5 ms·

I don’t deny that what I’m asking for is challenging, but if anyone would have the power and influence to pull it off it would be the WiFi alliance. Going highe

I don’t deny that what I’m asking for is challenging, but if anyone would have the power and influence to pull it off it would be the WiFi alliance. Going higher and higher in the spectrum just sucks for the end user. Something in the 1-2 ghz range that isn’t a congested disaster like 2.4ghz would be extremely helpful for most home users. I understand that spectrum is hotly contested and rife with corruption in allocation processes, but it’s insane to me that the most important and most used wireless technology (by any metric really) is relegated to crappy leftover spectrum.

tw04 3y ago
Why is that insane to you? The same technology that will allow your wireless signal to travel through all the walls in your house will allow your wireless to travel through all the walls in your neighbor's house too. The only reason wifi is even usable in a city is because of the limits in place today.
- callalex 3y ago
  That’s not what I meant/said. It’s insane to me that we don’t just throw more spectrum at the problem. WiFi has definitively proven its utility and popularity. It’s insane that we allocate more spectrum to things hardly anyone uses instead of something that literally everyone is using, all the time.
  - hamandcheese 3y ago
    The reason I think it's not that insane is because WiFi works pretty well as it is. I don't know anyone who seriously struggles with WiFi problems... those that did bought a (albeit expensive) mesh system. The combo Wifi/modem that Xfinity gives out these days is also quite good, as much as I hate devices like that. The truth is, WiFi is mainly a "problem" for nerds like me who LARP as network administrators and want faster-than-gigabit speeds in every corner of their home.
    - callalex 3y ago
      It’s holiday season, I still have a bunch of crappy quality calls with my family all the time. Talk to any doctor about their tele health experience, crappy WiFi gets in the way of them providing care coooonstantly. It’s WiFi that is the weakest link, the problems are rarely caused by the ISP.
      - incahoots 3y ago
        There's so much nuance to the WiFi problem. So many put the ISP owned gateways on the floor, behind a TV, in the basement, in the attic, etc. Like an overwhelmingly large amount do not understand that putting your gateway in a bedroom closet on the opposite side of the house when you need it in say, the living room is nearly always the problem. The only time I can recall when it wasn't for goofy reasons, was the launch of the Intel Puma chipset, where it would suffer from a CPU issue causing packet loss, or freeze until hard restarted. More reading here: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/hardware/lawsuit-brewing-over-unfixed-bug-in-intel-puma-6-cpus/ https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/hardware/lawsuit-brewi...
      - MR4D 3y ago
        > It’s WiFi that is the weakest link... Uh, I have a beef with this. I worked in a hospital (multiple medical facilities actually), and there are many, many medical locations have wifi poorly rolled out. Hospitals are places that look nothing like a house from an electromagnetic perspective. If you don't put stuff in the right places, it won't work well. But if you do it right, then it works fine. And that's true of old buildings and new ones. - - - - EDIT - to clarify, it's not the wifi, it's the design of the wifi network (hotspot locations, backhaul, etc). It has nothing to do with wifi wireless technology itself.
      - supertrope 3y ago
        That’s why I still use a desk phone at home.
  - ianburrell 3y ago
    We did just throw more spectrum at the problem. The 6GHz spectrum for Wifi 6E is a big change. It effectively eliminates the contention in higher bands. The downside is that need to buy new gear, and like all higher bands, need more AP.
- ianburrell 3y ago
  More importantly, the same lower bands that let Wifi go through walls let mobile signals go through walls to enter your house. It is more valuable, both to the mobile providers and to the customers, to use that spectrum for mobile data.
tjohns 3y ago
Why do you think 1.2 GHz would be less congested? Wi-Fi is congested because (1) lots of neighbors, especially in urban areas, and especially on lower bands where the signal penetrates walls better, and (2) unlicensed devices have to tolerate interference from other unlicensed devices, and (3) limited overall spectrum bandwidth, particularly as you go down the spectrum. 1.2 GHz would have all these same problems, but worse by being at a lower band.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 3y ago
  There is consumer level software that lets you analyze bands and channels and select less noisy ones. If that kind of feature was somehow integrated into WiFi itself alongside widening spectrum bandwidth, that would probably go a long way. Easier said than done, I know, but there's got to be some better solution than running some program and looking at what's being used once a month or so.
  - itishappy 3y ago
    I'd always assumed most access points already do this. For example, the 2.4GHz band has 14 channels and I've never told my setup which one to use.
    - incahoots 3y ago
      >2.4GHz band has 14 channels and I've never told my setup which one to use. This is an issue because some channels don't overlap, so if there's interference on a particular channel, your throughput is going to tank. Additionally, if the gateway/router/ap is always switching channels this will cause low power devices (nearly anything mobile) to disconnect and attempt to reconnect. I'm still under the assumption that it's preferred to pull a Wifi survey before deploying any hardware so that it can be setup properly to function reliably.
  - vGPU 3y ago
    Even my (extremely basic) modem from my cable provider does this. Auto channel switching/selection has been around for half a decade at the minimum.
ianburrell 3y ago
1-2 GHz is super congested. Some of the most popular mobile bands are in that range. With mobile carriers bidding billions of dollars for spectrum, there is no way to Wifi Alliance could find free spectrum. Also, spectrum is allocated per country; we are very lucky that the ISM bands are international.
eternityforest 3y ago
Going higher in the spectrum means we can move as much as possible off off 2.4, and have less interference. Mesh WiFi is common for consumers, and putting the mesh backhaul on higher frequencies frees up spectrum. What we really need of course is like, another entire GB of low frequency ISM spectrum, though. Seems like there's a bit of spectrum that could easily be freed up if they just took it from the commercial and public safety radios, which could probably use an upgrade anyway. Spending a few billion giving them all spectrum efficient digital radios with a cellular fallback seems like it might be in the public's interest. If they tried I would imagine they could provide make something so much more reliable, nobody would even think of complaining.
- incahoots 3y ago
  >Going higher in the spectrum means we can move as much as possible off off 2.4, and have less interference. Correct me if I'm wrong but I recall the opposite. Lower frequencies pass through material better, and are less likely to be disrupted by ingress (foreign signal operating on the same frequency), where as higher frequencies have the ability to pass on more information. My previous time as a headend Coax/fiber technician has lead me to believe this. It's one of the reasons for example, Comcast utilized the lowest frequencies for it's upstream data pipeline, and the higher frequencies are for the downstream pipeline. Agree on getting other systems off of the 2.4ghz band, but you still run into the throughput problem with that band.
  - eternityforest 3y ago
    Lower frequencies definitely pass through material better and generally have longer range, but with mesh systems you only need half or a third the range, because you've got repeaters. 5Ghz still goes through a few walls, kinda, mostly, so you can use it for closely spaced repeaters, kinda. Which also means the 2.4ghz part can be turned down a lot, because it's only got to go to the nearest repeater, if you even need a 2.4ghz link at all for anything but IoT. None of this applies to typical HN readers though, who all seem to be running an HFT stock exchange in their basement and need 10gbit at 0.5ms latency, but for the rest of us if it's good enough for 1080p Netflix and 720p zoom calls it's perfectly fine. Except when the printer disappears despite everything having a strong signal because of mesh bugs... then it's not fine.
supertrope 3y ago
More wall penetration is not the solution. 900 MHz is the outcome of what you seek. It’s unlicensed so it’s filled with noise. And the noise carries far thanks to the low frequency. The entire band is only 28 MHz wide. “DECT 6.0” cordless phones use a 1.9 GHz band that is only 10 MHz wide.

