You should see 2.4 GHz noise floor when viewed from a spectrum analyzer in a densely populated, 5-floor, wood framed condo/apartment in a major urban area. Prototypical example would be some place in south lake union seattle.
Since 2.4 GHz goes through wood fairly effectively to moderate distances, it's a total half duplex CSMA hell...
One possible mitigation if you have older 2.4 GHz only devices is to run your own wifi on a 20 MHz channel, sacrificing throughput for better SNR. As channel sizes get narrower it cuts through the noise floor a little bit better. And of course to use your own choice of the cleanest 5.x GHz channel for everything you care about.
Why are your first two links just about buildings looking the same? I was thinking they'd spectrum visualizations per your lead-in which would be really fascinating to see...
I chuckle when Americans say that their "5 over 1" buildings "all look the same". This is nowhere near the level of sameness that I'm accustomed to see here in Eastern Europe. To my eye, these buildings look very distinct from each other.
I did my undergrad in Seattle and had this issue. I eventually made 10 or so unprotected wifi printers spit out the "how to turn off wifi printing" page of their manuals. Definitely cleared up a bit of 2.4ghz room.
Interesting reading. The results, and the issues with housing, remind one of the post war building boom in Central Europe, Communist enforced 'blocks'. We would visit from Canada and marvel how everything was the same. Obviously a very efficient use of planning and construction. Almost assembly line. Actually impressive how many people they had to house, quickly.
The amount of design work that went into the community was more impressive. Years later, I could appreciate how everything was coordinated to have nearby playgrounds - so that you could watch your kids from your apartment. Schools, grocery stores, medical clinics, were all nearby in a logical efficient pattern. ( Communist system though, meant there was little to eat, or buy, or drugs, in those facilities.)
The wiring, (and plumbing) was all prebuilt into the concrete walls and floors, ready to be connected, upon assembly. The ideas and designs were great. Of course, the actually performance, and construction, were prone to the usual Communist era woes of graft, theft, and shortages.
To get back to the topic, phone wires were installed, but phones were not available for another 20 years. Imagine if Ethernet wiring was installed that way?
OK - I didn't want to be 'that guy', but here I go: DevRant is garbage! I like the concept, but the execution is a marketing black hole.
First of all: the linked page doesn't scroll on an iPad - they are trying to be clever with scrolling and it actually breaks scrolling.
Secondly: they take pushing their app to an insane level: none of the links works, they all point to 'Get the app'. This fact alone has just gained the site a place in my DNS blackhole.
> Secondly: they take pushing their app to an insane level: none of the links works, they all point to 'Get the app'.
I agree. Its “use our app”-push is similar to Twitter or Instagram, but these platforms offer a lot of functionality in their apps.
Devrant on the other hand, seems to be quite simple in functionality. Why would I need to download an app for that?
Hii all, the original poster of the devrant thread here (made an account sjust for you guys).
I've read some of your comments and wanted to address some things.
I've seen people tell me to get a 5GHz capable AP and a dongle.
But this shouldn't be needed.
I already own a hAP AC3 (MikroTik) but to the way our house is built (it's pretty much all solid brick between each room), 5GHz doesn't go that far, so I'd need to buy an AP for pretty much every room.
When sitting behind my desk (about 2M from my AP), everything is fine and dandy but when I leave the room, 5GHz basically dies.
Next, I saw people recommend "working it out with my neighbours" by having them turn down the power or use cables to hook up all the APs (I even offered to pay for all the cabling myself), but they are not willing to do so.
And just saying "Would you stop using all this smarthome junk so we can have a decently working wifi" also isn't really gonna cut it for them.
And finally, I saw a comment or two to just jam the living shit out of it, but well... I'd rather not get my own ass into legal trouble for this.
> I've seen people tell me to get a 5GHz capable AP and a dongle. But this shouldn't be needed.
