7 ms·

I've worked as an engineer in the Wi-Fi industry. Here's my advice: stay at least one or, even better, two generations behind the current Wi-Fi standards. Ve

I've worked as an engineer in the Wi-Fi industry. Here's my advice: stay at least one or, even better, two generations behind the current Wi-Fi standards. Vendors care about only two things: (1) Cost (2) the Gbps they can print on the box. So today that means 802.11ac and WPA2, unfortunately. Stability of the software is not a consideration.

itronitron 3y ago
I'm the proud owner of a major brand WiFi router, and there is a typo on the admin login screen. Not a good look, but it's the best we've got.
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
  I would argue that OpenWrt is the best we've got. (I grant that the hardware side remains messy)
  - kjs3 3y ago
    I grant that the hardware side remains messy Other than that, how was the play Mrs Lincoln.
  - p1mrx 3y ago
    Yes, but you usually have to choose hardware that's a couple generations behind, in order to run OpenWrt.
    - Borealid 3y ago
      I don't think that's the case, exactly. You can choose current-generation hardware from a company that chooses to implement less advanced wireless specifications. For example, the gl-inet Flint 2 (MT-6000) runs a fork of OpenWRT out of the box and can be flashed with stock OpenWRT snapshots. That's a very modern piece of hardware that will do wifi 6 (not wifi 6E/7). So hardware-wise you get the current gen, software-spec-wise you get one generation behind. I don't think practically speaking you're going to feel much pain from using Wifi 6 for the next few years, as it can saturate a 1Gbps link pretty easily.
    - treflop 3y ago
      You could run a separate switch/gateway and a separate Wi-Fi access point. Worth it? Idk But it’s nice when your Wi-Fi is just a dumb box with almost no settings that you can upgrade independently.
      - hunter2_ 3y ago
        Pfsense (on a Proxmox VM, on a laptop with 2 NICs), tp-link managed switch with PoE on half the ports, all-in-one ASUS box configured as an AP only (and switch). It's only WiFi 5, but in a pinch that could go back to doing everything. Rock solid, with no reboots in years other than what ended up being unnecessary ones. Went 390+ days at one point on pfsense.
    - ikiris 3y ago
      No you don't. You just have to learn how to compile things.
  - pseudosavant 3y ago
    I run, and love, OpenWrt, but if you make your wifi with routers configured as 'dumb APs', you can keep most of the complexity on the router connected to your internet. I have had (gasp) non-OpenWrt APs on my network at times. Currently I have 3 TP-Link AC routers running OpenWrt, RPi 4 running OpenWrt for the router.
- dudeinjapan 3y ago
  The original Street Fighter II arcade game had the same problem, but Capcom managed to fix it: https://fabiensanglard.net/sf2_warrier/index.html https://fabiensanglard.net/sf2_warrier/index.html
  - d1str0 3y ago
    I love these little posts.
  - frozenlettuce 3y ago
    I was replaying Resident Evil 2 and this typo broke the climate for me: "Platform Eleveter" https://twitter.com/ResiFacts/status/1189139062197604357 https://twitter.com/ResiFacts/status/1189139062197604357 (in moments like that you are reminded, "oh, this is a Japanese game")
    - furyofantares 3y ago
      I'll note that you have typo'd the typo, it looks like it was "elevater".
      - frozenlettuce 3y ago
        I'm leaving that unedited for posterity, thanks for pointing that out
    - dudeinjapan 3y ago
      Living in Japan I see so much bad English spelling I’ve gotten used it. Esp. at restaurants it can be very off-putting (e.g. “Flesh Juice” instead of “Fresh Juice”)
  - Lammy 3y ago
    See also: KONMAI Quality https://namu.wiki/w/KONMAI https://namu.wiki/w/KONMAI (long list of typos and other errors in KONAMI arcade games, including infamously misspelling the name of the company itself)
- lostlogin 3y ago
  > I'm the proud owner of a major brand WiFi router Why not name it?
  - itronitron 3y ago
    Asus
silisili 3y ago
I think ax is now 2 generations behind, if we count 6e and 7, and a pretty nice upgrade over ac. The nice thing about the newer 2 is 6ghz, for people in highly congested areas. I live on an acre and pick up tons of 2.4ghz, some 5ghz. I can't imagine how bad it would be in a modern tract home development, or worse, a large apartment complex.
- jorvi 3y ago
