[ssl-3]

>It does feel like at some point we might end up with apartment building standards requiring 2.4ghz/5ghz mesh in the walls to attenuate cross-talk signals between apartments or something (and then maybe phone-tower micro antennas to provide signal for 5G).

I've had it both ways, and I can't say that it is better either way.

In dense neighborhoods (especially stick-framed apartments), Wifi is problematic due to co-channel interference, as you've addressed. This can be resolved somewhat by increasing the density of my own access points.

But things don't get completely rosy with isolation, either. My current dwelling has aluminum siding, low E windows, and even some metal lath in the walls. This all conspire to make it resemble a Faraday cage.

Wifi works great indoors, but it's a struggle to even load up the most basic of web pages (like HN) using wifi on my front porch.

It is fixable by adding some low-power access points outside and I probably will do that at some point. It's just still not exactly ideal, either.

Both situations have challenges.

[eternityforest]

Can't we fix this with better beamforming? Lots of stuff doesn't use it at all, there's probably a lot of spectrum to be gained just with very basic stuff.

If they improve it enough and make it cheaper, the WiFi people could rename anything without beamforming to wifi lite or something so everyone knows to avoid it if possible.

[XorNot]

With decent planning though and PoE it's substantially easier to add new APs to cover dead spots due to signal attenuation then it is to try and reduce signal attenuation after everything is built though.

I can fish new wires through walls, I can't easily wrap my building in mesh.