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> the best way to speed up your Wi-Fi is to not use it. So true! Other tips I’ve found useful: Separate 2.4ghz network for only IoT devices. They tend to hav

> the best way to speed up your Wi-Fi is to not use it. So true! Other tips I’ve found useful: Separate 2.4ghz network for only IoT devices. They tend to have terrible WiFi chipsets and use older WiFi standards. Slower speed = more airtime used for the same amount of data. This way the “slow” IoT devices don’t interfere with your faster devices which… Faster devices such as laptops and phones belong on 5ghz only network, if you’re able to get enough coverage. Prefer wired backhaul and more access points, as you’re better off with a device talking on another channel to an ap closer to it rather than tieing up airtime with lots of retries to a far away ap (which impacts all the other clients also trying to talk to that ap) WiFi is super solid at our house but it took some tweaking and wiring everything that doesn’t move.

vitaflo 1y ago
Solid idea and something I should work towards. We have Ethernet drops in every room but you’re right about IoT devices. Now I have some more planning to do.
- kiney 1y ago
  skip wifi and use zigbee for IoT where possible.
chrneu 1y ago
Absolutely. Your IoT devices should be on their own 2.4ghz network running on a specific channel to isolate them. You should also firewall these devices pretty heavily on their own router. The only devices on wifi should be cell phones and laptops if they can't be plugged in. Everything else, including TVs, should be ethernet. When I moved into my last house with roommates their network was gaaarbage cuz everything was running off the same router. The 2.4ghz congestion slowed the 5ghz connections because the router was having to deal with so much 2.4ghz noise. A good way of thinking about it is that every 2.4ghz device you add onto a network will slow all the other devices by a small amount. This compounds as you add more devices. So those smart lights? Yeaaahh
- drnick1 1y ago
  My advice would be NOT to connect any kind of TV to the Internet. They have microphones and sometimes cameras, and are a huge privacy risk.
  - bdangubic 1y ago
    so does your phone :)
    - drnick1 1y ago
      Yes, but unlike TVs, my phone runs free software (Graphene) and is free of the spyware "smart" TVs are known for.
      - whatevaa 1y ago
        Most people don't run Graphene so point stands.
        drnick1 1y ago
        Most people don't know that Big Tech is extracting data from them on a massive scale. It's up to us, the "tech people," to educate the people and show them alternatives like Graphene. As for the TV, my advice is not to connect it to the internet. If you need to stream something, hook up a laptop or dedicated device to the TV.
        hvb2 1y ago
        This is where regulation comes in. For the TV makers. Things should be secure by default and come with fines if they aren't. As for the extracting of data, yes that happens on a massive scale. In free products that no one is forced to use. And I would argue that, by now, almost everyone should know that comes at a price, it's just not monetary to the user. At that point it's a choice people make and should be allowed to make.
ssl-3 1y ago
That's sounds like a good concept: I'm no stranger to cheap IoT devices chewing up local 2.4GHz bandwidth with chatter and I have a lot of that going on. But does it matter in 2025? As a broad concept: Ever since my last Sonos device [that they didn't deliberately brick] died, I don't have any even vaguely bandwidth-intensive devices left in my world that are 2.4GHz-only. Whatever laptop I have this year prefers the 5GHz network, and has for 20 years. My phone, whatever it is today, does as well and has for 15 years. My CCwGTV Chromecast would also prefer hanging out on the 5GHz network if it weren't plugged into the $12 ethernet switch behind the TV. Even things like the Google Home Mini speakers that I buy on the used market for $10 or $15 seem to prefer using 5GHz 802.11ac, and do so at a reasonably-quick (read: low-airtime) modulation rate. The only time I spend with my phone or tablet or whatever on the singular 2.4GHz network I have is when I'm at the edge of what I can reach with my access points -- like, when I visit the neighbors or something, where range is more important than speed and 2.4GHz tends to go a wee bit further. So the only things I have left in normal use that requires a 2.4GHz network are IoT things like smart plugs and light bulbs and other small stuff like my own little ESP/Pi Zero W projects that require so little bandwidth that the contention doesn't matter. (I mean... the ye olde Wii console and PSP handheld only do 2.4GHz, but they don't have much to talk about on the network anymore and never really did even in the best of times.) It's difficult to imagine that others' wifi devices aren't in similar form, because there's just not much stuff left out there in the world that's both not IoT and that can't talk at 5GHz. I can see some merit to having a separate IoT VLAN with its own SSID where that's appropriate (just to prevent their little IoT fingers from ever reaching out to the rest of the stuff on my LAN and discovering how insecure it may be), but that's a side-trip from your suggestion wherein the impetus is just logical isolation -- not spectral isolation. So yes, of course: Build out a robust wireless network. Make it awesome -- and use it for stuff. But unless I'm missing something, it sounds like building two separate-but-parallel 2.4GHz networks is just an exercise in solving a problem that hasn't really existed for a number of years.
- ipython 1y ago
  There is no non-IoT 2.4ghz network in my design. All "fast" devices are on a 5ghz only network. The only 2.4ghz network is dedicated to IoT devices. This also eliminates the need for devices to hunt and roam between 5ghz and 2.4ghz unnecessarily. Just need to balance tx power to make sure the 5ghz handoffs are as smooth as possible between APs.