  Not that much worse for 5GHz because a decent wall will already heavily attenuated that signal. When I was still at university, just walking out of my studio appartement and closing the door would already drop my 5GHz signal a good bit. Open the door, much better.
  - silisili 3y ago
    They are pretty close in frequency IIRC, but in a crowded place I assume every little bit would help. Not sure how much, though. Of course the -real- benefit to upgrading early is that you'll likely have the 6ghz space to yourself for a couple years.
    - TylerE 3y ago
      It’s a trade off. The higher the frequency the worse it does with obstructions, generally.
      - MobiusHorizons 3y ago
        When concerned with congestion that is considered a benefit ( but you might have to run more than one access point)
        TylerE 3y ago
        Yeah, it’s that second one is the biggie, especially if you’re dealing with something like an outbuilding that either only has intermittent power or even no power at all.
boringuser2 3y ago
This topic has been fascinating me because I can't find reliable information. It seems like most people don't necessarily care per se about wifi performance because you can stuff an AP every 30 ft and call it a day. Most MSPs seem to become a shop of some kind based around a hardware that isn't necessarily the most performant, but good enough, cheap, easy to manage, etc. (lots of UniFi shops even though I don't consider it a good solution). In terms of performance, though, I live in a very high density apartment so I have a niche use case: I've been trying to find the access point. So far, ruckus has been outperforming every other access point I've tried (Aruba, Unifi, extreme, etc.) I can't find any reliable data on whether or not Ruckus is just literally the best access point, and I still consider myself in the researching phase. Is there industry knowledge to the contrary? Are there any actual engineering standards that companies aspire to, or is it just a "most people don't measure this, so whatever" industry?
- krelas 3y ago
  Just went through this for a large site installation. We had to reach out to vendors and have them send us trial units because performance data was impossible to find, it was incredibly time consuming setting up a proof of concept for each vendor AP. Also, this is only really an option open to people who are doing big deployments because it isn’t worth the vendor’s time otherwise. I’d recommend looking at Juniper Mist for high congestion areas because their auto mode actually works and adapts to changes in the environment. I do have to ask though, do you really need enterprise Wi-Fi? It’s not very neighbourly but buying a high end consumer Wi-Fi router that lets you pick DFS channels, picking the least congested channel, and setting transmit power as high as it will go should do the job in an apartment.
  - boringuser2 3y ago
    I need enterprise wifi because I want a bullet-proof network. Do I actually need it? Eh, no, I suppose. But I can't stop myself from not doing it. Also, in terms of tangibility, my 2.4ghz is so abysmal due to congestion I'm willing to do anything to maximize it. Even Aruba falls flat with this band but Ruckus does an *okay* job. It's obvious that AP performance is a factor here. My 4x4 Wifi 6 Aruba 535 gets completely shut out by a 2x2 beige colored clunker Ruckus 510 that I got for $40. It's obvious that price, features or "newness" aren't things I can rely on to give me a good picture. Aruba outperforms my other models -- I've spent a lot of money just testing this out myself using the use case of 40 competing SSIDs. (According to my research juniper doesn't perform particularly well. Check the Packet6 report that Ruckus cites. Probably biased, but what else is there? "Data sheets" that don't really say much about anything. I havent purchased a test AP, though.)
gerdesj 3y ago
I run roughly 60 site's wifi across the UK according to my Unifi VM, which has been trundling along for over five years now. One of those sites is my home, another my brother's home and another my dad's and another is at work. At least one of the others, you might have heard of. I'm not quite so jaded as @roboman. I suggest you keep up with the Joneses. The latest is wifi 7 and if we get a bit conservative, we might consider 6 as current and hence the advice is stick to wifi 4! That's not my advice. I suggest that we embrace the latest stuff and learn how it works. If necessary you can always spin up another SSID with special properties. I've got devices from fridges to ESP80266 wired thingies and laptops and phones and whatever all working fine.
