[dkarl]

Side note, it's interesting how common it is for tech-savvy people to wire their homes for ethernet (more common now than 10-15 years ago) and how it is still common, or at least not rare, for people reliant on wi-fi to suffer from video streaming issues. The underlying technology keeps getting better, so maybe the improvements will outpace the growth in congestion at some point -- fingers crossed that makers of apps and household appliances don't eat up all future gains and keep us stuck in the same place.

[Gigachad]

Is congestion still an issue? Seems to me like after the switch from 2.4ghz to 5ghz, congestion stopped being a problem since wifi hardly leaves your own home. Amusingly, in my apartment sitting on the balcony, shutting the glass door would cause a total loss of connection, while leaving it open resulted in a very strong connection.

The future is probably just having multiple wifi APs wired up and then just running extremely fast but low range wifi.

[mvkg]

5GHz certainly helps, but congestion/co-channel interference can still be an issue in high density environments, especially in a multi-user environment like an apartment complex where nothing is coordinated. The addition of 6GHz will help alleviate this problem too, but a lot of consumer gear seems to default to the widest channels possible.

Also, your glass door probably has Low-E glass which has a metallic coating.

> The future is probably just having multiple wifi APs wired up and then just running extremely fast but low range wifi.

This is somewhat the case, but it is limited. For example, in 5GHz there are 21x 20MHz channels available. In a highly dense environment, this can support roughly 30x devices per channel well and 50x devices per channel with some degradation.

Limiting the TX power on an AP can help, but it's not a panacea since clients always transmit their control frames at their default power (usually ~15dBm). There have been some improvements to this in .11ax, but depending on the spatial organization of the devices, it can only do so much.

[esseph]

> The future is probably just having multiple wifi APs wired up and then just running extremely fast but low range wifi.

Well, what if you want wifi in your garden? Maybe you own a few acres of property and you want wifi for a wedding? Now you actually have to do a minor bit of planning. Supported wifi versions, max EIRP, range, modulation rate, throughput, XPIC, coverage area, frequency, beamwidth, MU-MIMO, does the frequency require prior coordination with any government entity, etc.

I'm just giving a different use-case on the other end of the spectrum, to be fair. I agree 100% with your analysis however, we're going to mmwave frequency ranges with small but many APs. Massive Multi User MIMO, etc.

[Marsymars]

It’s not like everything has moved off 2.4ghz - I’m in a SFH in a relatively low-density suburb and everything in my house that can be wired is, but I still typically see ~50% congestion on the 2.4ghz radios.

[Gigachad]

Yeah I just had a look and I'm seeing a reasonable amount of interference on 2.4ghz, very little on 5ghz, and then nothing at all on 6ghz.

My guess is people with large houses and only one wifi AP are probably using 2.4 when their devices are out of range for 5. But other people doing this probably doesn't impact you at all since you can just make sure you have good coverage for 5ghz and enjoy uncongested wifi.

[BobbyTables2]

I would love for a single AP to serve 500mbps throughout a whole house.

Though I would certainly not have complained about 50-100mbps throughout in 2003 — 1GBps wired networking was not mainstream then.

[dmd]

My tp-link ax6000 does that just fine.

[kstrauser]

Oh, how I wish. I have 3 Firewalla AP7s to get decent coverage through my house. Its lath and plaster walls may as well be lead lined. You could put a CT scanner in my living room and not notice a thing 2 rooms away.

[kjellsbells]

Lath and plaster walls have a distressing tendency to be lined with chicken wire mesh which really damages your chances of any radio signal getting through.

Pictures for anyone wondering what it looks like:

https://www.civilengineermag.com/chicken-mesh-for-plaster/

Wired wifi mesh or Ethernet all over would be my prescription. You basically have Faraday cages in every room right now!

[kstrauser]

I’ve strung CAT 6e from one end of the house to the other to link 2 of them. The 3rd’s in a place not amenable to cabling without way more effort than I’m up for, but it’s close enough to one of them that they mesh alright.

[esseph]

Ethernet/fiber is far better in that scenario. You may even have better luck using existing coax and moca adapters than wifi in those scenarios.