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Comment by petarb | Hacker News Reader

I want my Wi-Fi to deliver me fast internet access, not track my position. Have a feeling this will be used for il-intent and monetized by future routers

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In this case you may want to use a router based on free software: https://ryf.fsf.org/categories/routers.

As many APs today are already cloud dependent I can totally see where all the sensed data will be stored and out of the owners control.

I’m skeptical there are customers really asking for this.

If there's one thing I learnt the last decade, it's to not underestimate how even the shittiest of tech, like a smart fridge or an iot juice press, will become must-haves for the consuming class. In this case, perhaps it's "find my keys", "alert me when my toddler wakes up", "metaverse body tracking", etc/whatever.

Yeah, I realized we are on a far side of the bridge when I saw how many people in the USA decided to buy their Echos. It is estimated the USA has ca. 140 housing units, and that there are 40 millions of Echos in use now. A device I would refuse to install in my house even if someone paid me a lot for it.

Customers also didn't ask for even more ads and tracking in their TV, but they did ask for cheaper devices - the result is that you'll have to shell out serious bucks for "digital signage"-style displays if you want to live in peace.

Warehouse and asset tracking and management is the number customer of this technology. On consumer router this will be just a marketing bullet points. Find your car key were you always put them but forgot.

How would this be useful? Collecting the average distance away from an access point someone uses their phone or whatever?

“You seem to spend a lot of time in your bathroom, would you like to try one of these laxatives from our partners?”

“Your honor, wifi data clearly shows the defendant was…”

Similar motivations as gait recognition or accelerometer data harvesting as proxy for other human actions.

What are you talking about, providing you fast internet access doesn't maximize the benefit for me and my shareholders. We need your exact location, eye movement, and heart rate every second so we can do better invasive target advertisements, or sell these to other companies.

But tracking your position allows it to give you fast internet access.

I don't need more than a few hundred megabits on the go, thank you very much. If I want to go faster, and Ethernet cable is always a faster solution with less moving parts.

When it comes to consumer gear, modern WiFi equipment is often faster than even Ethernet. I agree with your overall point, though.

i can tell when an ssh connection in my own apartment is going over wifi rather than the ethernet cable (if the session open before connecting the ethernet) - is it a weak signal? yes, but it's not a big apartment. With a modern router, sitting right next to it, i've never seen a connection that exceeds my gigabit ethernet.

Through all these years, ethernet always works, wifi is more often than not the culprit of connectivity issues. Moving my chromecast on to ethernet (which was one of the closest wifi devices to the router) has lead to higher quality, less stalling.

i've had my 5ghz wifi disappear because of weather radar, can't say the same for my cabled connections.

How does beamforming position granularity correlate with speed?

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