- roboman 3y ago
  Do you measure WiFi 7 for packet loss? UniFi might be better but I stand by my advice and still suggest 802.11AC or AX for consumer grade router.
  - gerdesj 3y ago
    I haven't seen any wifi 7 gear. I have a Unifi tri band wifi 6 AP in the next room at home which is a bit excessive. However, I live on the side of a hill and I get coverage across the entire valley. Unifi tends to be a bit divisive in forums such as HN and r/networking and even their own forums! The wailing and gnashing of teeth at every version update is quite something to behold. For me as an old school sysadmin, running a Linux VM as a Unifi gateway is fine and has been for years. I treat it with respect and read change logs and I have decent backups and so on. The vast majority of my customers and my already installed gear is wifi5 and any new APs are 6 by default. I'll wait for 7 devices to actually be available but it doesn't bring much to the table. Wifi 6 with the addition of 6GHz was a major upgrade, 7 not so much. My phone now has way more bandwidth to my home LAN via wifi than the LAN itself! It can use 2.4/5/6 GHz and each band has more than one MIMO. Its not quite that simple but I will be grabbing some 2.5 or 10Gb LAN switches soon. At work 10Gb with 40Gb uplinks is generally indicated ...
- zamadatix 3y ago
  Agreed, I left healthcare networking at a place with ~36,000 APs just around the time 6E was getting its first early release hardware and we had already deployed multiple hospitals with Wi-Fi 6 APs and laptops at the time. As you say, the absolute latest (especially when it's the first round of hardware) can be iffy but 2 back seems extraordinary over-conservative. I'd even go as far as to say we had as many client tickes from bugs about old hardware from 2 standards (~10 years) ago that weren't receiving patches anymore as we did from the new hardware but at least the new stuff was still getting patches. That said once you go to consumer/prosumer hardware I'm convinced everything has a litany of bugs that have no hope of getting meaningfully fixed regardless which version you use. For 99% of use cases it'll work fine enough and that's all any vendor selling it will care about, new or old. Often Qualcomm/Broadcom/whoever-made-the-actual-wifi-chip-com will have patched things consumer APs and devices won't have actually updated to anyways.
grow2grow 3y ago
This advice checks out: at home, I have the WiFi 5 Google-pods "mesh network" with five pods (this is a larger house). Economy of scale does take a generation or two to get behind in general. Wifi, EV's, heck even apple refurbished macbooks are cheaper because there are more of them (as they are from an older generation). So "being N generations behind latest tech" is solid advice in general is my point. Thanks.
- lxgr 3y ago
  Multiple access points supporting the same SSID, i.e. ESSIDs, have been supported since the very beginning in 802.11, and definitely much earlier than in 802.11ac.
- flemhans 3y ago
  I thought you could just have the same SSID on the same LAN in 802.11n (WiFi 4), too.
  - vetinari 3y ago
    You could, 802.11r/k/v just provides some nice hints for faster transitions, but ultimately it is up to the client, whether it is used or not. Mesh, however, it is not about roaming (i.e. multiple APs with same ssid, clients connects to preferred one). Mesh is a topology thing (nodes come and go), wireless mesh also means wireless uplink (i.e. the AP you are connected to itself talks to its uplink wirelessly). These are things you use only if you cannot avoid them; metalic connection to each AP is way more reliable.
krelas 3y ago
I have found Wi-Fi 6/ax is mature enough to deploy now. I wouldn’t be touching Wi-Fi 7, considering it hasn’t even been ratified yet. One generation behind is usually where you want to be because your clients usually haven’t caught up anyway.
Havoc 3y ago
Is it really that big of a risk? If you’ve got current gen gear and it works fine then why not
justinclift 3y ago
> Stability of the software is not a consideration. Yeah. I'm pretty sure that I've seen a toggle-able option in some home user routers for them to automatically reboot themselves once every um... day (or some other time period). Like "we can't be bothered tracking down the memory leaks in shipped software, so lets just implement an auto-reboot of the router". It's both funny and tragic at the same time.
