16 ms·

Diagnosing an Unusual WiFi Issue (2020)

271 points by llimllib 2y ago

Johnny555 2y ago
>First, I purchased a new, highly-reviewed, wifi adapter on Amazon. This is not how you find a high quality product on Amazon. >It didn’t resolve the issue. It did, however, come with an offer for a free 64GB flash drive in exchange for a good reviews. Now you know why it was so highly reviewed.
- Semaphor 2y ago
  > Now you know why it was so highly reviewed. I’m relatively certain that was indeed what the author meant to imply.
  - generalizations 2y ago
    Usually, you can see a few comments mentioning those offers when you check the reviews. Amazon lets you go see just the 1-star reviews; this is a good use for that feature.
    - jchw 2y ago
      It's interesting how it's actually really easy to notice this happening as a random consumer (I've seen it a few times, in fact) but somehow impossible for Amazon to do anything about, and presumably when they do they don't bother putting in much effort to properly punish sellers for it. It's almost like Amazon does not give a shit.
      - PaulHoule 2y ago
        Part of my falling out with AMZN was when I saw a product listing that where somewhere between fraud and word salad, complained, and was told that AMZN doesn't care what I think about a product listing unless I bought the product. Problem is if I try to buy something on AMZN I need to sift through large numbers of junk product listings, a problem I don't have with best buy, petsmart, adorama, or other reputable online retailers. Even the marketplaces like Ebay, Etsy and Temu seem less offensive to me. Result = I canceled my Prime subscription and now AMZN is the last place I will go to buy something and not the first.
      - radicality 2y ago
        I wrote another comment in the thread about it, but fyi as of now mid-2024 giving out incentives (free items / discounts / cashback etc) conditioned on a positive review, is considered fraud and can be reported as such on https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/ https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/ . Next time I see such an offer in an item I order I will definitely report it. Maybe it will improve the online shopping landscape by an epsilon if we all do it.
    - dotBen 2y ago
      Fakespot is not infallible but a useful addition to any Amazon research process. They try to hide it from the front page (a bit of a dark pattern) but you don't need to download the plugin to use it, just visit https://www.fakespot.com/analyzer https://www.fakespot.com/analyzer
      - frereubu 2y ago
        Yeah, I was really annoyed when it to me quite a while to find that URL after they changed the layout of the site. I only shop on Amazon when I absolutely have to, and have an extension just sitting there being regularly updated with who knows what code really didn't appeal.
      - 0x2a 2y ago
        Bookmarklet: javascript:void(open('https://www.fakespot.com/analyze?url='+encodeURIComponent(location.href)))
    - radicality 2y ago
      If you are ever a recipient of such an offer (free item, cashback, any benefit) and it is conditioned on writing a positive review (ie giving 1/5 won’t get you the free gift), this is as of recently not allowed and considered fraud. Should report all such new cases you see to https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/ https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/ ftc press release: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/08/federal-trade-commission-announces-final-rule-banning-fake-reviews-testimonials https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/08/...
Johnny555 2y ago
I was certain that I read about a very similar issue here in the past, and after some searching, found this exact article posted 2 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32524702 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32524702
- cf100clunk 2y ago
  Algolia Search and Refined Hacker News appear to treat title strings as case sensitive, so didn't highlight the original version... i.e. Unusual vs unusual
  - Raed667 2y ago
    Not sure what you mean about the search? I managed to find the post from 2022 with no issue: `rEsOlViNg aN UnuSuaL WiFi isSUe` https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=rEsOlViNg%20aN%20UnuSuaL%20WiFi%20isSUe&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
    - cf100clunk 2y ago
      Now try using this url string Algolia Search: https://ryuuta.net/blog/diagnosing-an-unsual-wifi-issue/ https://ryuuta.net/blog/diagnosing-an-unsual-wifi-issue/
      - Raed667 2y ago
        OK i see what is going on, the 2022 post was a different URL that now redirects https://blog.ando.fyi/posts/diagnosing-an-unsual-wifi-issue/ https://blog.ando.fyi/posts/diagnosing-an-unsual-wifi-issue/
- Andoryuuta 2y ago
  Yeah, I should probably update my Hugo theme to include the date (not that I ever write anything on there anyways TBH). Also, the I changed domains not too long ago, so that probably added some more confusion. I wrote this in 2020 apparently: https://github.com/Andoryuuta/website/blob/b95a693c74568899568fb5d077ad58e161e7e3f0/content/blog/diagnosing-an-unsual-wifi-issue/index.md?plain=1#L3 https://github.com/Andoryuuta/website/blob/b95a693c745688995...
