I worked in this field for a while, and had my own novel mechanism for solving a problem.
The major issue I had and I suspect this will have, is with devices that don't play by the rules. The unit economics mean the manufacturer is going to squeeze everything out, and if they can 'cheat' and claim higher numbers they will.
Back ten years ago the issue was devices ignoring CTS frames but this feels similar.
When I worked on WiFi at Microsoft, we discovered that Apple was cheating. Apple was implemented a random backoff timer to have less range than the spec, which would mean that Apple devices win most contentions.
We decided not to copy this into Windows, since it would be a race to the bottom.
I would guess that this aspect of the spec was not well tested. It is possible to write a test that causes 100 or 1000 collisions and plots the random distribution of the backoffs, but that is pretty complicated versus just checking that 1 collision had a backoff that was within range.
Was it a small difference from the spec, like an off by one error might be, or was it an order of magnitude difference that might point to it being significant and intentional? (Of course dropped 0 could also be a bug). That’s a fairly important detail for a claim like this.
What's the legality of devices intentionally violating wifi standards and causing potential issues with other devices? Is this something the FCC could act on?
There's no laws about it. It's mostly a "handshake agreement" enforced via the WiFi Alliance. You go through the WFA certification process to get the "WiFi Certified" sticker. https://www.wi-fi.org/certification
Aren't the 2.4 and 5 GHz bands among the unlicensed ISM bands?
So long as you're complying with the general rules for the ISM bands, I'd expect the FCC doesn't care about you following the details of a specific protocol.
I don't know. It's possible that it was merely a bug, and maybe it was fixed at some point.
But it's also not something that would cause noticeable issues on a network. Apple devices performing slightly better wouldn't be a big red flag. There are many reasons that this could be the case, from a better implementation, better testing, better HW (antennas), a different OS with a better TCP stack, etc.
Regarding how commonly are used wifi and Bluetooth in our everyday life. I don't understand why we haven't more frequency bands available for it. It is more in the public interest than a lot of useless private initiatives like WiMAX that can easily get large frequency bands.
WiMAX has been dead for more than a decade now. Pretty rest of the spectrum is allocated to licensees for cellular/LTE/5G and other military applications.
6GHz is definitely a step in the right direction. Also filters out all the poor people with old devices so you can enjoy radio silence on your 320MHz channel ;)
The propagation differences between 5Ghz and 6Ghz are minimal compared with 2.4Ghz vs 5Ghz. In fact, given that there's a bunch of other protocol & HW improvements, it wouldn't be surprising to see identical 6Ghz and 5Ghz deployment density.
> I don't understand why we haven't more frequency bands available for it
Do we really need more frequency? At this point it does not seem like the challenge for Wifi quality is actually the available frequency spectrum. In fact, I have a lot of devices still in this household that cannot connect to more than 2.4GHz and that is not a question of available spectrum but that supporting all those frequency bands apparently is too costly for some chips on the market.
Thanks to DFS restrictions in the US, there are effectively only two 80 MHz channels that can reliably be used in the 5GHz band.
2.4GHz only has three non-overlapping 20MHz channels, and those can only do ~286 Mbps throughput in the best case when using 802.11ax.
The 6GHz band is finally allowing 14 non-overlapping 80 MHz channels and 7 160MHz channels, without any DFS restrictions (though some channels are lower-power/indoors only).
From what I've read a significant contributor to that congestion is routers using too much power. A router in the middle of an 800 ft^2 one bedroom apartment in a dense apartment complex doesn't need anywhere near as much power to cover the whole apartment as does a router at one end of an 2200 ft^2 4 bedroom ranch style house in a suburb.
Out of the box most consumer WiFi routers will be configured for high power and most consumers won't even know that it is something they can change. Even if someone does know about it lowering it will probably make things worse for them unless their neighbors also lower their power.
Maybe consumer WiFi routers should also include some kind of long range low bandwidth communication method, such as LoRa, to find and communicate with surrounding routers to build a map of the routers in a general area (not necessarily a spatial map [1]) and then agree on power levels and channel assignments to avoid interfering.
[1] it would be a map of how they relate by WiFi signal strength rather than how they relate in space. So a two routers that are a couple meters apart but on opposite sides of a wall that nearly completely blocks WiFi radio frequencies would be far apart on the radio map despite being very close together spatially.
I have one bedroom apartment and the was unstable wifi in one half of it due to L-shaped reinforced concrete wall near the router. Cannot move it due to optic fiber input. To solve the issue I installed second router to have a wifi mesh.
I’m in a dense apartment block in Vienna. The walls are thick enough that I barely see two WiFi’s. Automatic band selection means we end up in different frequencies.
Not everywhere in the world uses the same concrete walls. It's quite common to see dozens of access points trying to share the same three 20MHz channels available at 2.4GHz in places like the US or dense areas in Asia.
I live in the US and I just counted 65 visible APs on 5GHz. The DFS channels aren't usable in this area, so almost all of those are trying to share the same 2 80MHz channels.
Perhaps if the bands were wider it would provide sufficient incentive for adoption, since there would be more channels available (and a wider band would presumably be easier than two separate bands that are further apart).
Keep this in mind when someone tells you again what a beautiful demonstration of capitalism the "spectrum auctions" are. Most bits move over spectrum no one paid for.
I worked in this field for a while, and had my own novel mechanism for solving a problem.
The major issue I had and I suspect this will have, is with devices that don't play by the rules. The unit economics mean the manufacturer is going to squeeze everything out, and if they can 'cheat' and claim higher numbers they will.
Back ten years ago the issue was devices ignoring CTS frames but this feels similar.