- Gabrys1 3y ago
  I wish more hardware had this setting exposed. My wifi router had a bug that was eventually fixed, but before that I would need to reboot it every hour. That's a simple workaround - if only there was a setting for that. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35986375 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35986375
  - justinclift 3y ago
    TP-Link Archer AX73's have it. Just logged into one to check. It won't allow every hour though. The options are either daily, weekly, or monthly, and you can set the exact time. It doesn't seem to allow for more than one reboot schedule either, so it wouldn't be possible to set (say) 24 different daily schedules 1 hour apart as a workaround.
    - Gabrys1 3y ago
      The same was the case in that Asus router. I just wish every AP had that setting
ikiris 3y ago
Maybe for consumer and ubi gear. The enterprisish gear they have to actually support so it get's fixed enough at some point. No way the big hospital systems / robot warehouses don't light people (VPs and up) up over flaky wireless.
sgtnoodle 3y ago
That's actually a hobby of mine, where I look for 5-10 year old forum posts recommending "new" hardware with good OpenWRT support. I order one on eBay for $30, then try it out myself. I now have 3 very stable 802.11ac access points across my home, and a WPS bridge capable of hitting 500Mbps of TCP throughput. I do suggest using the latest generation client chipsets with driver support in your OS, though. Whether or not a newer client radio talks to a similarly capable AP, it is likely to have better receive sensitivity than older radios. I also suggest specifically buying Intel client radios. I have first-hand benchmarking experience that shows that Intel radios are very good at receiving marginal radio frames in heavily congested environments. Qualcomm and Broadcom radios might be just as good, but I wasn't able to evaluate them for lack of driver support for my purpose. Realtek/Mediatek/Ralink radios have pretty good drivers, but the actual radios behave notably worse with congestion. I've had friends living in apartments take my advice and switch from Realtek to Intel, and they've reported back significant gains in wifi stability. I'll also note that the original Steam Deck has a Realtek radio, and many people complain about its mediocre Wifi performance. Some people have gone as far as hot air reworking their Decks to have 802.11ax Intel radios, which happen to be pin compatible.
- Avamander 3y ago
  For $30 you can already get used enterprise access points. No OpenWRT, but they perform way better than 500Mbps. Even the ones that are now five or more years old.
  - sgtnoodle 3y ago
    I just want to make sure we're comparing the same thing, since data rates are such a nuanced topic. I have two 802.11ac APs communicating at 866Mbps link rate, via two spatial streams at 80Mhz of channel bandwidth. The APs bridge Ethernet traffic using WDS. I can measure 500Mbps of sustained TCP throughout over that wireless link. I believe that's pretty much the theoretical limit for the link rate. Are you suggesting there are some good cheap APs that can readily do WDS with more than two spatial streams, or wider channel bandwidth? That could be fun to play with, although at this point my WDS link is just for the lols because I've since run cat6 between buildings...
LinuxBender 3y ago
In my personal experience just anecdotally one generation is usually fine provided it is on the latest firmware for that device. A notable bonus is the cost is usually much less than the latest generation. The WiFi 6 that I bought about mid-life of 6 was about $150 and is now $75 on Amazon where as WiFi 7 is significantly more. Some may have a need for the extra speed but my WiFi 6 is still plenty fast enough to keep up with my 500mb/s fiber.
rldjbpin 3y ago
in my dorm, back when 802.11ac was the latest standard, having one of few devices which could support the standard gave me a great wireless experience because the new APs supported it and was enabled by the network admins. besides the algorithmic stability, the new radio bands or their combinations still have merit fwiw.
DANmode 3y ago
What "home" hardware are you using? Best person to ask I've come across all year!

