7 ms·

I 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 attac

• gnarbarian 6y ago
  Talk to your neighbor!?! What is this 1950?
  • k3liutZu 6y ago
    > What year is this, 2019?
• walrus01 6y ago
  On 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 6y ago
    > so uninformed on the fundamentals of the FCC part 15 that ... You mean... basically everyone?
    • walrus01 6y ago
      I'm not saying "they literally need to know the FCC regs" - but totally uninformed on how to not step on yourself in a half duplex wifi medium in the same channel with all your equipment, yeah.
      • recursive 6y ago
        I'm definitely at least that uninformed. I'd like to think I'd listen to a logically reasoned technical explanation. I really don't understand how wifi works and I know this. Sometimes I wish I did, but not quite enough to do anything about it.
      • kbenson 6y ago
        Please explain to me the time a hypothetical person that decides to install a bunch of IoT things is referring to a document that explains how to do this? To me this sounds like a classic case of "because of a twist of fate and my hobbies/job/past I happened to do a deep dive on wifi fundamentals at so e point and since I now find it easy and obvious I can't fathom why people with different hobbies/jobs/pasts don't know the same things I find obvious!"
        • walrus01 6y ago
          Somebody who has literally 140 discrete wifi based IOT devices yet has put them all on the same channel and is further using half duplex mesh repeaters also on the same single channel, is probably the sort of technology early adopter/enthusiast who thinks they know what they are doing, with a high degree of confidence, but actually doesn't. I have to admit I am biased by doing some microwave band rf engineering stuff professionally, so my perspective on it is perhaps a bit more critical than others. You could say I've seen how the sausage is made...
          • kbenson 6y ago
            Maybe. Or maybe it's someone that paid for a complete remodel and some contractor sold them on making every light and outlet and appliance "smart" along with some more we can't even think of, because that's all extra money to them, and then they throw whatever else they can find at it to make it work because really, they haven't ever put so many things on one network before. I've heard crazy stories about home installers and contractors that didn't really know what they were doing. Everyone starts somewhere, and it's not always with our own home nor with a mentor that actually knows what they are doing. Or, it's just some person that did it for their own home but went way too far and when they finally got it working (sort of) decided they really didn't want to touch it again for a while, because it was a pain. Truthfully, either of those sound kinda likely to me.
  • randy5 6y ago
    > blablabla, is a person that I would rate as highly unlikely to listen to a logically reasoned technical explanation https://www.reddit.com/r/iamverysmart/ https://www.reddit.com/r/iamverysmart/
• Taniwha 6y ago
  Not everyone can use 5Ghz - if you have one of those 50s/60s/70s houses that were build with plaster/chicken wire (rather than lath&plaster or drywall) then at 5GHz you're basically living in a bunch of faraday cages (at a company I used to work at we once had to abandon a 5GHz product when we discovered that an appreciable numbers of customers would take it home and not be able to make it work reliably - it would have been a support nightmare)
  • astrange 6y ago
    Not all IoT products support 5ghz - some of mine say they don't (Nest Protect) and some say they do but don't work (Nest thermostat, Netatmo). The only way I could get a stable IoT network in my apartment was to set up a 2.5ghz guest network and put all of them on it.
    • kylegordon 6y ago
      See also all Espressif ESP devices. Still sadly on 2.4GHz only.
      • numlock86 6y ago
        Yeah, really sad. Even the new ESP-C6 that will come with WiFi 6 and BLE 5 only operates on 2.4GHz. :(
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  • trhway 6y ago
    >50s/60s/70s houses that were build with plaster/chicken wire the new townhouses being built near by in MV are exactly this.
    • Taniwha 6y ago
      depends on whether it's used for internal walls, chicken wire as part of plaster on external walls alone would help keep the neighbor's interference down Older chicken wire for internal walls (ie pre-drywall) is the problem at 5GHz (and I'm sure to a lesser extent at 2.4GHz)
• yesenadam 6y ago
  > I have over 80 IOT devices This is a lot to ask, but.. what are all those things?! (My house has 0..I think)
  • dheera 6y ago
    Every light bulb in my home is on Wi-Fi and has its own IP address. And then several outlets have their own IP address. Door locks. Robots. My Christmas tree had an IP address when it was up. My air purifier. My air quality monitor. Security cameras. Lots of things. Seems pretty normal.
    • bscphil 6y ago
      > Seems pretty normal. I think it's safe to assume that 80+ wireless devices puts you in the top few percentiles. So while not unheard of, not "normal" exactly. And even less common in dense apartment environments where having more than 3-4 rooms is unusual.
      • mypalmike 6y ago
        Agreed. When I worked in IoT services, I think I only came across 1 instance of a customer with over 10 devices.
        • hvidgaard 6y ago
          10 window/door sensors, 5 cameras, 10 radiator thermostats, 20 lightbulbs and some other now that you've started and you're already at 50 while "only" doing the "basic" smart home. I've heard of at least a handful of people that have done this and more this year alone.
          • fogihujy 6y ago
            Yeah, it obviously does happen from time to time, but is it normal? My anecdotal data point: 3 devices all isolated on their own AP with no way to talk to eachother or the rest of the world. 50 is a lot. 120 is just insane. :)
• irjustin 6y ago
  If you want to run your own IoT devices then you're largely stuck in the 2.5 ghz range. I'd like to know what 120-ish devices they're running. That's a lot of devices.