cf100clunk 2y ago
Just go right to the tl;dr
- xattt 2y ago
  Good advice for all product reviews and most articles too.
  - cf100clunk 2y ago
    Anyone know of a browser extension that opens pages right to any detected tl;dr headings?
    - reaperducer 2y ago
      If you have Safari, and a machine that supports Apple Intelligence, that sort of thing is built in. Click on the leftmost icon in the URL bar, select Show Reader, then click on Summarize.
      - aruggirello 2y ago
        Mozilla's new Orbit AI assistant for Firefox is in beta, BTW: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42555440 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42555440
        ppp999 2y ago
        Apparently not available for Firefox for Android
  - fortran77 2y ago
    No, it was very interesting to learn about his process and the tools used to diagnose. (I had a similar problem with Acronis True Image killing KiKad performace on Windows!)
    - cf100clunk 2y ago
creeble 2y ago
Interesting - Anyone know if this problem affects QT5 under Linux? I’ll have to do some digging to find out, but curious if anyone else has seen this on Qt.
- TonyTrapp 2y ago
  It doesn't look like that polling code was used under Linux. The fix was to only poll on Windows XP, since apparently this wasn't even needed on newer Windows versions. The bug was also fixed in 2018, so you would only be affected if your distriubtion ships a severely outdated Qt5 version.
  - creeble 2y ago
    Thanks so very much!
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
404mm 2y ago
This is very similar to an issue I battled for months on MacBook Pro (one of the later Intel versions, like 2018-ish), although there problem was not in the HW itself but the current version of MacOS at that time (this is no longer an issue). I noticed that my WiFi had similar repeating lags .. about every 8-10s pings would go to a few hundred ms and then return to single/low double digits. Long story short, the problem was with several MacOS components (and maybe some 3rd party software) requesting Location services to determine Mac’s position. To do that, among other things, Mac scans WiFi around you (probably for the names/SSID?) and to do that, the current WIFI connection is temporarily put on a back burner, resulting in a brief delay in traffic. The solution was to minimize location services.
- tonymet 2y ago
  This plagued a lot of remote workers when the trend started due to ping latency causing terrible VC quality like delayed speech , dropped frames, out-of-order frames . Very frustrating.
- Suppafly 2y ago
  >and to do that, the current WIFI connection is temporarily put on a back burner, resulting in a brief delay in traffic. I can't believe they ever thought that'd be a good idea.
  - cenamus 2y ago
    Probably have to sweep across the frequency bands, so it's physically the only way to do it. Still stupid to do it more than once every 15 minutes
    - wbl 2y ago
      Fast switching on a background schedule while packets continue to flow but at slightly reduced rate should be possible. Might be very export controlled though given obvious application.
      - 2y ago
xp84 2y ago
Worth the read just for the delightful Gift Note from your brother. LOL.
- fullstop 2y ago
  I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one sending and receiving notes like this with my siblings.
tonymet 2y ago
I encourage techies to dig into their wifi hardware & software end-to-end. Install smokeping on a raspberry pi (even a $10 zero works). Ping all of your home devices , your gateway, DNS & first hops of your IP. You will discover all sorts of disruptions affecting your network quality, including interference. For your primary devices like desktops & laptops, use mtr (my-traceroute) in a terminal window to watch your pings over time. Your connectivity issues , particularly with VC, terminal emulation & gaming, are due to ping latency , not bandwidth issues. You will find software issues like this one, the location services bug on MacOS, and others; as well as hardware issues due to transmission interference, noise, physical interference. Consistent & low pings are critical.
- toast0 2y ago
  This is such a pain to do though, because so much of it is seeing braindead behaviors and not being able to do anything about it. Putting as much as you can on wired ethernet helps a lot. Still have just as much bogus traffic, but on 1g (or even 100m), there's a lot more room for it. Everyonce in a while, I look at the broadcast traffic on my wifi and cry.
  - tonymet 2y ago
    wired is best, but for many it's not possible. MTR is a good start, and easy to run on a chron job. Graph the results with excel
    - wolrah 2y ago
