samMouret

Radar/DFS is a whole other can of worms.

My rules of thumb for DFS:

(1) If you can use a DFS channel - use it. it's usually less congested than the regular channels

(2) If you're unlucky and DFS is triggered once per month or more, try repositioning the AP or changing the AP model to one less sensitive to radar pulses

(3) If no luck - use one of the non-DFS channels. Every country has those. In Germany, that would be channels 32-48 or 149+

Note that DFS (5.4GHz) is for weather radar. In some countries it's operated only in winter season. You may want to use different channels in summer and in winter :)

160MHz channels are a rarity even today, neither the latest Samsung S10 nor the latest iPhone support 160MHz.

Much more common is 80MHz channel, and even then, there is a distinction between the "main" 40MHz and the "secondary" 40MHz sub-channel. If you monitor the packets over the air, you'll notice that the secondary channel is much less occupied - all mobile devices switch to 40MHz to save considerable power, unless downloading a big file.

In the US, there are 6 available 80MHz channels, which is more than needed (think 4-color graph coloring).

I agree. "Mesh node" with wire backhaul is good and usually solves the seamless roaming issue (YMMV, check before you buy).

That's no snark.

If she can reliably demonstrate sensitivity to -60dBm RF signals (nanoWatts - the typical received signal strength of a Wi-Fi signal), that's the equivalent of having discovered a new human sense on top of the 5 known senses.

This discovery, or the explanation of mechanism underlying this sense, is worthy of a Nobel prize.

Thus recommendation #1 - Use 5GHz only.

5GHz propagation across walls is much worse than 2.4GHz propagation, therefore only nearby neighbors may interfere with your access point, and on 5GHz there are enough non-overlapping channels to choose an alternate channel avoiding this interference completely.

> definitely she does.

That's not scientific.

That's not a double-blind experiment. Your may be more attentive to her mentions when you've secretely switched on the wifi. You may behaving differently and she may be picking up clues from your behavior. etc.

If you really want to be scientific, you need to do at least n=100 experiments to detect a 10% bias at 95% confidence level. (Z=2 E=0.1) [0]

If you detect such bias, your wife may be able to earn $1M prize for her supernatural abilities. [1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checking_whether_a_coin_is_fai...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Million_Dollar_Paranormal_...

Wireless is OK, you just need to use it correctly.

The trick is to treat it as a cellular system, and use the same methodology used to build cellular networks:

(1) Use only 5GHz for Wi-Fi. Turn off 2.4GHz WiFi - it's an overloaded, noisy spectrum band.

(2) One router per room, alternating channels between rooms.

(3) Use MU-MIMO (802.11ac gen2) or 802.11ax. The efficient MTU for Wi-Fi is much much larger than the MTU used for real time communication. MU-MIMO lets you send multiple small packets destined for multiple users inside one big wifi frame.

(4) Don't use mesh devices. They multiply the "airtime" of each packet by x2-x4 depending on number of hops and number of packet retries.

(5) Leave 2.4GHz for Bluetooth, and "junk" ISM devices (microwave oven, very-low bandwidth devices, etc).

People push wireless to the breaking point, then complain it's broken...