• gaudat 6y ago
  The mad scientist in me says to use a microwave magnetron pointing at the neighbor's house to fry all their 2.4 GHz stuff.. Could that work in principle?
  • 01100011 6y ago
    I doubt you'd damage anything permanently but you'd swamp the frontends and cause it to temporarily stop working. I used to fantasize as a kid about doing this to a satellite. Phased array of cheap magnetrons and all that. I doubt that would work though.
    • wankeler 6y ago
      Can you phase synchronise magnetrons? I thought they are a free running oscillator. Also circa 1kW not a safe thing to be spraying around, I think fleshy things might well be damaged.
    • caf 6y ago
      Not quite the same, but Serbian forces used microwave ovens with the door interlocks defeated as cheap decoys for anti-radiation missiles in the Kosovo war.
• 8128js8121 6y ago
  also no, you use 5ghz, its shit
• lrvick 6y ago
  I have maybe around 100 ESP32s. Sensors, bulbs, switches, power monitors, etc. If someone came at me with a deauth attack I would be incredibly amused and probably make a new friend.
  • korethr 6y ago
    I'm probably romanticizing and projecting, but I imagine that scenario going something like this: * lrvick knocks on guilty neighbor's door. * guilty party's non-technical brother answers Brother: Yeah? lrvick: Hey, I notice you guys have an antenna on the east side of your roof pointed at my house, is that yours? Brother: Huh? No, that's my sister's. lrvick: Is she around? It's messing with my Netflix and I'd like to talk to her about it. Brother: Oh, um, yeah. hold on... * Brother leans away from door into house and shouts inside, "Hey sis! Neighbor at the door for you!" * lrvick waits. * Guilty sister walks up to door Sister: Can I help you? lrvick: Is that your antenna on the east side your roof? Sister: Yes. lrvick: So, the past month, someone's been messing with my wifi with deauth attacks. Sister: *mildly indignant* I'm not doing that. lrvick: Well, The past week, I spread a bunch of sensors around my property and a couple of the neighbors and logged the 2.4Ghz spectrum for the area. I correlated everything and triangulated the attacks to that antenna of yours, which just so happens to be aimed at my house. Here's the logs and spectrum heat maps if you'd like to see. * lrvick offers Sister the printouts he brought with him. * Sister takes, looks them over and starts to get that embarrassed flush in the cheeks and ears characteristic of someone who knows they're busted. Sister: I mean -- lrvick: I'm actually not even mad. It's kind of illegal, but it's also ballsy and I respect that. But I'm not the kind of person to go snitching to the FCC first thing. You do know if we're competing for spectrum, you can come talk to me, and we can coordinate a plan over a couple beers, right? * Three months later lrvick and Sister are co-presenting a talk at the local hackerspace on counterattacks to deauth attacks.
    • Toutouxc 6y ago
      I'd just like to say that awkward IT fanfiction is not why I come to HN.
      • 6y ago
• hansvm 6y ago
  > that supports decent 5ghz range What does that gain exactly? The 5ghz band is so crowded around my apartment that most devices can't connect at all. Is there some fundamental reason it should work better?
  • dvdkon 6y ago
    There are many more WiFi channels in the 5GHz range and the signal drops off faster, so you should have both fewer APs "visible" and more room for them to spread.
• PietdeVries 6y ago
  I can't imagine it's the high number of (IoT) clients that is the problem - it is the high power that the AP's use that causes the issue. WiFi goes two ways - the AP talks to the client, and the client has to talk back. Clients don't have the high transmitting power that an AP has, and actually the AP won't need this high power. After all, if you use a bullhorn to reach your backyard, but the guy over there can't talk back, there is still no communication. The solution would be to set the AP's to a lower transmitting power, enough to cover the house but not the street.
  • bserge 6y ago
    That would be the ideal solution, but they'd have to adjust tx power on all of their devices. Or at least a significant number of them. Which might prove problematic, since most of them don't allow manual adjustment.
    • PeterisP 6y ago
      According to the original thread there seem to be 4 APs linking all these devices, so the tx power would be adjusted for those 4 APs.
• bserge 6y ago
  Well, if you talk to them first and negotiations break down, they'll immediately suspect you if you start a deauth attack :D
  • bartread 6y ago
    The poster on devrant has joined the discussion and it seems like this is exactly what has happened: they spoke to their neighbours, and their neighbours have refused to make any changes. It does seem like getting some 5GHz hardware would be a relatively straightforward solution but the poster is unwilling to do that. My take is if you want good quality home networking then you need to be willing to pay the price to get that within the constraints of where you live: sometimes that means spending more money than you might like. Such is life.
• raducu 6y ago
  How many channels are there on 5ghz? To me, the problems seem to be those devices use too many channels, continously? I recently tried checking some TPMS sensors that I bought with rtl_433 and was amazed by how many sensors can get along just fine in my 10 story appartment buiding, but those messages are really short and only transmitted once every couple of minutes.
• vertis 6y ago
  What I got from this article was "Person using WiFi complains about another person using WiFi". I agree with your sentiment. It requires communication. De-authing is not going to solve the problem just make enemies if they work out what the OP is doing.