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> 5Ghz has such terrible penetration power that it's almost useless.

To a degree, that is a good thing. High density living spaces (apartments) end up with so much interference on 2.4GHz that it becomes unusable.

For reference: a few years ago I lived in an apartment where I counted at least 35 different 2.4 GHz networks. This wasn't even a high-rise but in a street with normal 3 story apartment buildings. Wifi only worked on channel 13 reliably because many access points don't include channel 13 in their "random channel" configuration because it's only available in Europe.

Hold on, buddy.

> You can barely use a single 5Ghz router to serve a 70m^2 home at acceptable performance.

Of course you can't. Compared to 2.4GHz, 5GHz barely passes through walls, and it is actually a good thing. My rule of thumb for 5GHz is to have access point every other room and to lower transmit power so that they don't in the way of each other.

In effect, there are 3 APs in my 160m^2, two storey flat. I get easily minimum 400-500MBit/s on AC with multiple users in any spot in the flat but I don't use typical consumer hardware. To do 5GHz properly in a large home you need something that will be able to properly roam users while they are moving about.

Where I live I see about 250-260 2.4GHz access points at any point in time and 2.4GHz is almost useless. I only see 3 5GHz APs. The fact that 5GHz is so attenuated by the walls makes it usable in high density environment.

I have also found that one shiny laptop that was more pricey than others had trouble with lower speeds and constant disconnets. LOWERING transmit power actually helped, because it caused it to be kicked earlier from AP and switch to another, closer one.

So, to underline, you need to know technology you are using. WiFi requires a little bit of knowledge because you want to realize a miracle of passing huge amount of data at high speeds through walls. I kinda wonder why everybody complains they can pass signal only through single wall.

Having multiple access points is perfectly reasonable. I don't think it's fair to blame the Wi-Fi spec for this.

If you want anyone to blame, maybe blame the ISPs or router manufacturers that market the idea that a single router can cover multiple rooms because that's just not possible with nowadays' interference levels and bandwidth requirements.

Having multiple access points should be considered normal and expected. Maybe we should understand and embrace the laws of physics and their limitations instead of trying to pretend they don't exist?

In high density housing the low range/penetration power is a positive. Having lived in an apartment building where all the neighbors (in three dimensions) also had 2.4ghz wifi I can tell you that having to find a frequency band that isn't congested in that situation is a hassle. And I suspect that the knowledge that congestion and selecting a frequency band is even a thing is not very common.

I’ll take an AP in every room gladly, for me it’s about less wires to the individual devices not less wires throughout the house as a whole. But it does suck if you live somewhere that doesn’t have wired Ethernet ports on every room.

However I’ve found that mesh works surprisingly well these days. With 3 access points I’m able to cover ~2200 sqft with no problems, and it works well enough that I haven’t bothered setting up wired backhaul even though I have Ethernet ports in every room.

Short range of wifi is intentional, unfortunately. They picked frequencies absorbed by water vapor in the atmosphere. On top of that, they picked high frequencies that cell carriers don't want because they have little penetration.

The short range is intentional to allow many networks function in dense areas. Multiple AP's is really the only option

> On top of that, they picked high frequencies that cell carriers don't want because they have little penetration.

This is true somewhat, but frequencies in the 2-6 GHz range are pretty common for LTE, and cell carriers have spent many billions on the licenses.

They picked frequencies that were unlicensed. And at time 2.4GHz was likely good balance between bandwidth(frequency) and available technology.

And the 2.4GHz was free because microwave-ovens used this frequency. As those licensing bands specially in 40s/50s would not have wanted to deal with potential issues. Thus it was designated for microwave-ovens. And later freed up for any use. Thus being available and free.

Too late to edit my comment but you're right. Apparently 2.4 being chosen for microwaves because it excites water is a common misconception. It was just a trade off between penetration and difficulty producing high frequencies back then

try wiring your home with enterprise grade APs ... the stability and performance when multiple devices are connected is vastly superior to anything consumer. And that's not only because the APs are better designed but because most firmware on consumer equipment is total crap based on old outdated sdk. On the other hand enterprise APs spend a lot of time optimising the AP even after launching it.

Do you consider Mikrotik enterprise grade? Because that’s what I use at home.

Specifically, I use this: https://mikrotik.com/product/rb4011igs_5hacq2hnd_in

It’s not AX, but still does N and AC over 5Ghz nonetheless.

I kind of don't get people discerning things into "enterprise," and not grades.

All mass market electronics today is made of common list of chipsets for a device.

There is no way to change fundamental limits of hardware being used. So, the best thing to look at is the chipset, and its specs.

The best example of this is the scam called "enterprise servers" whose only distinction from no-name OEM ones is that "enterprise server" name, and 3-4 times bigger price. They are all made of sometimes 1-to-1 identical motherboards, chassis, and other components.

> The best example of this is the scam called "enterprise servers" whose only distinction from no-name OEM ones is that "enterprise server" name, and 3-4 times bigger price. They are all made of sometimes 1-to-1 identical motherboards, chassis, and other components.

It's more than just the parts used:

* Support contracts

* On-site, next-day or even same-business-day technicians

* Guaranteed parts availability

* Often from a company your org will have a procurement contract with already (Dell, HP, etc).

Mikrotik consumer routers are quite decent. A hAP² handles my apartment just fine.