tw04 3y ago

Why is that insane to you? The same technology that will allow your wireless signal to travel through all the walls in your house will allow your wireless to travel through all the walls in your neighbor's house too. The only reason wifi is even usable in a city is because of the limits in place today.

callalex 3y ago
That’s not what I meant/said. It’s insane to me that we don’t just throw more spectrum at the problem. WiFi has definitively proven its utility and popularity. It’s insane that we allocate more spectrum to things hardly anyone uses instead of something that literally everyone is using, all the time.
- hamandcheese 3y ago
  The reason I think it's not that insane is because WiFi works pretty well as it is. I don't know anyone who seriously struggles with WiFi problems... those that did bought a (albeit expensive) mesh system. The combo Wifi/modem that Xfinity gives out these days is also quite good, as much as I hate devices like that. The truth is, WiFi is mainly a "problem" for nerds like me who LARP as network administrators and want faster-than-gigabit speeds in every corner of their home.
  - callalex 3y ago
    It’s holiday season, I still have a bunch of crappy quality calls with my family all the time. Talk to any doctor about their tele health experience, crappy WiFi gets in the way of them providing care coooonstantly. It’s WiFi that is the weakest link, the problems are rarely caused by the ISP.
    - incahoots 3y ago
      There's so much nuance to the WiFi problem. So many put the ISP owned gateways on the floor, behind a TV, in the basement, in the attic, etc. Like an overwhelmingly large amount do not understand that putting your gateway in a bedroom closet on the opposite side of the house when you need it in say, the living room is nearly always the problem. The only time I can recall when it wasn't for goofy reasons, was the launch of the Intel Puma chipset, where it would suffer from a CPU issue causing packet loss, or freeze until hard restarted. More reading here: https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/hardware/lawsuit-brewing-over-unfixed-bug-in-intel-puma-6-cpus/ https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/hardware/lawsuit-brewi...
    - MR4D 3y ago
      > It’s WiFi that is the weakest link... Uh, I have a beef with this. I worked in a hospital (multiple medical facilities actually), and there are many, many medical locations have wifi poorly rolled out. Hospitals are places that look nothing like a house from an electromagnetic perspective. If you don't put stuff in the right places, it won't work well. But if you do it right, then it works fine. And that's true of old buildings and new ones. - - - - EDIT - to clarify, it's not the wifi, it's the design of the wifi network (hotspot locations, backhaul, etc). It has nothing to do with wifi wireless technology itself.
    - supertrope 3y ago
      That’s why I still use a desk phone at home.
- ianburrell 3y ago
  We did just throw more spectrum at the problem. The 6GHz spectrum for Wifi 6E is a big change. It effectively eliminates the contention in higher bands. The downside is that need to buy new gear, and like all higher bands, need more AP.
ianburrell 3y ago
More importantly, the same lower bands that let Wifi go through walls let mobile signals go through walls to enter your house. It is more valuable, both to the mobile providers and to the customers, to use that spectrum for mobile data.