      > wired is best, but for many it's not possible. For some it's not possible, but in my personal experience a lot of people who "can't" wire really just don't want to wire. Even if you can't do a full "professional grade" install there are almost always viable options unless you live in an apartment built like a prison. I have in the past: * Poked tiny easily-patched holes in the wall just large enough to pass a bare cable through to an adjacent room * Tuck cables under baseboard molding * Run cables through vents * Followed existing television/telco wiring * (last resort) Just stapled the cable to the wall/ceiling, optionally covering with stick-on covers. Most of those options can be hidden from view and all are trivially removable/repairable so there's no issue in a rental situation. Almost everyone can do most if not all of those things if they want to, they just usually don't want to because they've been trained to not like wires, that wireless is better. I have actually had a person complain about lag on their game console, which was in the shelves under their TV connected via WiFi to their cable modem which was in the same shelves, and they didn't want me to plug in a simple six foot cable between the two because they didn't want more wires. That's just pure stupid. If it doesn't move, it should be wired unless there is absolutely no practical way to wire it. Desktop computers, game consoles, TVs, etc. Even laptops, if you're working from home and sitting at a desk, have a cable there. Modern laptops with USB-C docking stations make it easier than it's ever been, the same cord that provides power also provides reliable high speed networking.
settsu 2y ago
TFA never addresses what MediBang Paint Pro is using Qt for. Checking for updates, etc. (e.g., online account connection, sharing)?
- mrgaro 2y ago
  As Qt is a GUI library (among other things) I would guess that Paint Pro is written entirely using Qt.
  - settsu 2y ago
    Ah okay, forgive my ignorance. The way the article is written I interpreted it to be a library.
    - dgfitz 2y ago
      I have a love/hate relationship with qt. It is powerful, generally well-maintained, and I’ve compiled the same app to windows, linux, Mac, and arm, and a specific use case needing JNI on android. It all just worked. Their licensing got really goofy for a while, and yocto (which unfortunately I became a “SME” of at work) made cloning and using anything after 5.15.2 very obnoxious. They needed to figure out how to pull a RedHat and get paid support, but this was right around the time electron (at least for a while) rendered native apps as second-class citizens. The bindings to other languages are neat, and the signal/slot idea is also neat. The whole moc part isn’t great, but I understand why, and it has very rarely caused me any real issues.
can16358p 2y ago
I have a completely unrelated issue: since switching to a new iPhone, only my iPhone occasionally can't access anything on Wi-Fi. All my other devices, including a MacBook and iPad connected to the same network work fine. My previous iPhone also worked just fine, it's just the new phone. I know how annoying these can become, and glad to hear that you could pinpoint it down.
cyberax 2y ago
I had a similar issue! Around 2017 I moved into a new house and my MacBook Pro started getting latency spikes every few minutes. Not as bad, but still noticeable. This irked me quite a bit, because I spent several weeks wiring my house with the best POE-powered WiFi access points available at that time. So I spent some time debugging the issue, and it turned out that the culprit was in the location services! For some reason, the weather widget tried to check the location every few minutes, and that involved scanning for the WiFi access points. Which in turn meant that latency spike, I posted about it on StackOverflow ( https://superuser.com/questions/1142798/experiencing-high-latency-on-wifi-every-other-second-with-macos-sierra/1348295#1348295 https://superuser.com/questions/1142798/experiencing-high-la... ).
- bazmattaz 2y ago
  Was this fixed in future OS releases?
deathanatos 2y ago
But why does querying the registry cause the WiFi to drop? It smells like there is a AP search occurring, which I think usually causes the antenna to frequency hop for the duration search, which results in latency on the established connection since it can't transmit at the same time. But does enumerating registry keys do that? I didn't think the registry had dynamic behavior like that. Still … a ridiculous bug.
- rincebrain 2y ago
  If I understand correctly, it's triggering an actual wifi AP scan, and the AP enumeration in the registry is a side effect of finding the interface to go ask it to rescan. But I might be missing something.
j-scott 2y ago
This is very similar to an issue I had while playing games on a wired Windows desktop. I haven’t run into it in a long time now that I think about it. I wonder what might have changed.
rincebrain 2y ago
My favorite stupid wifi thing I ever had, for some value of favorite, was a previous incarnation of my home router, which apparently had a known issue where certain Intel wifi cards connecting to the AP would cause it to start having firmware crashes randomly, which I discovered when I brought home a new laptop and my wireless on every device started being unreliable... Nothing to be done about it other than "don't do that" or "replace AP" since the firmware is a black box. It was...maddening.
- apfsx 2y ago
