Why Your Wi-Fi Sucks And How It Can Be Helped, Part 1

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Flynn_Serlant

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I really did not enjoy the format of this article. Good content, but whoever made the call to employ this type of formatting should be reprimanded and it should never be used ever again
 

dragonic2020

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There is always something lost when using a wireless connection, whether that be data, power usage and/or speed.
This is why to this very day of technological advancement, my house still uses a wired Internet connection. It's also why we use wired mice and keyboards.
Of course, cellphones need to be wireless. It's more convenient that way.
 
Can you read the text in those informative pictures? I sure can't. That's not whining but pointing out a fundamental flaw. Ok, so maybe it was more colorful than necessary... but the point remains the same. As I previously stated, thank you for the very nice article. I found it very informative.
 

Jamdodds

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I'm a college kid looking for better ping on multiplayer PC games. I have a rosewill adapter for my desktop that has an antenna attached, and the router in my house is directly below me. Yet when I download a file I get the same rate whether the adapter's antenna is pointed up (at the roof away from the router), or down, straight towards the router. I know it may sound dumb,but I'm just looking for an explanation and maybe some tips to improve my ping. Thanks guys, and good luck.
 
[citation][nom]Jamdodds[/nom]I'm a college kid looking for better ping on multiplayer PC games. I have a rosewill adapter for my desktop that has an antenna attached, and the router in my house is directly below me. Yet when I download a file I get the same rate whether the adapter's antenna is pointed up (at the roof away from the router), or down, straight towards the router. I know it may sound dumb,but I'm just looking for an explanation and maybe some tips to improve my ping. Thanks guys, and good luck.[/citation]

Steal the router and plop it right next to your desktop and jack in. Then convince anyone else needing it that they'd be better off going wireless.


Edit: On a more serious note, you can try a wired connection by moving the router closer or moving your desktop closer for testing purposes. Once wired, determine if your connection to any particular multiplayer game improves. With the limited information you provided, we can only suggest the very basics. Of course, there are many factors involved inside and outside your home that can effect your connection / latency. You must rule out what possibilities you have control over, 1 at a time.
 
Yeah, this layout doesn't work for me... The 30 Gmail tips one was OK, since it was made up of short bits of information with pictures that explain the text, similar to a slideshow. But for articles with a lot of textual content, this click-fest is not helpful at all.
 
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WILLIAM VAN WINKLE(sorry for caps, I just copied his name from the top of the article) mentioned that he "assumed the problem was the nettop’s feeble processing and graphics capabilities". He should of followed up on his assumption. We have an article that just jumps from that assumption to using a wireless bridge with no confirmation if the processor or graphics were a limiting factor. I have 400 MHz Mobile Intel Celerons that run automation systems and I can tell you that I am unable to maintain a stable remote connection using a USB dongle. USB dongles just heavily tax the on-board computers too much. When we installed wireless bridges the load was greatly reduced and the computers were able to maintain a constant connection.
 
anyone else hear "ice ice baby" in their head when reading the author's name? Hey jus had to say it. To Mr. Winkle, you done good despite areas mentioned though you may have had nothing to do with the layout so i still applaud your work here and expect part 2 promptly :p
 

Jamdodds

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Hey thanks clonazepam! Yeah, I always used the wired connection in my dorms, but when I'm at my house only the wireless is available. No ethernet jacks. I live on the second floor, and the router is a floor below me, so a cable across the ceiling below would be funny, but not practical. I am now getting 100% signal strength and link quality, so I guess its going to be as good as it will get. I'm downloading CoD right now at 346kb/s. I just miss the nice 1 Mb/s on the wire and was wondering if there were tips on how to set up my adapter antenna for better bandwidth/ping in games. Thanks for the help, this is why I post on Tom's.
 

jabliese

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For those of you that do not understand, including whatever Tom's editor gave this format the green light:

Using 1/3 of my screen real estate for useful information, and 2/3 for irrelevant pictures, is bad.
Using 9/10 of my screen real estate for useful information, and 1/10 for frippery, is good.