When I worked on WiFi at Microsoft, we discovered that Apple was cheating. Apple was implemented a random backoff timer to have less range than the spec, which would mean that Apple devices win most contentions.
We decided not to copy this into Windows, since it would be a race to the bottom.
If it got tested and verified, wasn't their WiFi Alliance certification supposed to be revoked?
I would guess that this aspect of the spec was not well tested. It is possible to write a test that causes 100 or 1000 collisions and plots the random distribution of the backoffs, but that is pretty complicated versus just checking that 1 collision had a backoff that was within range.
Was it a small difference from the spec, like an off by one error might be, or was it an order of magnitude difference that might point to it being significant and intentional? (Of course dropped 0 could also be a bug). That’s a fairly important detail for a claim like this.
What's the legality of devices intentionally violating wifi standards and causing potential issues with other devices? Is this something the FCC could act on?
There's no laws about it. It's mostly a "handshake agreement" enforced via the WiFi Alliance. You go through the WFA certification process to get the "WiFi Certified" sticker. https://www.wi-fi.org/certification
Usually large vendors try to do the right thing.
Aren't the 2.4 and 5 GHz bands among the unlicensed ISM bands?
So long as you're complying with the general rules for the ISM bands, I'd expect the FCC doesn't care about you following the details of a specific protocol.
Wow. Do you (or anyone) know if they still do it? Was there any pushback on them?
I don't know. It's possible that it was merely a bug, and maybe it was fixed at some point.
But it's also not something that would cause noticeable issues on a network. Apple devices performing slightly better wouldn't be a big red flag. There are many reasons that this could be the case, from a better implementation, better testing, better HW (antennas), a different OS with a better TCP stack, etc.
Sounds like Token Ring...
Regarding how commonly are used wifi and Bluetooth in our everyday life. I don't understand why we haven't more frequency bands available for it. It is more in the public interest than a lot of useless private initiatives like WiMAX that can easily get large frequency bands.
WiMAX has been dead for more than a decade now. Pretty rest of the spectrum is allocated to licensees for cellular/LTE/5G and other military applications.
6GHz is definitely a step in the right direction. Also filters out all the poor people with old devices so you can enjoy radio silence on your 320MHz channel ;)
Temporary solution until within 5-10 years everyone has upgraded their routers and devices to sit on 6ghz, 5ghz, and 2.4ghz.
Eh, also doesn't go as far, which forces higher deployment densities, which helps.
The propagation differences between 5Ghz and 6Ghz are minimal compared with 2.4Ghz vs 5Ghz. In fact, given that there's a bunch of other protocol & HW improvements, it wouldn't be surprising to see identical 6Ghz and 5Ghz deployment density.
> I don't understand why we haven't more frequency bands available for it
Do we really need more frequency? At this point it does not seem like the challenge for Wifi quality is actually the available frequency spectrum. In fact, I have a lot of devices still in this household that cannot connect to more than 2.4GHz and that is not a question of available spectrum but that supporting all those frequency bands apparently is too costly for some chips on the market.
Thanks to DFS restrictions in the US, there are effectively only two 80 MHz channels that can reliably be used in the 5GHz band.
2.4GHz only has three non-overlapping 20MHz channels, and those can only do ~286 Mbps throughput in the best case when using 802.11ax.
The 6GHz band is finally allowing 14 non-overlapping 80 MHz channels and 7 160MHz channels, without any DFS restrictions (though some channels are lower-power/indoors only).
In any moderately dense city environment, apartment complexes, or high traffic areas you can absolutely feel the effects of a lack of frequencies.
In American suburbia it might not matter much, but it's definitely an issue for the rest of us
From what I've read a significant contributor to that congestion is routers using too much power. A router in the middle of an 800 ft^2 one bedroom apartment in a dense apartment complex doesn't need anywhere near as much power to cover the whole apartment as does a router at one end of an 2200 ft^2 4 bedroom ranch style house in a suburb.
Out of the box most consumer WiFi routers will be configured for high power and most consumers won't even know that it is something they can change. Even if someone does know about it lowering it will probably make things worse for them unless their neighbors also lower their power.
Maybe consumer WiFi routers should also include some kind of long range low bandwidth communication method, such as LoRa, to find and communicate with surrounding routers to build a map of the routers in a general area (not necessarily a spatial map [1]) and then agree on power levels and channel assignments to avoid interfering.
[1] it would be a map of how they relate by WiFi signal strength rather than how they relate in space. So a two routers that are a couple meters apart but on opposite sides of a wall that nearly completely blocks WiFi radio frequencies would be far apart on the radio map despite being very close together spatially.
It really depends on the materials.
I have one bedroom apartment and the was unstable wifi in one half of it due to L-shaped reinforced concrete wall near the router. Cannot move it due to optic fiber input. To solve the issue I installed second router to have a wifi mesh.
I’m in a dense apartment block in Vienna. The walls are thick enough that I barely see two WiFi’s. Automatic band selection means we end up in different frequencies.
Not everywhere in the world uses the same concrete walls. It's quite common to see dozens of access points trying to share the same three 20MHz channels available at 2.4GHz in places like the US or dense areas in Asia.
I live in the US and I just counted 65 visible APs on 5GHz. The DFS channels aren't usable in this area, so almost all of those are trying to share the same 2 80MHz channels.
Perhaps if the bands were wider it would provide sufficient incentive for adoption, since there would be more channels available (and a wider band would presumably be easier than two separate bands that are further apart).
Keep this in mind when someone tells you again what a beautiful demonstration of capitalism the "spectrum auctions" are. Most bits move over spectrum no one paid for.