route might be using ethernet over power lines, and then have 5g points in rooms that need it. But essentially , everywhere I need to do things that require bandwidth, I just pull 1gb ethernet cable. Sure it's not as convenient, and pulling cables is a pain, but once you do those things it just works.
- FinlayDaG33k 5y agoI know, my AP is wired up to my core infra. But even then it'd still not solve the issue at hand. It's treat the symptoms not the disease.
- unionpivo 5y agoI mean we all know what the solution is. Get an agreement with your neighbor. You could have shared mesh network, each (you, neighbor) with it's own vlan. You both win, great coverage and bandwith for both, and your AP's wouldn't fight (and cheaper too, since you need less overall AP's). If talking is out, then you are only left with suboptimal options. Depending where you live mobile 5/4g might also be an option.
- blikdak 5y agodevrant looks like bullshit to me. Just saying.
- blikdak 5y agodevrant.com looks like bro low pants to me.
- devit 5y agoThis is why you should use wired Ethernet and not Wi-Fi at home.
- boomboomsubban 5y agoAnd just run ethernet to USB adapter cables to every place you use your phone? The author says they wire what they can, but they want WiFi for the laptop and phone.
- devit 5y agoThe phone can use the cellular network when not docked and usually both laptop and phone are only used/docked in 1-3 different places (desk, bed, some other place).
- boomboomsubban 5y agoThat would likely require a much more expensive data plan, and many people like to be more mobile with their laptop.
- benhurmarcel 5y agoI wire every device I can, but I still end up with more devices on wifi. Just the phones and tablets outnumber the computers and TV already.
- tibbydudeza 5y agoWhat ever happened to using Zigbee or Z-Wave ???. I guess since the EP32 does not support it and you need a compatible router you are stuck with normal WiFi.
- jaimehrubiks 5y agoFor the past more than 10 years I could see more than 50 APs from my room in my 12 floor building, and this even before IoT was so popular. Wifi has never been reliable for more than browsing or chatting.
- bernardv 5y agoFirst world problem... what makes me chuckle is the need for someone to start a dev rant site. Sigh.
- fabbari 5y agoOK - I didn't want to be 'that guy', but here I go: DevRant is garbage! I like the concept, but the execution is a marketing black hole. First of all: the linked page doesn't scroll on an iPad - they are trying to be clever with scrolling and it actually breaks scrolling. Secondly: they take pushing their app to an insane level: none of the links works, they all point to 'Get the app'. This fact alone has just gained the site a place in my DNS blackhole. Archive.org link - that actually works better than the original site: https://web.archive.org/web/20210420050504/https://devrant.com/rants/4186069/dev-my-neighbours-have-so-many-fucking-iot-devices-that-they-basically-fuck-over https://web.archive.org/web/20210420050504/https://devrant.c...
- arjonagelhout 5y ago> Secondly: they take pushing their app to an insane level: none of the links works, they all point to 'Get the app'. I agree. Its “use our app”-push is similar to Twitter or Instagram, but these platforms offer a lot of functionality in their apps. Devrant on the other hand, seems to be quite simple in functionality. Why would I need to download an app for that?
- stevewodil 5y agoHow else will they send you push notifications after you forget about the app for an hour?
- arthur2e5 5y agoJust use the Web Notifications API! Maybe also act like some obnoxious "captchas" and actually check whether you got the permissions to nag you later or give you some flair reward.
- 34679 5y agoIt doesn't scroll on an Android Galaxy Tab either.
- sly010 5y agoYou should post this on devrant [0] [0] https://devrant.com https://devrant.com - "Share and bond over successes and frustrations with code, tech and life as a programmer"
- wooptoo 5y agoTurning down the transmit power of the AP might help in this situation. I use the 2.4GHz band only for legacy/unimportant devices so I've turned its transmit power to the lowest setting available. All of the legacy devices are in the same room with the AP so this is not a problem in my case. Since 2.4GHz penetrates through walls quite well this has the added benefit of limiting the radius of the coverage and to some extent improving security. But this is not a perfect solution (it's more like an unintended side-effect). The 5GHz band has lower penetration through walls so leaving it on highest transmit power should be fine. I found the following article and its comments to be quite helpful: https://metis.fi/en/2017/10/txpower/ https://metis.fi/en/2017/10/txpower/
- croutonwagon 5y agoIt definatley helps if you have space/property. If you live in a relatively close density (apartment, zero lot line homes) it very well may not. I have some rtsp cameras. To keep them from being dumb and randomly roaming to like aps (and overloading the antennas and causing breakups in the stream)I setup different SSIDs on each ap for them so I can control what ap the cameras use and prevent bad roaming decisions. This also means I have an SSID on each non overlapping 2.4 GHz channel. However I live on a couple acres. If I’m interfering you are trespassing. I probably would take a different approach on a higher density area, such as getting an AP with 2 dual-port, dual-polarity antennas dedicated to 2.4GHz and sticking them all on the same AP dedicated to the task, also assuming i would need to cover fewer doors and RSSI wouldnt be an issue.
- bob1029 5y agoWhy doesn't anyone make a variant of drywall that has copper mesh embedded in it? You could theoretically make it thin enough to cut with almost the same level of difficulty. You would only want the shielded variant on your exterior walls & upper floor ceilings. All you would need to do is make sure you clearly label/color the shielded vs non-shielded drywall appropriately so the construction crew doesn't get em mixed up.
- nickthenerd 5y ago1. Copper is expensive 2. This would block your cell phone signal
- DigitallyFidget 5y agoAs someone with an irresponsible amount of IOT devices, I try to hardwire everything to avoid being 'that asshole' on the block. I have my wifi decluttered to being just my phone, work laptop (when I bring it home), my boyfriend's phone, and two bluetooth wireless headsets for our two computers. I have 3 music receivers (for android casting), 7 TVs, weather station, coffee maker, fridge, google home controlled lights (40ish), and other stuff all hardwired. A lot of which I had to modify or build the controllers myself to get them off wifi. The lights all run off POE.