itronitron 3y ago

I'm the proud owner of a major brand WiFi router, and there is a typo on the admin login screen. Not a good look, but it's the best we've got.

yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
I would argue that OpenWrt is the best we've got. (I grant that the hardware side remains messy)
- kjs3 3y ago
  I grant that the hardware side remains messy Other than that, how was the play Mrs Lincoln.
- p1mrx 3y ago
  Yes, but you usually have to choose hardware that's a couple generations behind, in order to run OpenWrt.
  - Borealid 3y ago
    I don't think that's the case, exactly. You can choose current-generation hardware from a company that chooses to implement less advanced wireless specifications. For example, the gl-inet Flint 2 (MT-6000) runs a fork of OpenWRT out of the box and can be flashed with stock OpenWRT snapshots. That's a very modern piece of hardware that will do wifi 6 (not wifi 6E/7). So hardware-wise you get the current gen, software-spec-wise you get one generation behind. I don't think practically speaking you're going to feel much pain from using Wifi 6 for the next few years, as it can saturate a 1Gbps link pretty easily.
  - treflop 3y ago
    You could run a separate switch/gateway and a separate Wi-Fi access point. Worth it? Idk But it’s nice when your Wi-Fi is just a dumb box with almost no settings that you can upgrade independently.
    - hunter2_ 3y ago
      Pfsense (on a Proxmox VM, on a laptop with 2 NICs), tp-link managed switch with PoE on half the ports, all-in-one ASUS box configured as an AP only (and switch). It's only WiFi 5, but in a pinch that could go back to doing everything. Rock solid, with no reboots in years other than what ended up being unnecessary ones. Went 390+ days at one point on pfsense.
  - ikiris 3y ago
    No you don't. You just have to learn how to compile things.
- pseudosavant 3y ago
  I run, and love, OpenWrt, but if you make your wifi with routers configured as 'dumb APs', you can keep most of the complexity on the router connected to your internet. I have had (gasp) non-OpenWrt APs on my network at times. Currently I have 3 TP-Link AC routers running OpenWrt, RPi 4 running OpenWrt for the router.
dudeinjapan 3y ago
The original Street Fighter II arcade game had the same problem, but Capcom managed to fix it: https://fabiensanglard.net/sf2_warrier/index.html https://fabiensanglard.net/sf2_warrier/index.html
- d1str0 3y ago
  I love these little posts.
- frozenlettuce 3y ago
  I was replaying Resident Evil 2 and this typo broke the climate for me: "Platform Eleveter" https://twitter.com/ResiFacts/status/1189139062197604357 https://twitter.com/ResiFacts/status/1189139062197604357 (in moments like that you are reminded, "oh, this is a Japanese game")
  - furyofantares 3y ago
    I'll note that you have typo'd the typo, it looks like it was "elevater".
    - frozenlettuce 3y ago
      I'm leaving that unedited for posterity, thanks for pointing that out
  - dudeinjapan 3y ago
    Living in Japan I see so much bad English spelling I’ve gotten used it. Esp. at restaurants it can be very off-putting (e.g. “Flesh Juice” instead of “Fresh Juice”)
- Lammy 3y ago
  See also: KONMAI Quality https://namu.wiki/w/KONMAI https://namu.wiki/w/KONMAI (long list of typos and other errors in KONAMI arcade games, including infamously misspelling the name of the company itself)
lostlogin 3y ago
> I'm the proud owner of a major brand WiFi router Why not name it?
- itronitron 3y ago
  Asus

silisili 3y ago

I think ax is now 2 generations behind, if we count 6e and 7, and a pretty nice upgrade over ac. The nice thing about the newer 2 is 6ghz, for people in highly congested areas. I live on an acre and pick up tons of 2.4ghz, some 5ghz. I can't imagine how bad it would be in a modern tract home development, or worse, a large apartment complex.

