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Comment by DiabloD3 | Hacker News Reader

Actually, we sort of already solved it. Wifi was never meant to go insanely long distances, and now spamming APs inside of even a smaller home is a cheap and effective way of dealing with signal problems.

60ghz (Added by 802.11ad) can't penetrate sheetrock effectively, let alone bother your neighbors, a much smaller distance than 5ghz (which has half-solved the dense urban environment issue on it's own, but not completely; the article overplays issues significantly).

I support abandoning 2.4ghz for Wifi and anything else that is high bandwidth. The good news is, the 802.11 Working Group and the major Wifi impl manufs agree with me, which is why 802.11ac is 5ghz only, and 802.11ad is 60ghz first, both of them removing 2.4ghz for anything but 802.11 b/g/n legacy connectivity.

Also, as a side note, I want the FCC to ban the LTE-over-5ghz plan. 5ghz is ours; they can have 2.4ghz, we're done with it.

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Except when you live in a 200 year old house like I do with 1 foot thick stone walls. I don't have to worry about "polluting" my neighbors because my nearest neighbor is a mile away. Any "standards" ought to not just assume everyone lives in dense, multi-family residences.

Yes, but it's called designing for the most damaging worst case. Both ultra-dense urban and houses like yours are corner cases, but on opposite ends of the spectrum.

For you, I'd suggest looking into Unifi AC APs (the lowest end ones are $99 each, the Pros are extremely nice), and then put them everywhere you want signal.

Thanks! Great suggestion. I've actually been running Cat 6/7 all over the place to mitigate my "problem." I'll check out your suggestion.

RF travels very well over line of sight. If you can punch through 1ft walls then you're also probably going to be saying "Hi!" to the neighbors.

Lots of people did this with CB back in the day, sending out 100W which started an escalation of noise floor and in part contributed to it's decline.

Sounds cool. Any pictures of where you live?

A ban on LTE over 5 GHz seems a bit heavy-handed and prone to allowing further abuses (as some dude on IRC said about something else, it's like trying to kill a mosquito with a chainsaw: you end up all bloody and probably don't even get the mosquito).

I think the real objectionable part is the requirement that the 5 GHz band be restricted to "licensed-assisted operation", only as a secondary downlink for a system based on a licensed band. A rule that any system using unlicensed spectrum shall not depend on licensed spectrum would block the existing LTE-on-5GHz plan and either get the whole idea scrapped or get mobiles that can work entirely on unlicensed spectrum into the market, opening up the possibility of private LTE networks on unlicensed spectrum.

Given how important centralized choke points seem to be to the 3GPP architecture, I tend to suspect it would just chase licensed users completely off the unlicensed spectrum.

>Also, as a side note, I want the FCC to ban the LTE-over-5ghz plan. 5ghz is ours

agreed, but i think simply banning LTE-over-5Ghz is not going far enough. We need a segment of spectrum reserved for end-user network communication - wifi is so important, shoving it into unlicensed spectrum seems like a bad idea. regulation should codify it as "ours". The cost and ease of use of ubiquiti bridges that operate on unlicensed wifi spectrum is quickly becoming a problem as well, as all our devices have to start competing with the private bridge networks.

> can't penetrate sheetrock effectively

Unfortunately, it can't penetrate human bodies or furniture effectively either. It's effectively requires a line of sight to have a good connection. If the line of sight is blocked, the best you can hope for is a one-bounce reflection at a significantly lower signal-to-noise ratio.

Where will you place the 60 GHz access point and where will you place the 60 GHz antenna on the device such that you'll consistently have LOS coverage?

Enter his earlier comment about spamming AP's. As AP's get cheaper, it may become reasonable to have several.

Ceiling. Unless you have a pendant light, residential ceilings are usually entirely visible from all points (well, unless you're under the coffee table...)

2.4GHz works fine in the suburbs. The only downside is that it stops working when someone turns on a microwave oven. If the telecommunications companies listen to your suggestion, they are likely to use both 2.4GHz and 5GHz.

But then how I am going to leech free wifi off the coffee shop without going inside?

I know you meant that as a joke, but when has "free Wifi" ever resulted in something better 1-2 mbit? I live in an extremely bad cell phone signal area, and not a single "free Wifi" area around here is usable, and I'd still rather use my cell phone signal for data given how bad the "free Wifi" is.

There are plenty of free hotspots in my city that are 20+ Mbps. It probably has more to do with the cost of Internet access in your area than the Wi-Fi connections themselves.

The free wifi at Telstra stores is pretty fast, often over 100Mbps. But then you're standing awkwardly outside a Telstra store with a laptop looking suspicious.

High gain directional antenna pointing at exactly the right direction

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