  I had this exact same experience with a brand new Dell XPS 15 I purchased around 2018 I believe. It came with a killer branded Wi-Fi card and I noticed shortly after purchasing that it would literally bring down my entire home network at the time. I don’t remember what router I was running or the rest of my home network set up at the time, but it was definitely a really bizarre thing to witness, I ended upreplacing the Wi-Fi card.
foldor 2y ago
On a related topic. I have a really weird problem in my house where I'm about 20 feet from my TV trying to use my PS5 DualSense connected to a Google TV device connected behind the TV. It uses Bluetooth, which is also 2.4GHz, and the issue I'm having is that the dongle behind the TV is really impacting my controller connection and making playing games over PS Remote Play completely impossible. I even have the GTV device hard wired with an Ethernet adapter, as is my PS5. This can't really be a range limitation can it?
- EvanDotPro 2y ago
  (Obligatory HN pedantry: arguably unrelated, but now I'll try to help anyway because this is quite common.) Bluetooth is pretty low power, but without the TV in the way, that range should be no problem at all. Problem is that a lot can block it physically and drown it out in RF noise. Most TV's probably have a thin, but solid aluminum plate in them for structure that could indeed block BLE and be causing the issue. Ironically, this is one RF case where metal studs would actually be helpful. For comparison, I fly a paramotor and use Sena Bluetooth mesh for comms, and just our heads at any distance are enough to block it if we're on the wrong side of each other. Motorcyclists on the other hand don't often have this issue since there's other vehicles and stuff to bounce their signals around. What might help if that's the issue is something reflective like foil mounted somewhere that can see both the controller and the GTV device. I'd also try to make the reflector slightly/roughly parabolic-ish (kinda shallow as to not make aiming difficult) pointed at the GTV device. You can hide the reflector behind and/or point it through anything RF transparent like wood or plastic. Another possibility is other 2.4ghz noise— You could try turning down 2.4ghz transmit power on your AP as a possible quick fix. Of course if you haven't, make sure anything that can be on 5ghz, is. Edit: Note that a reflector will also reflect noise sources at the GTV device. I've also had issues with poorly shielded HDMI interfering with 2.4ghz in close proximity, so even just jostling things around behind the TV a little or using your best shielded HDMI cables there could help some. Debugging RF can be tricky and frustrating, but I hope one of these tips helps either you or maybe a passer-by one day. :) Happy new year!
garganzol 2y ago
At last, I know what probably was causing my Realtek WiFi problems during that era (circa 2020). It is so strange that a Ring 3 application can wreck a havoc on the networking subsystem for the whole OS. Also it is weird that Qt, being a UI library, takes a role of advanced network guardian by monitoring the activity of network interfaces. What a mess.
NotYourLawyer 2y ago
> Later, (for unrelated reasons) I built an entirely new desktop computer, not using anything from the old one, except the new wifi adapter. This included a fresh install of Windows 10… A few weeks later, and the issue suddenly began happening on the new computer also This pretty clearly points to some weird software you’ve got installed. It’s not hardware, and it’s not a wonky Windows installation. What else could it be?
Pxtl 2y ago
My reaction: "If scanning for wifi has that much negative impact on my connection, the OS should by default pop up a toast notification when it happens without a user request to do so." If MS can put slop like news and weather and ads for apps like Candy Crush into the Windows GUI, they can also give me useful info like that.
alcoholic_byte 2y ago
I think some are missing the actual point here: Why does a software/hardware/driver concerned with drawing need to know what wifi-networks are available? That is tantamount to surveillance. An absolute no-go.
tuzemec 2y ago
I have a similar issue with two M3 MBPro machines. There's a high volume of lost packets when I'm connected to my home 5GHz wifi. The 2.4 connection works just fine. All the other devices don't have any problems.
disillusioned 2y ago
This isn't even particularly close, but I had a gremlin that I would notice at night time where I'd hear my CPU fan idly spin up and the computer slow down... come to find out I was basically getting port scanned and _blasted_ with RDP requests, and since RDP is a nightmare protocol with no rate limiting to speak of, it was obvious that some botnet had found the port I had changed RDP to and was hammering it to try to gain access to my computer. This manifested with svchost.exe maxing out CPU, and digging deeper revealed it was coming from a botnet in... well, who knows where. Obviously that was all the incentive I needed to finally heed my devops friend's warning and disable port forwarding and instead use Tailscale for remote access, but yeesh. Wild to watch happen first-hand.