jorvi 3y ago
Not that much worse for 5GHz because a decent wall will already heavily attenuated that signal. When I was still at university, just walking out of my studio appartement and closing the door would already drop my 5GHz signal a good bit. Open the door, much better.
- silisili 3y ago
  They are pretty close in frequency IIRC, but in a crowded place I assume every little bit would help. Not sure how much, though. Of course the -real- benefit to upgrading early is that you'll likely have the 6ghz space to yourself for a couple years.
  - TylerE 3y ago
    It’s a trade off. The higher the frequency the worse it does with obstructions, generally.
    - MobiusHorizons 3y ago
      When concerned with congestion that is considered a benefit ( but you might have to run more than one access point)
      - TylerE 3y ago
        Yeah, it’s that second one is the biggie, especially if you’re dealing with something like an outbuilding that either only has intermittent power or even no power at all.

boringuser2 3y ago

This topic has been fascinating me because I can't find reliable information. It seems like most people don't necessarily care per se about wifi performance because you can stuff an AP every 30 ft and call it a day. Most MSPs seem to become a shop of some kind based around a hardware that isn't necessarily the most performant, but good enough, cheap, easy to manage, etc. (lots of UniFi shops even though I don't consider it a good solution). In terms of performance, though, I live in a very high density apartment so I have a niche use case: I've been trying to find the access point. So far, ruckus has been outperforming every other access point I've tried (Aruba, Unifi, extreme, etc.) I can't find any reliable data on whether or not Ruckus is just literally the best access point, and I still consider myself in the researching phase. Is there industry knowledge to the contrary? Are there any actual engineering standards that companies aspire to, or is it just a "most people don't measure this, so whatever" industry?

krelas 3y ago
Just went through this for a large site installation. We had to reach out to vendors and have them send us trial units because performance data was impossible to find, it was incredibly time consuming setting up a proof of concept for each vendor AP. Also, this is only really an option open to people who are doing big deployments because it isn’t worth the vendor’s time otherwise. I’d recommend looking at Juniper Mist for high congestion areas because their auto mode actually works and adapts to changes in the environment. I do have to ask though, do you really need enterprise Wi-Fi? It’s not very neighbourly but buying a high end consumer Wi-Fi router that lets you pick DFS channels, picking the least congested channel, and setting transmit power as high as it will go should do the job in an apartment.
- boringuser2 3y ago
  I need enterprise wifi because I want a bullet-proof network. Do I actually need it? Eh, no, I suppose. But I can't stop myself from not doing it. Also, in terms of tangibility, my 2.4ghz is so abysmal due to congestion I'm willing to do anything to maximize it. Even Aruba falls flat with this band but Ruckus does an *okay* job. It's obvious that AP performance is a factor here. My 4x4 Wifi 6 Aruba 535 gets completely shut out by a 2x2 beige colored clunker Ruckus 510 that I got for $40. It's obvious that price, features or "newness" aren't things I can rely on to give me a good picture. Aruba outperforms my other models -- I've spent a lot of money just testing this out myself using the use case of 40 competing SSIDs. (According to my research juniper doesn't perform particularly well. Check the Packet6 report that Ruckus cites. Probably biased, but what else is there? "Data sheets" that don't really say much about anything. I havent purchased a test AP, though.)

gerdesj 3y ago

I run roughly 60 site's wifi across the UK according to my Unifi VM, which has been trundling along for over five years now. One of those sites is my home, another my brother's home and another my dad's and another is at work. At least one of the others, you might have heard of. I'm not quite so jaded as @roboman. I suggest you keep up with the Joneses. The latest is wifi 7 and if we get a bit conservative, we might consider 6 as current and hence the advice is stick to wifi 4! That's not my advice. I suggest that we embrace the latest stuff and learn how it works. If necessary you can always spin up another SSID with special properties. I've got devices from fridges to ESP80266 wired thingies and laptops and phones and whatever all working fine.

