{"id":1390,"date":"2017-03-04T21:03:22","date_gmt":"2017-03-05T05:03:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bradleycbuchanan.com\/b\/?p=1390"},"modified":"2017-03-04T21:03:22","modified_gmt":"2017-03-05T05:03:22","slug":"recommended-reading-wi-fi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bradleycbuchanan.com\/b\/recommended-reading-wi-fi\/","title":{"rendered":"Recommended Reading: Wi-Fi"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This morning\u00a0Ars Technica posted <a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/information-technology\/2017\/03\/802-eleventy-what-a-deep-dive-into-why-wi-fi-kind-of-sucks\/\">the most useful\u00a0article I&#8217;ve ever read about Wi-Fi problems<\/a>, by Jim Salter. \u00a0It answered questions I&#8217;ve had for a\u00a0<em>long<\/em> time.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Questions like:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>How can\u00a0my wireless router <a href=\"http:\/\/www.netgear.com\/home\/products\/networking\/wifi-routers\/R7000.aspx\">claims 1300 Mbps speeds<\/a> when my 100 Mbps Ethernet connection is clearly so much faster?<\/li>\n<li>Why does the network lock up when there are a lot of devices attached?<\/li>\n<li>Is buying a &#8220;louder&#8221; router really the\u00a0best solution to the interference from other networks in my building?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I learned more about Wi-Fi in this one article than the last several years combined. \u00a0Some highlights for me:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Advertised wireless router speeds report a totally theoretical maximum transfer rate from the router to\u00a0<em>all<\/em> connected devices.<\/strong> The actual speed to a single device, even in ideal real-world conditions, is usually less than a tenth of the advertised speed &#8211; which is why Ethernet is still so much faster and more reliable.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Only one device can &#8220;speak&#8221; on a Wi-Fi channel at a time.<\/strong> That&#8217;s not just within your network but\u00a0for\u00a0<em>all<\/em> devices within &#8220;earshot.&#8221;\u00a0This means a\u00a0powerful router isn&#8217;t just causing interference in the &#8220;radio static&#8221; sense: It&#8217;s also one more caller\u00a0on a crowded party line to every device that can hear it on that channel.<\/li>\n<li><strong>The future is about less power, not more.<\/strong> \u00a0New Wi-Fi mesh products create your home network with a collection of low-powered access points instead of one high-powered access point, giving each device less competition when trying to speak on the local wireless channel.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I definitely recommend you read the full article, which is very accessible but covers a lot more ground than this, and in more detail.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This morning\u00a0Ars Technica posted the most useful\u00a0article I&#8217;ve ever read about Wi-Fi problems, by Jim Salter. \u00a0It answered questions I&#8217;ve had for a\u00a0long time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[418],"tags":[440,438,439,441],"class_list":["post-1390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-networking","tag-today-i-learned","tag-wi-fi","tag-worth-reading"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bradleycbuchanan.com\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bradleycbuchanan.com\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bradleycbuchanan.com\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bradleycbuchanan.com\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bradleycbuchanan.com\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1390"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bradleycbuchanan.com\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1390\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1391,"href":"https:\/\/www.bradleycbuchanan.com\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1390\/revisions\/1391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bradleycbuchanan.com\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bradleycbuchanan.com\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bradleycbuchanan.com\/b\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}