271 points by llimllib 2y ago

>First, I purchased a new, highly-reviewed, wifi adapter on Amazon. This is not how you find a high quality product on Amazon. >It didn’t resolve the issue. It did, however, come with an offer for a free 64GB flash drive in exchange for a good reviews. Now you know why it was so highly reviewed.

Semaphor 2y ago
> Now you know why it was so highly reviewed. I’m relatively certain that was indeed what the author meant to imply.
- generalizations 2y ago
  Usually, you can see a few comments mentioning those offers when you check the reviews. Amazon lets you go see just the 1-star reviews; this is a good use for that feature.
  - jchw 2y ago
    It's interesting how it's actually really easy to notice this happening as a random consumer (I've seen it a few times, in fact) but somehow impossible for Amazon to do anything about, and presumably when they do they don't bother putting in much effort to properly punish sellers for it. It's almost like Amazon does not give a shit.
    - PaulHoule 2y ago
      Part of my falling out with AMZN was when I saw a product listing that where somewhere between fraud and word salad, complained, and was told that AMZN doesn't care what I think about a product listing unless I bought the product. Problem is if I try to buy something on AMZN I need to sift through large numbers of junk product listings, a problem I don't have with best buy, petsmart, adorama, or other reputable online retailers. Even the marketplaces like Ebay, Etsy and Temu seem less offensive to me. Result = I canceled my Prime subscription and now AMZN is the last place I will go to buy something and not the first.
    - radicality 2y ago
      I wrote another comment in the thread about it, but fyi as of now mid-2024 giving out incentives (free items / discounts / cashback etc) conditioned on a positive review, is considered fraud and can be reported as such on https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/ https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/ . Next time I see such an offer in an item I order I will definitely report it. Maybe it will improve the online shopping landscape by an epsilon if we all do it.
  - dotBen 2y ago
    Fakespot is not infallible but a useful addition to any Amazon research process. They try to hide it from the front page (a bit of a dark pattern) but you don't need to download the plugin to use it, just visit https://www.fakespot.com/analyzer https://www.fakespot.com/analyzer
    - frereubu 2y ago
      Yeah, I was really annoyed when it to me quite a while to find that URL after they changed the layout of the site. I only shop on Amazon when I absolutely have to, and have an extension just sitting there being regularly updated with who knows what code really didn't appeal.
    - 0x2a 2y ago
      Bookmarklet: javascript:void(open('https://www.fakespot.com/analyze?url='+encodeURIComponent(location.href)))
  - radicality 2y ago
    If you are ever a recipient of such an offer (free item, cashback, any benefit) and it is conditioned on writing a positive review (ie giving 1/5 won’t get you the free gift), this is as of recently not allowed and considered fraud. Should report all such new cases you see to https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/ https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/ ftc press release: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/08/federal-trade-commission-announces-final-rule-banning-fake-reviews-testimonials https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/08/...

Johnny555 2y ago

I was certain that I read about a very similar issue here in the past, and after some searching, found this exact article posted 2 years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32524702 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32524702

cf100clunk 2y ago
Algolia Search and Refined Hacker News appear to treat title strings as case sensitive, so didn't highlight the original version... i.e. Unusual vs unusual
- Raed667 2y ago
  Not sure what you mean about the search? I managed to find the post from 2022 with no issue: `rEsOlViNg aN UnuSuaL WiFi isSUe` https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=rEsOlViNg%20aN%20UnuSuaL%20WiFi%20isSUe&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
  - cf100clunk 2y ago
    Now try using this url string Algolia Search: https://ryuuta.net/blog/diagnosing-an-unsual-wifi-issue/ https://ryuuta.net/blog/diagnosing-an-unsual-wifi-issue/
    - Raed667 2y ago
      OK i see what is going on, the 2022 post was a different URL that now redirects https://blog.ando.fyi/posts/diagnosing-an-unsual-wifi-issue/ https://blog.ando.fyi/posts/diagnosing-an-unsual-wifi-issue/
Andoryuuta 2y ago
Yeah, I should probably update my Hugo theme to include the date (not that I ever write anything on there anyways TBH). Also, the I changed domains not too long ago, so that probably added some more confusion. I wrote this in 2020 apparently: https://github.com/Andoryuuta/website/blob/b95a693c74568899568fb5d077ad58e161e7e3f0/content/blog/diagnosing-an-unsual-wifi-issue/index.md?plain=1#L3 https://github.com/Andoryuuta/website/blob/b95a693c745688995...