roboman 3y ago
Do you measure WiFi 7 for packet loss? UniFi might be better but I stand by my advice and still suggest 802.11AC or AX for consumer grade router.
- gerdesj 3y ago
  I haven't seen any wifi 7 gear. I have a Unifi tri band wifi 6 AP in the next room at home which is a bit excessive. However, I live on the side of a hill and I get coverage across the entire valley. Unifi tends to be a bit divisive in forums such as HN and r/networking and even their own forums! The wailing and gnashing of teeth at every version update is quite something to behold. For me as an old school sysadmin, running a Linux VM as a Unifi gateway is fine and has been for years. I treat it with respect and read change logs and I have decent backups and so on. The vast majority of my customers and my already installed gear is wifi5 and any new APs are 6 by default. I'll wait for 7 devices to actually be available but it doesn't bring much to the table. Wifi 6 with the addition of 6GHz was a major upgrade, 7 not so much. My phone now has way more bandwidth to my home LAN via wifi than the LAN itself! It can use 2.4/5/6 GHz and each band has more than one MIMO. Its not quite that simple but I will be grabbing some 2.5 or 10Gb LAN switches soon. At work 10Gb with 40Gb uplinks is generally indicated ...
zamadatix 3y ago
Agreed, I left healthcare networking at a place with ~36,000 APs just around the time 6E was getting its first early release hardware and we had already deployed multiple hospitals with Wi-Fi 6 APs and laptops at the time. As you say, the absolute latest (especially when it's the first round of hardware) can be iffy but 2 back seems extraordinary over-conservative. I'd even go as far as to say we had as many client tickes from bugs about old hardware from 2 standards (~10 years) ago that weren't receiving patches anymore as we did from the new hardware but at least the new stuff was still getting patches. That said once you go to consumer/prosumer hardware I'm convinced everything has a litany of bugs that have no hope of getting meaningfully fixed regardless which version you use. For 99% of use cases it'll work fine enough and that's all any vendor selling it will care about, new or old. Often Qualcomm/Broadcom/whoever-made-the-actual-wifi-chip-com will have patched things consumer APs and devices won't have actually updated to anyways.

grow2grow 3y ago

This advice checks out: at home, I have the WiFi 5 Google-pods "mesh network" with five pods (this is a larger house). Economy of scale does take a generation or two to get behind in general. Wifi, EV's, heck even apple refurbished macbooks are cheaper because there are more of them (as they are from an older generation). So "being N generations behind latest tech" is solid advice in general is my point. Thanks.

lxgr 3y ago
Multiple access points supporting the same SSID, i.e. ESSIDs, have been supported since the very beginning in 802.11, and definitely much earlier than in 802.11ac.
flemhans 3y ago
I thought you could just have the same SSID on the same LAN in 802.11n (WiFi 4), too.
- vetinari 3y ago
  You could, 802.11r/k/v just provides some nice hints for faster transitions, but ultimately it is up to the client, whether it is used or not. Mesh, however, it is not about roaming (i.e. multiple APs with same ssid, clients connects to preferred one). Mesh is a topology thing (nodes come and go), wireless mesh also means wireless uplink (i.e. the AP you are connected to itself talks to its uplink wirelessly). These are things you use only if you cannot avoid them; metalic connection to each AP is way more reliable.

krelas 3y ago

I have found Wi-Fi 6/ax is mature enough to deploy now. I wouldn’t be touching Wi-Fi 7, considering it hasn’t even been ratified yet. One generation behind is usually where you want to be because your clients usually haven’t caught up anyway.