Using a slideshow layout for anything not picture centric, is bad. And even then, there are better ways to do pictures. Honestly, for as bad as this is, you might as well have put in blink tags too.
 

funpreacher

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Kudos on the content and intent of the article. (far too much was said on the format already). I appreciate it when there is technical content because that is often helpful in troubleshooting things. Like this article, mentioned polarization - I never thought of applying that to wireless networks. I can see how polarization might be just "one more thing" that one needs to take into account in order to get things working better. For someone like me (trying to support a whiny hoard of thankless wireless users off of an overtaxed number of access points) this type of article is very helpful because of these details. I am looking foreward to the conclusion of the matter. Now I want to know what access point/router appliance is best and why (more details). Thanks Toms for feeding the ravenous hunger for fresh tech geek information.
 

burnley14

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Extremely interesting article. I too was a little disappointed by the format and having to click so often, but learning as much as I did made it worthwhile.
 
[citation][nom]Jamdodds[/nom]Hey thanks clonazepam! Yeah, I always used the wired connection in my dorms, but when I'm at my house only the wireless is available. No ethernet jacks. I live on the second floor, and the router is a floor below me, so a cable across the ceiling below would be funny, but not practical. I am now getting 100% signal strength and link quality, so I guess its going to be as good as it will get. I'm downloading CoD right now at 346kb/s. I just miss the nice 1 Mb/s on the wire and was wondering if there were tips on how to set up my adapter antenna for better bandwidth/ping in games. Thanks for the help, this is why I post on Tom's.[/citation]

Ah dorms. Yeah that's a whole different ballgame in terms of connection speed / latency. Jus be careful with speeds, 1 Mb/s is different than 1 MB/s, just like 1 Kb/s is different than 1 KB/s. Big B = bytes and little B = bits. There are 8 bits to a byte. It's normally not a big deal unless you are using k's and m's within a thought.

In routers, like the article states, you can turn features off you don't need. For instance, my router allows me to select 802.11b, or g, or both. I dont have any b devices so I switched it to G only. According to the article, this could filter out excess noise. Your router may be different. If you have a a/b/g router, you could consider upgrading to 802.11n router, of course, if your desktop's wireless card doesn't support 'n', then its got to go as well.

Lastly, the 2nd part to this article will tell us what devices work best under what circumstances, so hold off any decisions til it comes.
 
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Too difficult to read this potential interesting piece. Poor page design. sorry folks.....
 
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How about using your normal article format when there is more text than pictures.

How retarded do you have to be to run a website into the ground like this?
 

feeddagoat

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That was painful to read. When doing the "christmas gifts" list I tolerated it but for an article like this it should never have been done. Just let use read the friggin article without having to do the equivalent of a point and click adventure.
 

mrjhh

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While antenna/transmission issues are one cause of problems, bufferbloat is also a substantial contributor to network performance problems, particularly if more than one thing is using an access point at a time. In a nutshell, there are many buffers within wireless access points, and they interfere with the normal TCP congestion control algorithms at the point where there is a change in bandwidth (high local bandwidth, lower ISP bandwidth). Visit http://www.bufferbloat.net/ for more technical discussions about the causes and work being done toward providing solutions to the problem.
 

gm0n3y

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First of all, this article was very good. Insightful and well written, plus a bonus Princess Bride reference. The pictures were also pretty good and it was appreciated that you don't have to click them to view them since they are a decent size. But the other commenters above are right, having to click 27 times to go through the pages and another 27 times to read the full text is ridiculous.

Are the number of page views so important that users must click dozens of times per article? Can't we just view it all on a few pages with full size images throughout? I guess you guys make money on advertisement impressions, but this is just ridiculous. Ever since BestOf took over Toms the site design has gone really downhill.
 

ProDigit10

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[citation][nom]iamtheking123[/nom]Really TH, you think I'm going to click next 27 times and Read more another 27 times? Sorry, but I'll read this when it is put on one huge page.[/citation]
A pitty, because it's actually a good article! Although I do regret the 'read more' bug too!
 
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