cf100clunk 2y ago

Just go right to the tl;dr

xattt 2y ago
Good advice for all product reviews and most articles too.
- cf100clunk 2y ago
  Anyone know of a browser extension that opens pages right to any detected tl;dr headings?
  - reaperducer 2y ago
    If you have Safari, and a machine that supports Apple Intelligence, that sort of thing is built in. Click on the leftmost icon in the URL bar, select Show Reader, then click on Summarize.
    - aruggirello 2y ago
      Mozilla's new Orbit AI assistant for Firefox is in beta, BTW: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42555440 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42555440
      - ppp999 2y ago
        Apparently not available for Firefox for Android
- fortran77 2y ago
  No, it was very interesting to learn about his process and the tools used to diagnose. (I had a similar problem with Acronis True Image killing KiKad performace on Windows!)
  - cf100clunk 2y ago

creeble 2y ago

Interesting - Anyone know if this problem affects QT5 under Linux? I’ll have to do some digging to find out, but curious if anyone else has seen this on Qt.

TonyTrapp 2y ago
It doesn't look like that polling code was used under Linux. The fix was to only poll on Windows XP, since apparently this wasn't even needed on newer Windows versions. The bug was also fixed in 2018, so you would only be affected if your distriubtion ships a severely outdated Qt5 version.
- creeble 2y ago
  Thanks so very much!

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

404mm 2y ago

This is very similar to an issue I battled for months on MacBook Pro (one of the later Intel versions, like 2018-ish), although there problem was not in the HW itself but the current version of MacOS at that time (this is no longer an issue). I noticed that my WiFi had similar repeating lags .. about every 8-10s pings would go to a few hundred ms and then return to single/low double digits. Long story short, the problem was with several MacOS components (and maybe some 3rd party software) requesting Location services to determine Mac’s position. To do that, among other things, Mac scans WiFi around you (probably for the names/SSID?) and to do that, the current WIFI connection is temporarily put on a back burner, resulting in a brief delay in traffic. The solution was to minimize location services.

tonymet 2y ago
This plagued a lot of remote workers when the trend started due to ping latency causing terrible VC quality like delayed speech , dropped frames, out-of-order frames . Very frustrating.
Suppafly 2y ago
>and to do that, the current WIFI connection is temporarily put on a back burner, resulting in a brief delay in traffic. I can't believe they ever thought that'd be a good idea.
- cenamus 2y ago
  Probably have to sweep across the frequency bands, so it's physically the only way to do it. Still stupid to do it more than once every 15 minutes
  - wbl 2y ago
    Fast switching on a background schedule while packets continue to flow but at slightly reduced rate should be possible. Might be very export controlled though given obvious application.
    - 2y ago

xp84 2y ago

Worth the read just for the delightful Gift Note from your brother. LOL.

fullstop 2y ago
I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one sending and receiving notes like this with my siblings.

tonymet 2y ago

I encourage techies to dig into their wifi hardware & software end-to-end. Install smokeping on a raspberry pi (even a $10 zero works). Ping all of your home devices , your gateway, DNS & first hops of your IP. You will discover all sorts of disruptions affecting your network quality, including interference. For your primary devices like desktops & laptops, use mtr (my-traceroute) in a terminal window to watch your pings over time. Your connectivity issues , particularly with VC, terminal emulation & gaming, are due to ping latency , not bandwidth issues. You will find software issues like this one, the location services bug on MacOS, and others; as well as hardware issues due to transmission interference, noise, physical interference. Consistent & low pings are critical.

