[LINK] Wi-Fi 7

[Fernando Cassia]

On Tue, 12 Dec 2023, 03:36 Scott Howard, <scott at doc.net.au> wrote:

> Why is that a bad thing?
>
> 2.4Ghz gives significantly higher range at lower power than 5/6Ghz.
>

>From my front door to my router I can count the steps with the fingers of
both hands. I would very much prefer my IoT devices to be on 5GHz. Rather
than on 2.4 which has become a mess in big cities and apartment buildings.

I can count ~35 APs in 2.4 from my 12th floor apartment. Some from the same
block, some from across the street, others from an intersection 150 meters
away. Oh the joys of low frequencies with wide range...

Crowding of those frequencies isn't a huge issue for such devices as their
> bandwidth requirements are generally tiny.
>

Until a kid next door purchases a $15 deauther that also works only in 2.4.
On the other hand, 5 GHz is great as it is very much blocked by hollow
brick walls. To the point that neighbor to neighbor interference is rather
minimal.

I wish someone came up with $2 chips for 5Ghz WiFi or for Expressif to
release 5Ghz versions of the ESP8266 that many IoT sensors are based on.
But even the newer versions of ESP32 like ESP32C3 or ESP32C6, which have
WiFi 6 capabilities do not support the 5Ghz band.

The best thing that can happen for these devices is for other (higher
> bandwidth) devices to move to 5/6Ghz and in doing so remove much of the
> contention that occurs on the 2.4Ghz space.
>

I think 2.4 is impossible to fix. Until all legacy APs and routers die.
Backwards compatibility in a shared frequency has its side effects. Eg I
might want to continue using my 3rd gen Kindle forever, but it has the side
effect of making my AP speak to it in b/g mode...

And finally I'm not sure wide range is a feature from a privacy/security
pov, in other words I'm not sure broadcasting all my home sensors to
everyone 150m around me and across the street is a nice feature to have. I
would prefer my sensors to have a 5 to 10 meters range, enough to reach my
router, so if anyone wants to mess with them using consumer grade kit
they'll have to at least lean to my front door.


> (Or move to protocols like Thread, but that's a completely different
> conversation - and even then it's still 2.4Ghz!)
>
>   Scott
>

Never heard of this. Now I have some catch up to do. Thanks!

FC

>
>
> On Tue, Dec 12, 2023 at 10:23 AM Fernando Cassia <fcassia at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Meanwhile most IoT cheap kit - door sensors, smart bulbs and the like-
>> still use the crowded 2.4GHz band in the 'n' spec.
>>
>> :(
>>
>> FC
>>
>