You can't have the cake and eat it too: 2.4 GHz propagates through walls, so you share the spectrum with your neighbors; 5 GHz is much more easily blocked by walls, but that also means you have the (much larger) spectrum to yourself.
> 5GHz doesn't go that far, so I'd need to buy an AP for pretty much every room.
Well, for every room that you need a stable connection in. If you can see your neighbor's signals that well through (presumably) multiple walls, I suspect that you'll also be able to cover at least one extra room per 5 GHz AP so that calls don't drop while you're moving between rooms.
> I've seen people tell me to get a 5GHz capable AP and a dongle. But this shouldn't be needed.
And yet, it sure sounds like it is! If your neighbor won't change the situation, and your outcomes are entirely dependent on them or you doing so, then you're left with taking an action that you normally wouldn't have to.
Or, depending on your needs, perhaps you can use Powerline adapters to some rooms.
Kind curious; you have obviously talked to the neighbor. What's their attitude? Do they just not care about the problems that are causing you and others?
Consider moving to 5GHz and installing a few metal reflectors/surfaces to direct the signal that comes though doorways and other openings about the house. If your ceilings are plaster you might be able to get up in the roof space and set up a bunch of reflectors to direct the energy though the ceilings and over the tops of the walls. The total cost could be a roll of aluminum foil, as used in cooking.
Mikrotik, has great support for mesh networks and managing multiple AP, if you want to go that route. (and combine 2g with 5g)
Another route might be using ethernet over power lines, and then have 5g points in rooms that need it.
But essentially , everywhere I need to do things that require bandwidth, I just pull 1gb ethernet cable. Sure it's not as convenient, and pulling cables is a pain, but once you do those things it just works.
Personally, I use a combination of wireless and physical cables. Not necessarily the most elegant solution, but it works.
Wireless has been great for a while, but I found it does not scale the way I would like it to, especially given the explosion of wireless devices out there.
Many years ago I lived in an apartment complex mostly populated by Comcast employees, with those horrid Comcast modems that broadcast two 2.4Ghz AP's a piece (Yours and the "xfinitywifi" hotspot)
My laptop picked up about 140 AP's from the couch. I could copy files from my NAS over Wi-Fi at a blistering 6KB/s! Sometimes bursting to 25KB/s
I have over 80 IOT devices and three aps. I also live in the middle of nowhere. That being said, I like how all the commenters just go straight to de-auth attacks. The proper solution is to get up knock on the door and talk to them about their signals, ask if they can clear one channel for you. Work with them. OR just you know, buy a router made in the last five years that supports decent 5ghz range and mount it up high.
Not everyone can use 5Ghz - if you have one of those 50s/60s/70s houses that were build with plaster/chicken wire (rather than lath&plaster or drywall) then at 5GHz you're basically living in a bunch of faraday cages
(at a company I used to work at we once had to abandon a 5GHz product when we discovered that an appreciable numbers of customers would take it home and not be able to make it work reliably - it would have been a support nightmare)
I can't imagine it's the high number of (IoT) clients that is the problem - it is the high power that the AP's use that causes the issue.
WiFi goes two ways - the AP talks to the client, and the client has to talk back. Clients don't have the high transmitting power that an AP has, and actually the AP won't need this high power. After all, if you use a bullhorn to reach your backyard, but the guy over there can't talk back, there is still no communication.
The solution would be to set the AP's to a lower transmitting power, enough to cover the house but not the street.
What I got from this article was "Person using WiFi complains about another person using WiFi".
I agree with your sentiment. It requires communication. De-authing is not going to solve the problem just make enemies if they work out what the OP is doing.
Wi-Fi 6E would solve this for you. 1,200 MHz of bandwidth is now available at 6 GHz. Wi-Fi 6E routers exist now. Here[1] are some devices that are Wi-Fi 6E capable.
It's an expensive, possibly inconvenient solution, but from the perspective of RF spectrum it has a high probability of success; your 2.4 GHz neighbor is unlikely to appear at 6 GHz for some time, and even then the reduced 'range' of 6 GHz will work in your favor.