toast0 2y ago
This is such a pain to do though, because so much of it is seeing braindead behaviors and not being able to do anything about it. Putting as much as you can on wired ethernet helps a lot. Still have just as much bogus traffic, but on 1g (or even 100m), there's a lot more room for it. Everyonce in a while, I look at the broadcast traffic on my wifi and cry.
- tonymet 2y ago
  wired is best, but for many it's not possible. MTR is a good start, and easy to run on a chron job. Graph the results with excel
  - wolrah 2y ago
    > wired is best, but for many it's not possible. For some it's not possible, but in my personal experience a lot of people who "can't" wire really just don't want to wire. Even if you can't do a full "professional grade" install there are almost always viable options unless you live in an apartment built like a prison. I have in the past: * Poked tiny easily-patched holes in the wall just large enough to pass a bare cable through to an adjacent room * Tuck cables under baseboard molding * Run cables through vents * Followed existing television/telco wiring * (last resort) Just stapled the cable to the wall/ceiling, optionally covering with stick-on covers. Most of those options can be hidden from view and all are trivially removable/repairable so there's no issue in a rental situation. Almost everyone can do most if not all of those things if they want to, they just usually don't want to because they've been trained to not like wires, that wireless is better. I have actually had a person complain about lag on their game console, which was in the shelves under their TV connected via WiFi to their cable modem which was in the same shelves, and they didn't want me to plug in a simple six foot cable between the two because they didn't want more wires. That's just pure stupid. If it doesn't move, it should be wired unless there is absolutely no practical way to wire it. Desktop computers, game consoles, TVs, etc. Even laptops, if you're working from home and sitting at a desk, have a cable there. Modern laptops with USB-C docking stations make it easier than it's ever been, the same cord that provides power also provides reliable high speed networking.

settsu 2y ago

TFA never addresses what MediBang Paint Pro is using Qt for. Checking for updates, etc. (e.g., online account connection, sharing)?

mrgaro 2y ago
As Qt is a GUI library (among other things) I would guess that Paint Pro is written entirely using Qt.
- settsu 2y ago
  Ah okay, forgive my ignorance. The way the article is written I interpreted it to be a library.
  - dgfitz 2y ago
    I have a love/hate relationship with qt. It is powerful, generally well-maintained, and I’ve compiled the same app to windows, linux, Mac, and arm, and a specific use case needing JNI on android. It all just worked. Their licensing got really goofy for a while, and yocto (which unfortunately I became a “SME” of at work) made cloning and using anything after 5.15.2 very obnoxious. They needed to figure out how to pull a RedHat and get paid support, but this was right around the time electron (at least for a while) rendered native apps as second-class citizens. The bindings to other languages are neat, and the signal/slot idea is also neat. The whole moc part isn’t great, but I understand why, and it has very rarely caused me any real issues.

can16358p 2y ago

I have a completely unrelated issue: since switching to a new iPhone, only my iPhone occasionally can't access anything on Wi-Fi. All my other devices, including a MacBook and iPad connected to the same network work fine. My previous iPhone also worked just fine, it's just the new phone. I know how annoying these can become, and glad to hear that you could pinpoint it down.

cyberax 2y ago

I had a similar issue! Around 2017 I moved into a new house and my MacBook Pro started getting latency spikes every few minutes. Not as bad, but still noticeable. This irked me quite a bit, because I spent several weeks wiring my house with the best POE-powered WiFi access points available at that time. So I spent some time debugging the issue, and it turned out that the culprit was in the location services! For some reason, the weather widget tried to check the location every few minutes, and that involved scanning for the WiFi access points. Which in turn meant that latency spike, I posted about it on StackOverflow ( https://superuser.com/questions/1142798/experiencing-high-latency-on-wifi-every-other-second-with-macos-sierra/1348295#1348295 https://superuser.com/questions/1142798/experiencing-high-la... ).

bazmattaz 2y ago
Was this fixed in future OS releases?

deathanatos 2y ago

But why does querying the registry cause the WiFi to drop? It smells like there is a AP search occurring, which I think usually causes the antenna to frequency hop for the duration search, which results in latency on the established connection since it can't transmit at the same time. But does enumerating registry keys do that? I didn't think the registry had dynamic behavior like that. Still … a ridiculous bug.

rincebrain 2y ago
If I understand correctly, it's triggering an actual wifi AP scan, and the AP enumeration in the registry is a side effect of finding the interface to go ask it to rescan. But I might be missing something.

j-scott 2y ago

This is very similar to an issue I had while playing games on a wired Windows desktop. I haven’t run into it in a long time now that I think about it. I wonder what might have changed.

rincebrain 2y ago

My favorite stupid wifi thing I ever had, for some value of favorite, was a previous incarnation of my home router, which apparently had a known issue where certain Intel wifi cards connecting to the AP would cause it to start having firmware crashes randomly, which I discovered when I brought home a new laptop and my wireless on every device started being unreliable... Nothing to be done about it other than "don't do that" or "replace AP" since the firmware is a black box. It was...maddening.

