[jasonmp85]

No, it patches over actual real-life issues by requiring intervention from users. This is a terrible strategy. Pretty soon, every person in a crowded apartment complex will be waving over their router any time they need to do something.

Channel congestion is a huge problem in urban environments. From my home office I'm seeing 20 networks right now. Even a rudimentary dynamic channel-switching implementation could help a lot, but that's not what happens. Instead, a power outage occurs, all devices reboot, and some pathological combination causes my wireless to degrade because my router came up faster and picked a channel that my neighbor's stupid ISP-provided POS decided to squat after-the-fact. Used to be I could sidestep a lot of this by using the 5GHz band, but it appears that ISP-provided devices are starting to show up there, too (though I _think_ the newer 802.11 protocols have better behavior around channel congestion? Maybe?)

Anyways, that's my $2: this is an issue, and involving the user will just result in magic-thinking/cargo-culting being taught to non-techies for problems that could be solved through better standards. It's 2015 and the best I can get from my 802.11n network is still ≈ 50mbps, even in the same room. If wireless is the future, we need solutions, not band-aids.

[vardump]

> It's 2015 and the best I can get from my 802.11n network is still ≈ 50mbps, even in the same room.

Odd. My 2007 laptop gets 160+ Mbps goodput in the same room using 11n @5GHz.

New Macbook Pro gets routinely 500 Mbps+ goodput using 11ac.

Maybe you should get a better router?

[simoncion]

> It's 2015 and the best I can get from my 802.11n network is still ≈ 50mbps, even in the same room.

That's a pity. I have a two-antenna 802.11n client that gets between 160 and 200 mbps transfer rate one room away from the AP and between 100mbps and 160mbps two rooms away in the pipe-obstructed, tile covered bathroom.

Are you -by chance- trying to do 802.11n in the 2.4Ghz band? [0] If you are, and have any other networks around you in that band, that's a recipe for sadness:

* If you don't use 40Mhz channels with 802.11n, you'll -at best- only see slightly better than 802.11 a/g transfer rates.

* AIUI, if you try to use 40Mhz channels in the 2.4 Ghz band, you have to either use channel 1 or channel 11 as your base channel. You'll also be stomping on every other channel in the band. What's more, some APs will detect interference from other users in the band and automatically drop back to 20Mhz channels. (This is a long-winded way of saying that 40Mhz channels in the 2.4 Ghz band are often impossible for any urban or semi-urban site.) [1]

[0] If you're advertising the same SSID on both bands, and don't have band steering that you know works, you really can't rely on your client's software to be smart enough to prefer the 5Ghz band. WiFi client software is almost always oh so dumb and chooses signal strength over throughput.

[1] Adjust channel numbers and interference advice appropriately if you're not in the US.