Depending on where you live, this could be something you could report to your local radio spectrum regulator.
Usually there are regulations that state your radio devices can't interfere with someone else's. It doesn't matter if they are off-the-shelf type approved devices, you still have to operate them responsibly.
I live in Ireland and there are have a few cases where the local regulator ComReg has intervened when someones wireless networks and devices affected others.
I live in a densely populated area. I see 250 distinct SSIDs belonging to about as many APs. 2.4GHz is basically unusable. People try to increase power of their emitters (I see some weird devices that emit way more power than they should legally be able to), but this is only making the problem worse.
Our flat is top of the building, we can assume middle is even worse.
We use 5GHz for our WiFi needs which does not penetrate through walls as readily which means we only see 3 other APs.
Why doesn't anyone make a variant of drywall that has copper mesh embedded in it? You could theoretically make it thin enough to cut with almost the same level of difficulty.
You would only want the shielded variant on your exterior walls & upper floor ceilings. All you would need to do is make sure you clearly label/color the shielded vs non-shielded drywall appropriately so the construction crew doesn't get em mixed up.
I never really understood why IoT devices don't communicate via the power cable; at a guess it's because the hardware needed is too bulky or more expensive than wifi.
Surely the solution with someone with that much kit is to turn the TX power wayyy down. I guess it depends how close your neighbours are too, and what kind of building they have.
My apartment had so many issues/complaints they just had the local ISP install AP access points in each apartment. It's one network but has VLAN segmentation and per apartment PSK. This way routers are way smarter at time sharing and power levels for 2.5Ghz are very low plus you can roam anywhere in the complex.
Of course I run my own network and do those steps my self. (they were nice enough to give me a port with a public IP). Ethernet is still king for many critical but WiFi seems great despite there still being 35+ SSIDs around.
TBH most SSIDs you see have so little traffic 90% of the time so I can't imagine they would decrease the SNR that much (e.g. printer setup networks...) My guess is their neighbor in this case does have a lot of traffic besides the IOT. # of devices and heavy usage just tend to corelate for obvious reasons.
I wish Zigbee didn’t pollute the WiFi frequency space either. Looks like Z-Wave is my only option, despite it being an inferior, closed protocol. It looks like the home automation community prefers Z-Wave for critical, high availability devices for this reason.
For the past more than 10 years I could see more than 50 APs from my room in my 12 floor building, and this even before IoT was so popular. Wifi has never been reliable for more than browsing or chatting.
I've ruminated over 2.4Ghz spectrum contention for a long time now, and, while I claim nothing more than ignorance on the physical side of things, it's not obvious to me why we have moved to bonding ever larger blocks of that frequency allocation together when from my experience, contention has been an issue for 15 years. As far as I can tell, most applications of ambient connectivity are fairly low throughput: push notifications, MQTT, and whatnot. The 'original' 5Mhz channels should be more than adequate.
I am willing to cede the entire 2.4GHz spectrum to IoT devices. We can use 5GHz and 6GHz for full-fat internet devices (TV, laptop, phone). This is what I've done at my home.
It will be interesting see if the next waves of wifi products solve this. For Wifi 6 and Halow there's a new feature called 'target wake time' that will let these devices sleep (and not pollute spectrum) for longer.
Wifi 6 also brings OFDMA which will let stations use much less of the channel at a time (instead of a 20MHZ+ chunk they can just use 2MHZ while other stations use the rest). 2.4GHz being stuck on old Wifi 4 (or worse) devices hasn't helped the situation.
[+] [-] walrus01|4 years ago|reply
https://archive.curbed.com/2018/12/4/18125536/real-estate-mo...
https://crosscut.com/2015/04/the-new-seattle-where-everythin...
a "one plus five" looks like this, structurally: https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DZ2BLyticQE/VRMjELb1DYI/AAAAAAAAX...
