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Post by mrclondon on Sept 18, 2019 15:52:07 GMT
Here in high density London, co-channel interference with neighbour's wifi is a major issue - scanning software can see over 40 different wifi access points from my house.
On the original 2.4 GHz band I have been fairly lucky as relatively few access points support channel 13, which all the plusnet supplied routers do, but the signal is a little weak in some corners of my property.
When I upgraded to fibre (FTTC) last year, I received a new router from plusnet which also offered 5Ghz Wifi, which whilst offering a stronger signal at the extremities to my property compared to 2.4 GHz, has an annoying habit of changing the channel I manually select back to one of the four default channels (36, 40, 44 or 48) ... on each of which there are 3 or more other access points of my neighbours.
I've finally managed to find out what is causing it .... all the 5 GHz Wifi channels above channel 48 are in shared radio spectrum, specifically shared with radar. Any device supporting these channels MUST scan for interference from radar, and drop out of the spectrum as soon as it is detected.
Seems to be a particular problem for people living near airports, but I'd guess I'm far enough away from London City Airport for that to not be the cause. I am however, less than 100m from the Thames .... which sees semi-regular traffic of medium sized ships (Cruise ships / Military / Super Yachts) heading upstream to the deep sea mooring adjacent to HMS Belfast in the Pool of London. Which may be the cause in my case, or perhaps the military helicopers that use the Thames as a flight corridor (Chinooks pass by most days).
That said, there a quite a few channels above 48, and I seem to have less trouble on some than others, 104 seems the best of those I've tried so far.
Yes, I could of course install more wifi accees points in my house ... but that just adds to the problem for my neighbours.
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adrianc
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Post by adrianc on Sept 18, 2019 16:10:35 GMT
If you cba to run Cat5e/6 around and "do it properly", have you tried powerline?
Out here in the sticks, we don't have quite the same issue you do (the canoedlers on the Wye don't use radar, and we can't see any other wifi at all!), but we have an issue with a couple of foot-thick solid stone walls part way down the house... It's almost like they didn't think about wifi interference when they built the place... We tried various wifi extender solutions, carefully placed for line-of-sight through doorways, but nothing was very effective. Powerline, otoh, just works. We started with a normal slow one, just to prove the concept, and that's sitting as a parallel network for the kitchen wap and outbuildings, but for SWMBO's office we've bought a couple of 2000Mbps units - damn near as quick as the wireless in my office, mebbe 4-5m pretty much line-of-sight from the main router and ap.
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bigfoot12
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Post by bigfoot12 on Sept 18, 2019 16:14:20 GMT
How interesting, I didn't know that. My router warns me of this when I try to select 104, like me most of my neighbours are using the 36 default.
You could have more access points, but reduce the power, which might help you without impacting your neighbours.
BTW A cleverer person than me could probably send those access points to google and obtain your exact location!
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adrianc
Member of DD Central
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Post by adrianc on Sept 21, 2019 9:28:09 GMT
If you cba to run Cat5e/6 around and "do it properly", have you tried powerline?
Don't be silly. Powerline is a joke. Either do it properly with CAT5/CAT6 or don't bother at all.
Electrical cables were never indended to transmit data. The whole powerline thing is an unofficial kludge. There are no standards, no nothing. Its vendor lock-in. You don't have all the flexibility and quality associted with structured networking.
Like I said - if you cba to do it properly, then it is an option. And it's one that's working well for us. There is a series of vendor-neutral standards, HomePlug. Running proper cabling around the average home without fairly major work is simply not possible. I'd be quite happy to do it properly, but I don't want to be lifting floors and the like when a simpler work-around does exist.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 21, 2019 10:16:09 GMT
If you cba to run Cat5e/6 around and "do it properly", have you tried powerline? Out here in the sticks, we don't have quite the same issue you do (the canoedlers on the Wye don't use radar, and we can't see any other wifi at all!), but we have an issue with a couple of foot-thick solid stone walls part way down the house... It's almost like they didn't think about wifi interference when they built the place... We tried various wifi extender solutions, carefully placed for line-of-sight through doorways, but nothing was very effective. Powerline, otoh, just works. We started with a normal slow one, just to prove the concept, and that's sitting as a parallel network for the kitchen wap and outbuildings, but for SWMBO's office we've bought a couple of 2000Mbps units - damn near as quick as the wireless in my office, mebbe 4-5m pretty much line-of-sight from the main router and ap. We had similar problems such as 1.5 foot thick walls. powerline works perfectly for just one additional wifi point. It allows me to sit in the garden and to skype around the world. Now if they could just solve the rain problem.
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Post by mrclondon on Sept 21, 2019 10:20:36 GMT
I've had mixed results with powerline technology, a lot depends on how clean the wiring is in the property. Works OK in my 1980's house, but works only in parts of my parents 1960's house (essentially only on the same ring main in the house, the signal is poor on different rng mains)
In general I've had good results with the original AV200 (200 MBPs) standard, and less good results as the notional max speed supported increases. In practise the max speed is irrelevant and is simply a marketing gimmick as the vast majority of devices only have 100 MBPs RJ45 ports on them.
After trying faster ones which resulted in frequent network connection drops, I've returned to the Simpler Networks AV200 units to a) connect a PC in the study to router which is elsewhere in house and b) to provide a wired connection when I use my laptop in the garden.
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iRobot
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Post by iRobot on Sept 21, 2019 10:25:40 GMT
Don't be silly. Powerline is a joke. Either do it properly with CAT5/CAT6 or don't bother at all.
Electrical cables were never indended to transmit data. The whole powerline thing is an unofficial kludge. There are no standards, no nothing. Its vendor lock-in. You don't have all the flexibility and quality associted with structured networking.
Like I said - if you cba to do it properly, then it is an option. And it's one that's working well for us. There is a series of vendor-neutral standards, HomePlug. Running proper cabling around the average home without fairly major work is simply not possible. I'd be quite happy to do it properly, but I don't want to be lifting floors and the like when a simpler work-around does exist. +2 for the 'doing it properly' but also +1 for the powerline option. Powerline has it's place. We once rented office space with Regus and used their meeting rooms to host client events. (Well, sales pitches really  ) Powerline allowed us to extend our dedicated network into the meeting room. Could have used Regus' own wifi and VPN'd back into our network, but powerline not only had greater bandwidth but also - and more importantly to us - had significantly lower latency. That was a good few years ago, back when 'on-prem' was still pretty much the norm and before (if you wholly believe the hype) everything moved to the cloud, hence latency being important. I haven't had reason to check it out recently but I dare say the tech has improved along with everything else. A useful option to have available, particularly when you don't own the floorboards / wall cavities / ceiling voids / etc.
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) Powerline allowed us to extend our dedicated network into the meeting room. Could have used Regus' own wifi and VPN'd back into our network, but powerline not only had greater bandwidth but also - and more importantly to us - had significantly lower latency.