apfsx 2y ago
I had this exact same experience with a brand new Dell XPS 15 I purchased around 2018 I believe. It came with a killer branded Wi-Fi card and I noticed shortly after purchasing that it would literally bring down my entire home network at the time. I don’t remember what router I was running or the rest of my home network set up at the time, but it was definitely a really bizarre thing to witness, I ended upreplacing the Wi-Fi card.

foldor 2y ago

On a related topic. I have a really weird problem in my house where I'm about 20 feet from my TV trying to use my PS5 DualSense connected to a Google TV device connected behind the TV. It uses Bluetooth, which is also 2.4GHz, and the issue I'm having is that the dongle behind the TV is really impacting my controller connection and making playing games over PS Remote Play completely impossible. I even have the GTV device hard wired with an Ethernet adapter, as is my PS5. This can't really be a range limitation can it?

EvanDotPro 2y ago
(Obligatory HN pedantry: arguably unrelated, but now I'll try to help anyway because this is quite common.) Bluetooth is pretty low power, but without the TV in the way, that range should be no problem at all. Problem is that a lot can block it physically and drown it out in RF noise. Most TV's probably have a thin, but solid aluminum plate in them for structure that could indeed block BLE and be causing the issue. Ironically, this is one RF case where metal studs would actually be helpful. For comparison, I fly a paramotor and use Sena Bluetooth mesh for comms, and just our heads at any distance are enough to block it if we're on the wrong side of each other. Motorcyclists on the other hand don't often have this issue since there's other vehicles and stuff to bounce their signals around. What might help if that's the issue is something reflective like foil mounted somewhere that can see both the controller and the GTV device. I'd also try to make the reflector slightly/roughly parabolic-ish (kinda shallow as to not make aiming difficult) pointed at the GTV device. You can hide the reflector behind and/or point it through anything RF transparent like wood or plastic. Another possibility is other 2.4ghz noise— You could try turning down 2.4ghz transmit power on your AP as a possible quick fix. Of course if you haven't, make sure anything that can be on 5ghz, is. Edit: Note that a reflector will also reflect noise sources at the GTV device. I've also had issues with poorly shielded HDMI interfering with 2.4ghz in close proximity, so even just jostling things around behind the TV a little or using your best shielded HDMI cables there could help some. Debugging RF can be tricky and frustrating, but I hope one of these tips helps either you or maybe a passer-by one day. :) Happy new year!

garganzol 2y ago

At last, I know what probably was causing my Realtek WiFi problems during that era (circa 2020). It is so strange that a Ring 3 application can wreck a havoc on the networking subsystem for the whole OS. Also it is weird that Qt, being a UI library, takes a role of advanced network guardian by monitoring the activity of network interfaces. What a mess.

NotYourLawyer 2y ago

> Later, (for unrelated reasons) I built an entirely new desktop computer, not using anything from the old one, except the new wifi adapter. This included a fresh install of Windows 10… A few weeks later, and the issue suddenly began happening on the new computer also This pretty clearly points to some weird software you’ve got installed. It’s not hardware, and it’s not a wonky Windows installation. What else could it be?

Pxtl 2y ago

My reaction: "If scanning for wifi has that much negative impact on my connection, the OS should by default pop up a toast notification when it happens without a user request to do so." If MS can put slop like news and weather and ads for apps like Candy Crush into the Windows GUI, they can also give me useful info like that.

alcoholic_byte 2y ago

I think some are missing the actual point here: Why does a software/hardware/driver concerned with drawing need to know what wifi-networks are available? That is tantamount to surveillance. An absolute no-go.

tuzemec 2y ago

I have a similar issue with two M3 MBPro machines. There's a high volume of lost packets when I'm connected to my home 5GHz wifi. The 2.4 connection works just fine. All the other devices don't have any problems.

disillusioned 2y ago

This isn't even particularly close, but I had a gremlin that I would notice at night time where I'd hear my CPU fan idly spin up and the computer slow down... come to find out I was basically getting port scanned and _blasted_ with RDP requests, and since RDP is a nightmare protocol with no rate limiting to speak of, it was obvious that some botnet had found the port I had changed RDP to and was hammering it to try to gain access to my computer. This manifested with svchost.exe maxing out CPU, and digging deeper revealed it was coming from a botnet in... well, who knows where. Obviously that was all the incentive I needed to finally heed my devops friend's warning and disable port forwarding and instead use Tailscale for remote access, but yeesh. Wild to watch happen first-hand.