Since 2.4 GHz goes through wood fairly effectively to moderate distances, it's a total half duplex CSMA hell...
One possible mitigation if you have older 2.4 GHz only devices is to run your own wifi on a 20 MHz channel, sacrificing throughput for better SNR. As channel sizes get narrower it cuts through the noise floor a little bit better. And of course to use your own choice of the cleanest 5.x GHz channel for everything you care about.
[+] [-] sushisource|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kozak|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] crimony|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wffurr|4 years ago|reply
If only wired ethernet was considered standard wiring like coax and power outlets, and installed during construction.
[+] [-] ortusdux|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SilverRed|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pomian|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Lammy|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fabbari|4 years ago|reply
First of all: the linked page doesn't scroll on an iPad - they are trying to be clever with scrolling and it actually breaks scrolling.
Secondly: they take pushing their app to an insane level: none of the links works, they all point to 'Get the app'. This fact alone has just gained the site a place in my DNS blackhole.
Archive.org link - that actually works better than the original site: https://web.archive.org/web/20210420050504/https://devrant.c...
[+] [-] sly010|4 years ago|reply
[0] https://devrant.com - "Share and bond over successes and frustrations with code, tech and life as a programmer"
[+] [-] arjonagelhout|4 years ago|reply
I agree. Its “use our app”-push is similar to Twitter or Instagram, but these platforms offer a lot of functionality in their apps. Devrant on the other hand, seems to be quite simple in functionality. Why would I need to download an app for that?
[+] [-] 34679|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] FinlayDaG33k|4 years ago|reply
I've seen people tell me to get a 5GHz capable AP and a dongle. But this shouldn't be needed. I already own a hAP AC3 (MikroTik) but to the way our house is built (it's pretty much all solid brick between each room), 5GHz doesn't go that far, so I'd need to buy an AP for pretty much every room. When sitting behind my desk (about 2M from my AP), everything is fine and dandy but when I leave the room, 5GHz basically dies.
Next, I saw people recommend "working it out with my neighbours" by having them turn down the power or use cables to hook up all the APs (I even offered to pay for all the cabling myself), but they are not willing to do so. And just saying "Would you stop using all this smarthome junk so we can have a decently working wifi" also isn't really gonna cut it for them.
And finally, I saw a comment or two to just jam the living shit out of it, but well... I'd rather not get my own ass into legal trouble for this.
[+] [-] lxgr|4 years ago|reply
You can't have the cake and eat it too: 2.4 GHz propagates through walls, so you share the spectrum with your neighbors; 5 GHz is much more easily blocked by walls, but that also means you have the (much larger) spectrum to yourself.
> 5GHz doesn't go that far, so I'd need to buy an AP for pretty much every room.
Well, for every room that you need a stable connection in. If you can see your neighbor's signals that well through (presumably) multiple walls, I suspect that you'll also be able to cover at least one extra room per 5 GHz AP so that calls don't drop while you're moving between rooms.
[+] [-] HelloMcFly|4 years ago|reply
And yet, it sure sounds like it is! If your neighbor won't change the situation, and your outcomes are entirely dependent on them or you doing so, then you're left with taking an action that you normally wouldn't have to.
Or, depending on your needs, perhaps you can use Powerline adapters to some rooms.
[+] [-] willis936|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Havoc|4 years ago|reply
Don’t think you’ve got much of a choice if you value your sanity.
You could also try powerline adapters in combination with 5ghz
[+] [-] 15155|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jarofgreen|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] femto|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unionpivo|4 years ago|reply
Another route might be using ethernet over power lines, and then have 5g points in rooms that need it.
But essentially , everywhere I need to do things that require bandwidth, I just pull 1gb ethernet cable. Sure it's not as convenient, and pulling cables is a pain, but once you do those things it just works.
