5 ms·
Let me know when Wifi gets to the point where I don't need 4 mesh nodes in my 700sqft 180 year old house just to get 50mbps in my bedroom out of my gigabit line
by emmet 3y ago
Let me know when Wifi gets to the point where I don't need 4 mesh nodes in my 700sqft 180 year old house just to get 50mbps in my bedroom out of my gigabit line at the front of the house.
- FredPret 3y agoIf it’s 180 y.o., is it built out of brick / stone? Not an RF expert but maybe you’ll need a totally different radio frequency for that. I would assume all the tech is built around 2.5 - 5 GHz
- themerone 3y agoLathe and Plaster wall construction is not WiFi friendly. It was the dominant interior wall material during the Victorian era until drywall became popular in the 1930s and 40s.
- madaxe_again 3y agoYeah - I have had this repeatedly as I tend to live in old stone houses with meter thick walls. I’ve found powerline networking to work surprisingly well - over a hundred megabits on a crufty 70 year old power install, and I just jam them strategically in rooms that are separated by a thick wall. At home, I throw regular 802.11n half a kilometer through empty air with a yagi, but that’s a different story entirely.
- ghaff 3y agoI got it working a few years ago in my house. But it took a certain amount of shifting stuff around plugs to do so.
- mping 3y agoSame, I have two powerline APs that deliver ethernet+wifi, more than enough for chromecast/netflix/etc. The only issue i have is sometimes clients don't choose the best APs.
- madaxe_again 3y agoCounterintuitive, but try turning the transmit power down on your APs - it’ll reduce the intersection without compromising signal quality where you actually want it. I used to almost reflexively turn them all up to full, but that, it turns out, is a fool’s errand.
- fmajid 3y agoTurning up transmit power on the AP does nothing to strengthen the signal from the mobile station, and you need a strong signal in both directions.
- tuckerpo 3y agoIEEE attempted to fix reliability, range and latency issues in WiFi 6 and 6E. Unfortunately, since the 802.11 spec's conception in the late 90s, the push has been to get throughput numbers (meaning, the marketing number for more sales for vendors) up. I believe WiFi 7 is something like 11 Gbps max theoretical throughput which is a solution in search of a problem. Absolutely nobody needs 11 Gbps, but everyone needs reliability.
- vel0city 3y agoIn crowded spaces speed == reliability since a ton of the unreliability is due to crowded channels. More speed == clients shut up faster == more clients are able to actually communicate reliably. Sure, you might not need 11Gbps on your own. But you + all your neighbors might need a total of 11Gbps. The air is just one big shared wire.
- emmet 3y agoFrom the ONT sure, but from a single wireless access point?
- vel0city 3y ago> In crowded spaces I'm not talking about a single wireless access point.
- tuckerpo 3y agoEh... OFDMA and guard interval modulation would probably serve better for crowded channels than higher throughput. Also, something like 40% of WiFi airtime is used by... beacons. Another opportunity for optimization.
- vel0city 3y agoOFDMA and adjustable guard interval modulation are already features of WiFi since WiFi 6. So its not like they're just ignoring those things, they're already there.
- bagels 3y agoMy house is larger than this, and my wifi covers my house, my yard, and reaches a few houses away. There's something different about your house, do you have metal in the walls?
- madaxe_again 3y agoThe clue is “180 year old” - it’s going to be masonry. I’m willing to bet that yours is framed lumber. The former is like, well, a brick wall, to WiFi signals. The latter is barely noticeable.
- emmet 3y agoYes I have walls in my walls rather than air and wasps.
- WeAddValue 3y agoYup, probably that. My 161 year old needs the router and 3 pods and still has no-signal areas.
- ghaff 3y agoNot necessarily. My 200 year old house is wood. Although the plaster still there attenuates a bit. But I agree with your basic point. An access point in one corner of the 1800 sq. ft. house mostly covers the whole place. I was just at a friend's 2BR Europen apartment and one access point only covered about half the place.
- szszrk 3y agoI have a slightly smaller flat and the same problem as mentioned. I DO have metal in the walls... reinforced concrete is a thing.
- vetinari 3y agoThat is probably never going to happen. Your problem is not wifi, but the environment, where you are using it. We also have an old house, with 1m thick stone walls. The stone works as a good material to build a Farraday cage, so we have wifi only in the rooms that have AP. But the APs themselves are not connected wirelessly, that would be futile. Where it was possible, we ran ethernet cable, and where it was not practical, powerline is it. You can get pretty decent speed over powerline, I was surprised too.
- maxglute 3y ago>You can get pretty decent speed over powerline, I was surprised too. How decent, I'm assuming new wires in old house?
- vetinari 3y agoAbout ~400 mbps via TP-Link TL-PA7017P; electricity was re-done in early 1980's, so about 40 years old 2.5mm^2 copper.
- fmajid 3y agoI wouldn't advise it, powerline technology is very flaky and even less reliable than WiFi. I have a Devolo G.hn powerline bridge and my parents as well, the one downstairs requires power-cycling about once a week (why they don't just put a watchdog timer in the unit eludes me).
- maxglute 3y agoIs it only that adapater or are you power cycling on both ends? Too much work dragging / cable management in my current setup. I'm looking to remote stream / remote play my desktop to living room and bed room TV. From what I'm reading, it feels smoother even when there's more latency. But power cycling multiple adapters would be a issue though.
- fmajid 3y agoJust one end suffices. I think the software for the Broadcomm PLC controller chipset is flaky and needs a swift kick in the pants every now and then, which is why a simple heartbeat protocol with a watchdog timer should suffice.
- amiga386 3y agoI don't think that'll ever be possible if by "180 year old house" you mean "house with interior walls made of stone". You chould use powerline adapters (with or without wifi extenders) to get the signal through the house without running visible cables. For example (and I'm not endorsing it, other manufacturers are available) the TP-LINK TL-WPA4220.
- emmet 3y agoI was just being facetious. I've used powerline in the past, but it's proven to be an impossibility in this house as it was wired multiple times over the years and there's like 8 different circuits between 5 rooms. I'll have to live with my dodgy mesh network.
- bluGill 3y agoWon't happen. They are pushing WiFi to lower range not more. A routers in each room (ideally wired, but mesh if you can get a connection is okay) won't interfere with your neighbors WiFi (you won't even realize this is the cause of problems if it is!) and allows for much faster speeds.