[jiggawatts]

In the software world we call the overall phenomenon in the article a leaky abstraction.

We all pretend that WiFi is this magic thing that allows our devices to transmit data, but in fact there are all these little details of reality "leaking through" that abstraction.

For example, it seems that instead of power cycling everything at once, WiFi should be turned on first to ensure that there is sufficient time for 5 GHz to be available. I sometime reboot my TV, Router, WiFi, and set-top-box simultaneously by simply turning the power board they're all connected to off and on. From now on I'll do them separately and in sequence...

[codazoda]

I started doing this about a year ago. Not because it takes longer to boot up, but because I was trying to see which single device was most often the solution.

In my setup there is a fiber modem (outside the house), a Wi-Fi router, and then all the connected devices.

Oddly, the one that I need to restart the most, seems to be my Mac. Realizing, of course, the problem could still be on the router side, but turning wifi on and off on the laptop usually solves my problem.

I rebooted one device at a time for about a year and made notes about each failure. I didn’t see the pattern until I had done this for a long time.

[salawat]

I am not impressed with Macbooks networking, or specifically the wireless on the Intel Macs. I've gone through three and ended up with such severe wifi issues, that I inevitably ended up switching to a wired dongle for anything serious/in need of stability.

Never really had a more fickle laptop as far as wireless goes. Only a VAIO VPCZ1 after ten years of abuse as a gaming machine/daily driver started to get close. Again though, that's after 10 years. A Macbook will manifest that behavior within the first year for me.

The frustration has gotten me to the point I'm reading up on USB/PCI-E/datasheets implementation/protocol details so I can actually try figuring out WTF could be the cause.

[marcosdumay]

Restarting everything at once can break all kinds of subsystems. Even if the radio interference wasn't an issue here, you would still get high odds of them not connecting cleanly to the network because of something else.

[drdaeman]

Restarting everything should be a highly recommended test step before going to production, no matter what the system. Catches so many problems based on the assumptions that one may not fully realize. And some day it will have to be done anyway (unless the system is extremely redundant in all aspects), so best to test it sooner than later.

[topranks]

I’m not really sure it’s a “leaky abstraction”. Technical detail or something, I fail to see how it’s an abstraction to have this constraint in the WiFi standard.