[+] [-] SquibblesRedux|4 years ago|reply
Wireless has been great for a while, but I found it does not scale the way I would like it to, especially given the explosion of wireless devices out there.
[+] [-] Quarrelsome|4 years ago|reply
then fuck em, pwn their network.
[+] [-] IntelMiner|4 years ago|reply
My laptop picked up about 140 AP's from the couch. I could copy files from my NAS over Wi-Fi at a blistering 6KB/s! Sometimes bursting to 25KB/s
[+] [-] crmrc114|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Taniwha|4 years ago|reply
(at a company I used to work at we once had to abandon a 5GHz product when we discovered that an appreciable numbers of customers would take it home and not be able to make it work reliably - it would have been a support nightmare)
[+] [-] gnarbarian|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lrvick|4 years ago|reply
If someone came at me with a deauth attack I would be incredibly amused and probably make a new friend.
[+] [-] PietdeVries|4 years ago|reply
WiFi goes two ways - the AP talks to the client, and the client has to talk back. Clients don't have the high transmitting power that an AP has, and actually the AP won't need this high power. After all, if you use a bullhorn to reach your backyard, but the guy over there can't talk back, there is still no communication.
The solution would be to set the AP's to a lower transmitting power, enough to cover the house but not the street.
[+] [-] yesenadam|4 years ago|reply
This is a lot to ask, but.. what are all those things?! (My house has 0..I think)
[+] [-] vertis|4 years ago|reply
I agree with your sentiment. It requires communication. De-authing is not going to solve the problem just make enemies if they work out what the OP is doing.
[+] [-] bserge|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] irjustin|4 years ago|reply
I'd like to know what 120-ish devices they're running. That's a lot of devices.
[+] [-] topspin|4 years ago|reply
It's an expensive, possibly inconvenient solution, but from the perspective of RF spectrum it has a high probability of success; your 2.4 GHz neighbor is unlikely to appear at 6 GHz for some time, and even then the reduced 'range' of 6 GHz will work in your favor.
1. https://www.cnet.com/home/internet/wi-fi-6-devices-top-compa... (the distinction between 6 and 6E is crucial; you want 6E)
[+] [-] throwaway8581|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DoubleGlazing|4 years ago|reply
Usually there are regulations that state your radio devices can't interfere with someone else's. It doesn't matter if they are off-the-shelf type approved devices, you still have to operate them responsibly.
I live in Ireland and there are have a few cases where the local regulator ComReg has intervened when someones wireless networks and devices affected others.
[+] [-] lmilcin|4 years ago|reply
Our flat is top of the building, we can assume middle is even worse.
We use 5GHz for our WiFi needs which does not penetrate through walls as readily which means we only see 3 other APs.
[+] [-] bob1029|4 years ago|reply
You would only want the shielded variant on your exterior walls & upper floor ceilings. All you would need to do is make sure you clearly label/color the shielded vs non-shielded drywall appropriately so the construction crew doesn't get em mixed up.
[+] [-] c12|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] noodlesUK|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] KingMachiavelli|4 years ago|reply
Of course I run my own network and do those steps my self. (they were nice enough to give me a port with a public IP). Ethernet is still king for many critical but WiFi seems great despite there still being 35+ SSIDs around.
TBH most SSIDs you see have so little traffic 90% of the time so I can't imagine they would decrease the SNR that much (e.g. printer setup networks...) My guess is their neighbor in this case does have a lot of traffic besides the IOT. # of devices and heavy usage just tend to corelate for obvious reasons.
[+] [-] xvector|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] phendrenad2|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jaimehrubiks|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ShroudedNight|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Evidlo|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] XorNot|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] perryizgr8|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] totallyabstract|4 years ago|reply
Wifi 6 also brings OFDMA which will let stations use much less of the channel at a time (instead of a 20MHZ+ chunk they can just use 2MHZ while other stations use the rest). 2.4GHz being stuck on old Wifi 4 (or worse) devices hasn't helped the situation.