I am yet to try Mikrotik but I have heard good things about it.

There's a lot of magic around MIMO, beamforming and other stuff where Mikrotik is kinda behind other manufacturers. Enterprise grade here would mean something like Cisco WAP or HPE Aruba.

Surprisingly, the "prosumer" things like more expensive Asus routers work better than you would expect.

If you want a deep dive, I suggest this page https://www.duckware.com/tech/wifi-in-the-us.html

I'll admit I'm a Ubiquiti fanboy now. I got fed-up with consumer-grade wifi gear when my old TP-Link AP+Router combi crapped out after ~20 wifi clients connected. Initially I kept the router but disabled its wi-fi AP and started using Ubiquiti APs - just one to begin with, but it handled 50+ simultaneous wi-fi clients like a champ - 6 years later I now have a UDM, PoE switch, LTE failover, three APs, and I'm considering moving-away from Google Nest to Ubiquiti for home-automation now too, because Google/Nest's video service makes no sense considering they don't let you access the video locally or save the video locally (what's the point of a video surveillance system that can be defeated simply by snipping the Internet coax connection outside?!?).

I’m a fan too! The dream machine, aps, and a poe switch were cheaper than what I’ve paid for just a single “enterprise” device before.

Ubiquiti's gear falls into a weird market segment: it's got 85% of the capability of true Enterprise-scale equipment (i.e. the kind you absolutely have to employee someone - or two, plus pager-duty, full-time for) for a fraction of the cost, but costs 2x or 3x more than the consumer-crap it's replacing - but has a _hint_ of vendor lock-in that at least with the full-time-employees you could task them with building and implementing an exit migration strategy.

My current APs are old and I got fiber recently so I am looking for cheap AX APs if they are worth the price. I know AX is still early but because I am in the market and both my daily devices are AX I might as well try (Unifi 6 Lite or LR though both don't support AX in 2.4GHz so something with 160MHz in 5GHz and AX in 2.4GHz). If you buy consumer AX now forget updates in a year or two. On the other hand the first AC Lite still receives updates and that board has gone through more than 30 revisions (I recently bought one for someone and that had board revision 36 or something). Sadly I haven't had the same luck with their wired routers. The EdgeRouters are running some old Debian and I have had trouble with their PPPoE client. So I flashed OpenWRT recently on it but it didn't run great (for my fiber) either. I am looking for either an R4S NanoPi or one of those protectli devices for just routing. I think in the router part these devices are not cutting it for me (I can do things like dnsmasq blocklisting and stubby with openwrt and cake sqm works great). Anyway I need to plan my WiFi 6 Fiber upgrade well otherwise its easy to get carried away and blow up the budget.

Sounds about right for a technology that operates on unregulated frequencies - as Shannon's law dictates that there is only so much bandwidth in the air. The primary reason for bad wifi in any densely populated city is not construction material but the two dozens of routers trying to yell on top of each other.

Are you sure the frequency is the problem? I’m living in an environment with lots of radio polution in a four story building built from concrete and rebar. I have 802.11ac wifi and I get at least 300Mbps in the worst place in my apartment.

Other argument might be FPV video. There are quite a few youtube videos comparing analog video streams over 1.3 to 5.8 GHz. The difference is there but much less than I expected.

I’m not sure about Hong Kong, but in Japan the allowable transmit power is much lower than the US. Anecdotally, I find 2.4Ghz is usually not usable due to so many networks coexisting but 5Ghz works well. Interior walls are mainly wooden though.

My complaint is about truth in advertising. Manufacturers should not be able to add the max speed of multiple networks and claim “5800Mbps combined speed”

Hard drive manufacturers advertise unrealistic speeds that can only be achieved in synthetic benchmarks. CPU manufacturers advertise CPU speeds that cannot be sustained under large load without dousing entire thing in liquid Nitrogen.

That's why you go and read benchmarks on the Internet, to see how the devices fare in more realistic conditions.

Absorption by walls is a net positive, means you can have isolation from adjacent networks in dense r̶u̶r̶a̶l̶ urban environment.

Urban, I believe you meant to say...

I completely agree! In a not-overly-large flat in Hong Kong, we have three APs to provide complete coverage, and only two of those are connected via Ethernet. The third is a repeater!

~10 other networks are also visible; the density hurts performance as well.

A good "secret" is to use the DFS frequencies most routers won't choose by default. High end consumer routers will allow you to select these frequencies, and usually there's no nearby interference.

I have ~70 nearby networks visible but none on my DFS channel. Your signal can drop if the AP detects radar but unless you're near a weather radar station or airport it works fine IMO

I dunno, a lot of commercial APs for hotels+such just spam the spectrum, creating a BSSID for every FCC-authorized channel. Like one box with 30 MAC addresses, one for every possible channel. It's crazy.

I guess that makes sense. I still haven't seen many using the DFS frequencies though. Presumably because they don't want to deal with testing related to avoiding radar.

In my area every channel is saturated except for DFS.

If you're desperate there is always that Japan-only WiFi channel (assuming you aren't in Japan) that no other country has approved use of... almost all WiFi gear supports it under Linux.

You didn't hear that from me.

How it works depends on your router, when it detects radar, my router just switches to one of the congested channels and never switches back to the DFS channel, which makes it rather impractical to use.