5 ms·

I get where you’re coming from, but I personally can’t do anything about my bad wifi, because I rent a room in a shared flat and don’t have control over it. The

I get where you’re coming from, but I personally can’t do anything about my bad wifi, because I rent a room in a shared flat and don’t have control over it. The router is in another room and I can’t run a cable there either. There’s also going to be noise I don’t have full control over, because there are three other people here (who you can sometimes hear despite us being in different rooms), and it’s summer so I either need the window open (my room is on the ground floor near a noisy road) or a fan on. I’d urge a bit more empathy before coming to the conclusion that people are lazy/incompetent.

xyzelement 5y ago
The world isn't black and white, so if someone was in your situation and explained it upfront, I would be fine with it. It's the silent "I am just going to expect the interviewer to put up with all my issues" assumption that really bugs me. It also depends on what role you are interviewing for. If your role is mainly going to be heads-down maybe it's OK. But if you're interviewing for a role where you'll have to be meeting lots of people all day, then the situation you describe above may actually be unfair to your coworkers.
rahimnathwani 5y ago
Not disagreeing with your general point but, if bad wifi is a problem for you and you can't run a cable, consider: A) plugging a better wifi router or AP into the existing router, or B) Using a pair of powerline ethernet adapters, or C) Same as A, but using a pair of mesh routers, with the main one set in 'access point' mode. None of these require a cable run between two rooms. Unless the flat is huge or has concrete walls, one of these solutions will work. (I'm assuming the problem is with the wifi connection between you and the router, and not the connection between your router and the internet.)
- thrashh 5y ago
  No, there is no guarantee one of those solutions will work. source: 1000 sq ft flat, no concrete. Already tried all 3, and I pay good money for networking equipment. Currently run cables for 2 APs
  - rahimnathwani 5y ago
    What model of WiFi mesh routers did you use? Where did you place them (distance from floor, proximity to metal objects)?
    - thrashh 5y ago
      I think it was Orbi. It was table level. (Now my APs are near the ceiling though.) Wireless traffic is super dense here. A lot of people are running multiple APs and I guess we’re no better. Some people are also stacking multiple APs on the middle channels.
      - rahimnathwani 5y ago
        The only Orbi I've used is the tri-band RBK50 2-pack. The hardware is good, but there's one annoying thing: you can't manually set the channel bandwidth to to 20MHz. This would improve signal strength and range, at the expense of bandwidth. The 'coexist' setting is meant to switch to 20MHz when needed but, from what I've read, the setting isn't very effective. If I lived in a place with a lot of wifi APs, I'd do what you did (string cables) or else use an Asus mesh wifi setup, which allows more fine-grained control of wifi settings.

xyzelement 5y ago

The world isn't black and white, so if someone was in your situation and explained it upfront, I would be fine with it. It's the silent "I am just going to expect the interviewer to put up with all my issues" assumption that really bugs me. It also depends on what role you are interviewing for. If your role is mainly going to be heads-down maybe it's OK. But if you're interviewing for a role where you'll have to be meeting lots of people all day, then the situation you describe above may actually be unfair to your coworkers.

rahimnathwani 5y ago

Not disagreeing with your general point but, if bad wifi is a problem for you and you can't run a cable, consider: A) plugging a better wifi router or AP into the existing router, or B) Using a pair of powerline ethernet adapters, or C) Same as A, but using a pair of mesh routers, with the main one set in 'access point' mode. None of these require a cable run between two rooms. Unless the flat is huge or has concrete walls, one of these solutions will work. (I'm assuming the problem is with the wifi connection between you and the router, and not the connection between your router and the internet.)

thrashh 5y ago
No, there is no guarantee one of those solutions will work. source: 1000 sq ft flat, no concrete. Already tried all 3, and I pay good money for networking equipment. Currently run cables for 2 APs
- rahimnathwani 5y ago
  What model of WiFi mesh routers did you use? Where did you place them (distance from floor, proximity to metal objects)?
  - thrashh 5y ago
    I think it was Orbi. It was table level. (Now my APs are near the ceiling though.) Wireless traffic is super dense here. A lot of people are running multiple APs and I guess we’re no better. Some people are also stacking multiple APs on the middle channels.
    - rahimnathwani 5y ago
      The only Orbi I've used is the tri-band RBK50 2-pack. The hardware is good, but there's one annoying thing: you can't manually set the channel bandwidth to to 20MHz. This would improve signal strength and range, at the expense of bandwidth. The 'coexist' setting is meant to switch to 20MHz when needed but, from what I've read, the setting isn't very effective. If I lived in a place with a lot of wifi APs, I'd do what you did (string cables) or else use an Asus mesh wifi setup, which allows more fine-grained control of wifi settings.