vitaflo 1y ago

Solid idea and something I should work towards. We have Ethernet drops in every room but you’re right about IoT devices. Now I have some more planning to do.

kiney 1y ago
skip wifi and use zigbee for IoT where possible.

chrneu 1y ago

Absolutely. Your IoT devices should be on their own 2.4ghz network running on a specific channel to isolate them. You should also firewall these devices pretty heavily on their own router. The only devices on wifi should be cell phones and laptops if they can't be plugged in. Everything else, including TVs, should be ethernet. When I moved into my last house with roommates their network was gaaarbage cuz everything was running off the same router. The 2.4ghz congestion slowed the 5ghz connections because the router was having to deal with so much 2.4ghz noise. A good way of thinking about it is that every 2.4ghz device you add onto a network will slow all the other devices by a small amount. This compounds as you add more devices. So those smart lights? Yeaaahh

drnick1 1y ago
My advice would be NOT to connect any kind of TV to the Internet. They have microphones and sometimes cameras, and are a huge privacy risk.
- bdangubic 1y ago
  so does your phone :)
  - drnick1 1y ago
    Yes, but unlike TVs, my phone runs free software (Graphene) and is free of the spyware "smart" TVs are known for.
    - whatevaa 1y ago
      Most people don't run Graphene so point stands.
      - drnick1 1y ago
        Most people don't know that Big Tech is extracting data from them on a massive scale. It's up to us, the "tech people," to educate the people and show them alternatives like Graphene. As for the TV, my advice is not to connect it to the internet. If you need to stream something, hook up a laptop or dedicated device to the TV.
        hvb2 1y ago
        This is where regulation comes in. For the TV makers. Things should be secure by default and come with fines if they aren't. As for the extracting of data, yes that happens on a massive scale. In free products that no one is forced to use. And I would argue that, by now, almost everyone should know that comes at a price, it's just not monetary to the user. At that point it's a choice people make and should be allowed to make.

ssl-3 1y ago

That's sounds like a good concept: I'm no stranger to cheap IoT devices chewing up local 2.4GHz bandwidth with chatter and I have a lot of that going on. But does it matter in 2025? As a broad concept: Ever since my last Sonos device [that they didn't deliberately brick] died, I don't have any even vaguely bandwidth-intensive devices left in my world that are 2.4GHz-only. Whatever laptop I have this year prefers the 5GHz network, and has for 20 years. My phone, whatever it is today, does as well and has for 15 years. My CCwGTV Chromecast would also prefer hanging out on the 5GHz network if it weren't plugged into the $12 ethernet switch behind the TV. Even things like the Google Home Mini speakers that I buy on the used market for $10 or $15 seem to prefer using 5GHz 802.11ac, and do so at a reasonably-quick (read: low-airtime) modulation rate. The only time I spend with my phone or tablet or whatever on the singular 2.4GHz network I have is when I'm at the edge of what I can reach with my access points -- like, when I visit the neighbors or something, where range is more important than speed and 2.4GHz tends to go a wee bit further. So the only things I have left in normal use that requires a 2.4GHz network are IoT things like smart plugs and light bulbs and other small stuff like my own little ESP/Pi Zero W projects that require so little bandwidth that the contention doesn't matter. (I mean... the ye olde Wii console and PSP handheld only do 2.4GHz, but they don't have much to talk about on the network anymore and never really did even in the best of times.) It's difficult to imagine that others' wifi devices aren't in similar form, because there's just not much stuff left out there in the world that's both not IoT and that can't talk at 5GHz. I can see some merit to having a separate IoT VLAN with its own SSID where that's appropriate (just to prevent their little IoT fingers from ever reaching out to the rest of the stuff on my LAN and discovering how insecure it may be), but that's a side-trip from your suggestion wherein the impetus is just logical isolation -- not spectral isolation. So yes, of course: Build out a robust wireless network. Make it awesome -- and use it for stuff. But unless I'm missing something, it sounds like building two separate-but-parallel 2.4GHz networks is just an exercise in solving a problem that hasn't really existed for a number of years.

ipython 1y ago
There is no non-IoT 2.4ghz network in my design. All "fast" devices are on a 5ghz only network. The only 2.4ghz network is dedicated to IoT devices. This also eliminates the need for devices to hunt and roam between 5ghz and 2.4ghz unnecessarily. Just need to balance tx power to make sure the 5ghz handoffs are as smooth as possible between APs.