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A lot of people don't realize that Wi-Fi pretty much always operates in an extremely degraded mode (on the verge of not working at all - which is why a person w
by Nextgrid 5y ago
A lot of people don't realize that Wi-Fi pretty much always operates in an extremely degraded mode (on the verge of not working at all - which is why a person walking past can be enough to break it) and it only seems to work for certain applications due to the magic of protocols such as TCP which can recover and essentially conceal packet loss. Jumping onto a call or some other real-time application (where retransmissions don't help and actually make the problem worse) will break the illusion and show you the reality of things.
There's also this misconception that speed is the only thing that matters, so "higher speed = better connection" and the vast majority of consumer-grade tools only ever test for this. This is where it will mislead you, as an unstable connection with short bursts of high speed will appear "better" (despite being fragile and completely unusable for anything real-time) than a slower but more reliable connection. In-browser speed tests are extremely bad for this because all the buffering & various layers could even fool the test code itself, making it believe it's getting a steady stream while in reality it's getting merely short bursts of data (in between tons of underlying TCP retransmissions). Iperf & ping are the tools of choice if you actually want to look into it - they are closer to the metal and will give you faster feedback (you will be able to actually see the dropouts due to packet loss).
- nearlyepic 5y agoIs there anything short of "get a better antenna" that helps address these issues? Recently had to switch to Wi-Fi for my desktop and have been frustrated with the inability to stop the connection from constantly being on the edge of not-working.
- Nextgrid 5y agoMore access points is the only real solution. Ideally with Ethernet backhaul - mesh systems still consume spectrum which is what you're after - there's a finite amount of it (that you need to share with neighbors - especially on 2.4Ghz - and potential interference) and you need to maximize efficiency, so only use it for mobile devices that can't be wired - static access points (and other devices, TV, gaming console, etc) should be wired. Mesh systems are a step up and can work but due to their cost (and also the fact it's usually hard to tell how well it'll perform without actually buying it and trying it out in the field) I would very much recommend just biting the bullet and doing it once and well with wired access points. A stop-gap solution would be to use powerline adapters to provide the Ethernet backhaul to the access points; you'll be limited in terms of bandwidth (mine top out at ~100Mbps in my current property, but went to ~300 in my previous one) but latency and packet loss-wise they're rock-solid and won't hog the precious Wi-Fi spectrum. Forget consumer-grade crap as well, go for enterprise-grade equipment or at the very least "prosumer" grade such as Ubiquiti.
- xore 5y agoIn theory you could get a bigger antenna (increasing your SNR) and a chip with a greater transmission power (increasing access point SNR)