tjohns 3y ago

Why do you think 1.2 GHz would be less congested? Wi-Fi is congested because (1) lots of neighbors, especially in urban areas, and especially on lower bands where the signal penetrates walls better, and (2) unlicensed devices have to tolerate interference from other unlicensed devices, and (3) limited overall spectrum bandwidth, particularly as you go down the spectrum. 1.2 GHz would have all these same problems, but worse by being at a lower band.

SOLAR_FIELDS 3y ago
There is consumer level software that lets you analyze bands and channels and select less noisy ones. If that kind of feature was somehow integrated into WiFi itself alongside widening spectrum bandwidth, that would probably go a long way. Easier said than done, I know, but there's got to be some better solution than running some program and looking at what's being used once a month or so.
- itishappy 3y ago
  I'd always assumed most access points already do this. For example, the 2.4GHz band has 14 channels and I've never told my setup which one to use.
  - incahoots 3y ago
    >2.4GHz band has 14 channels and I've never told my setup which one to use. This is an issue because some channels don't overlap, so if there's interference on a particular channel, your throughput is going to tank. Additionally, if the gateway/router/ap is always switching channels this will cause low power devices (nearly anything mobile) to disconnect and attempt to reconnect. I'm still under the assumption that it's preferred to pull a Wifi survey before deploying any hardware so that it can be setup properly to function reliably.
- vGPU 3y ago
  Even my (extremely basic) modem from my cable provider does this. Auto channel switching/selection has been around for half a decade at the minimum.

ianburrell 3y ago

1-2 GHz is super congested. Some of the most popular mobile bands are in that range. With mobile carriers bidding billions of dollars for spectrum, there is no way to Wifi Alliance could find free spectrum. Also, spectrum is allocated per country; we are very lucky that the ISM bands are international.

eternityforest 3y ago

Going higher in the spectrum means we can move as much as possible off off 2.4, and have less interference. Mesh WiFi is common for consumers, and putting the mesh backhaul on higher frequencies frees up spectrum. What we really need of course is like, another entire GB of low frequency ISM spectrum, though. Seems like there's a bit of spectrum that could easily be freed up if they just took it from the commercial and public safety radios, which could probably use an upgrade anyway. Spending a few billion giving them all spectrum efficient digital radios with a cellular fallback seems like it might be in the public's interest. If they tried I would imagine they could provide make something so much more reliable, nobody would even think of complaining.

incahoots 3y ago
>Going higher in the spectrum means we can move as much as possible off off 2.4, and have less interference. Correct me if I'm wrong but I recall the opposite. Lower frequencies pass through material better, and are less likely to be disrupted by ingress (foreign signal operating on the same frequency), where as higher frequencies have the ability to pass on more information. My previous time as a headend Coax/fiber technician has lead me to believe this. It's one of the reasons for example, Comcast utilized the lowest frequencies for it's upstream data pipeline, and the higher frequencies are for the downstream pipeline. Agree on getting other systems off of the 2.4ghz band, but you still run into the throughput problem with that band.
- eternityforest 3y ago
  Lower frequencies definitely pass through material better and generally have longer range, but with mesh systems you only need half or a third the range, because you've got repeaters. 5Ghz still goes through a few walls, kinda, mostly, so you can use it for closely spaced repeaters, kinda. Which also means the 2.4ghz part can be turned down a lot, because it's only got to go to the nearest repeater, if you even need a 2.4ghz link at all for anything but IoT. None of this applies to typical HN readers though, who all seem to be running an HFT stock exchange in their basement and need 10gbit at 0.5ms latency, but for the rest of us if it's good enough for 1080p Netflix and 720p zoom calls it's perfectly fine. Except when the printer disappears despite everything having a strong signal because of mesh bugs... then it's not fine.

supertrope 3y ago

More wall penetration is not the solution. 900 MHz is the outcome of what you seek. It’s unlicensed so it’s filled with noise. And the noise carries far thanks to the low frequency. The entire band is only 28 MHz wide. “DECT 6.0” cordless phones use a 1.9 GHz band that is only 10 MHz wide.