Havoc 3y ago

Is it really that big of a risk? If you’ve got current gen gear and it works fine then why not

justinclift 3y ago

> Stability of the software is not a consideration. Yeah. I'm pretty sure that I've seen a toggle-able option in some home user routers for them to automatically reboot themselves once every um... day (or some other time period). Like "we can't be bothered tracking down the memory leaks in shipped software, so lets just implement an auto-reboot of the router". It's both funny and tragic at the same time.

Gabrys1 3y ago
I wish more hardware had this setting exposed. My wifi router had a bug that was eventually fixed, but before that I would need to reboot it every hour. That's a simple workaround - if only there was a setting for that. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35986375 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35986375
- justinclift 3y ago
  TP-Link Archer AX73's have it. Just logged into one to check. It won't allow every hour though. The options are either daily, weekly, or monthly, and you can set the exact time. It doesn't seem to allow for more than one reboot schedule either, so it wouldn't be possible to set (say) 24 different daily schedules 1 hour apart as a workaround.
  - Gabrys1 3y ago
    The same was the case in that Asus router. I just wish every AP had that setting

ikiris 3y ago

Maybe for consumer and ubi gear. The enterprisish gear they have to actually support so it get's fixed enough at some point. No way the big hospital systems / robot warehouses don't light people (VPs and up) up over flaky wireless.

sgtnoodle 3y ago

That's actually a hobby of mine, where I look for 5-10 year old forum posts recommending "new" hardware with good OpenWRT support. I order one on eBay for $30, then try it out myself. I now have 3 very stable 802.11ac access points across my home, and a WPS bridge capable of hitting 500Mbps of TCP throughput. I do suggest using the latest generation client chipsets with driver support in your OS, though. Whether or not a newer client radio talks to a similarly capable AP, it is likely to have better receive sensitivity than older radios. I also suggest specifically buying Intel client radios. I have first-hand benchmarking experience that shows that Intel radios are very good at receiving marginal radio frames in heavily congested environments. Qualcomm and Broadcom radios might be just as good, but I wasn't able to evaluate them for lack of driver support for my purpose. Realtek/Mediatek/Ralink radios have pretty good drivers, but the actual radios behave notably worse with congestion. I've had friends living in apartments take my advice and switch from Realtek to Intel, and they've reported back significant gains in wifi stability. I'll also note that the original Steam Deck has a Realtek radio, and many people complain about its mediocre Wifi performance. Some people have gone as far as hot air reworking their Decks to have 802.11ax Intel radios, which happen to be pin compatible.

Avamander 3y ago
For $30 you can already get used enterprise access points. No OpenWRT, but they perform way better than 500Mbps. Even the ones that are now five or more years old.
- sgtnoodle 3y ago
  I just want to make sure we're comparing the same thing, since data rates are such a nuanced topic. I have two 802.11ac APs communicating at 866Mbps link rate, via two spatial streams at 80Mhz of channel bandwidth. The APs bridge Ethernet traffic using WDS. I can measure 500Mbps of sustained TCP throughout over that wireless link. I believe that's pretty much the theoretical limit for the link rate. Are you suggesting there are some good cheap APs that can readily do WDS with more than two spatial streams, or wider channel bandwidth? That could be fun to play with, although at this point my WDS link is just for the lols because I've since run cat6 between buildings...

LinuxBender 3y ago

In my personal experience just anecdotally one generation is usually fine provided it is on the latest firmware for that device. A notable bonus is the cost is usually much less than the latest generation. The WiFi 6 that I bought about mid-life of 6 was about $150 and is now $75 on Amazon where as WiFi 7 is significantly more. Some may have a need for the extra speed but my WiFi 6 is still plenty fast enough to keep up with my 500mb/s fiber.

rldjbpin 3y ago

in my dorm, back when 802.11ac was the latest standard, having one of few devices which could support the standard gave me a great wireless experience because the new APs supported it and was enabled by the network admins. besides the algorithmic stability, the new radio bands or their combinations still have merit fwiw.

DANmode 3y ago

What "home" hardware are you using? Best person to ask I've come across all year!