Neighbour manages to pollute the 2.4 ghz spectrum with his 120 IoT devices

https://devrant.com/rants/4186069/dev-my-neighbours-have-so-many-fucking-iot-devices-that-they-basically-fuck-over

by akshayt • 5 years ago

270 331 5 years ago

This neighbor must be some kind of tech reviewer or IoT QA engineer working from home. Would be cool to hear their story.

Evidlo• 5 years ago

These responses bring back memories of Yahoo Answers.

XorNot4• 5 years ago

What's really baffling is how this is a problem if he just wants to use his laptop or something? Like 5ghz is everywhere these days.

silly-silly2• 5 years ago

Not everyone has 5ghz laptops.

xvector3• 5 years ago

5Ghz doesn’t work well in a lot of houses. Weird geometry, thick walls, etc.

tr1ll10nb1ll• 5 years ago

One of the comments is just borderline suspicious activity though. Anyway, hope you sort this out without having to nuke your neighbor's connection.

throwaway8581• 5 years ago

Crazy thought, but maybe communicate with them and try to work out a solution?

devenblake• 5 years ago

And lose the chance to rant about it on the Internet?!

silly-silly2• 5 years ago

I've had similar problems in my neighbourhood, I can't honestly find out who it is.. i kinda know the direction, and have tried talking to each of the units and everyone denies it is them.

MikeTheGreat• 5 years ago

First - that's definitely super frustrating and I'm sorry you're dealing with it.

It's possible that the person who's causing the problem doesn't know they're the problem. Like, if the underlying cause of this problem is "not super techno-savvy" then they might not realize what they're doing :)

lrvick2• 5 years ago

Drones are great for pinpoint WiFi mapping. :)

kwyjobojoe• 5 years ago

If a neighbour asks you to turn off half your devices indefinitely so their network works better, what exactly are you supposed to do?

XorNot4• 5 years ago

There is literally no benefit if you are this person to acknowledging its you. From their perspective you might be a well informed tech person or just crazy, but either way you don't want to be dealing with them everytime anything goes wrong with their wifi.

And it's pretty obvious the person ranting doesn't feel this problem rises to the issue of "spend $50 to get a 5ghz router and dongle".

yarcob• 5 years ago

The neighbour definitely has problems with his wifi as well, so fixing the issue would be beneficial for everyone.

Step 1 would be to use APs that are connected with ethernet instead of Mesh-type APs. That would greatly reduce the amount of data that needs to be transmitted (with mesh, your signal needs to be repeated multiple times. With ethernet it's just transmitted once)

Step 2 would be adjusting power output of each AP. If the neighbour has multiple APs, they probably don't each need to run on full power.

Step 3 would be looking for devices that transmit a lot of data. I assume most of the 120 devices don't cause a lot of traffic. Maybe there's just a few that cause 90% of the traffic. Maybe the most traffic intensive devices (eg. camera) could be replaced with a wired connection.

I'm assuming the neighbour doesn't know anything about how to optimize Wifi networks, but OP sounds knowledgable, so maybe they could work together to fix the issue.

It can be a Win-Win situation: OP gets a usable 2.4GHz channel, Neighbour also gets better connectivity.

TameAntelope• 5 years ago

Yeah, I don't think I'd know if I were doing this. I really don't think I am, but default settings and shitty proprietary IoT devices make me unsure...

xvector3• 5 years ago

If he does this, and the neighbor decides not to do anything, OP can’t run de-auth attacks later on to free up the network, or he will be immediately suspect.

The only sure fire way to solve this is de-auth.

crooked-v• 5 years ago

That just gets you a neighbor running even more wifi stuff to try and fix whatever 'bad connection' problem is happening.

bscphil4• 5 years ago

That might work, but also, it's possible 120 devices is simply too many for one person to be using in an apartment complex. Wireless spectrum is a shared resource, it's not okay to hog it.

If not 120, imagine someone with 200 or 1000 devices. At some point you've eaten more than your quota of spectrum and you owe it to your neighbors to stop hoarding IOT devices.

Edit: heh, not believing in scarce resources is peak Orange Site.

PeterisP3• 5 years ago

In an ideal world that might be true, however, in our world currently there's no such thing as "your quota of spectrum"; wireless spectrum is a shared resource but people are allowed to hog it. FCC does not prescribe that the spectrum usage should be shared equally or equitably; within the allowed limits and without intentional harm (e.g. deauthers) you're each allowed to try and use as much as you can. The person running 120 or 200 or 1000 devices is entitled to assert that they don't, in fact, owe anything to their neighbours - on the other hand, they would be entitled to protection and FCC intervention if the neighbours attempt to deauth their devices as suggested in other comments. You're welcome to try and hog the shared resource yourself, but preventing others from hogging a lot of the shared resource is illegal.

Sure, there are scarce resources; and what we're seeing is the expected results of the tragedy of commons for a shared resource.

stirlo• 5 years ago

All Tuya based devices are 2.4ghz only. Considering the scale of that ecosystem it's unsurprising this has occurred. I have around 40 devices in my home already...

noodlesUK• 5 years ago

Surely the solution with someone with that much kit is to turn the TX power wayyy down. I guess it depends how close your neighbours are too, and what kind of building they have.

zoomablemind• 5 years ago

... to turn the TX power wayyy down

Exactly! That's what it was supposed to be. A wifi-neighborly approach - have your local coverage at minimum needed power and with lower pollution. Except that all wifi-devices would be factory configured at increasingly higher 'medium' power setting.

I had fun with just the worst case scenario - 20m away is a glass condo tower right in front of my windows (the list of loud networks is endless), 100m away is a cell-tower. The RF interference from the cell tower so bad across all bands that I could hear it even in radio speakers. Yet, I still get steady browsing speads over my wifi (loud it is), just not practical NAS speeds, so wire does it.

korethr3• 5 years ago

I actually tried coordinating an effort like this with my neighbors when I lived in an apartment complex. That effort very quickly died, for most neighbors not knowing much about their wifi other than that the box with blinking lights made the Internet go, and not a single stock firmware I encountered exposing a TX power setting anywhere in the configuration interface.

Hopefully someone with that much kit would be the kind enthusiast who'd be running firmware that allows you to turn TX power below 100%, but it could just as likely be someone who really likes being able to set their light bulb color from their iPhone.

nly2• 5 years ago

Many ISP provided modems (with built in WiFi) don't let you control this setting.

KozmoNau7• 5 years ago

I put up an AP at the other end of my apartment from where my router sits, chose non-overlapping 5GHz channels with no interference from neighbors, tuned the transmit power so the signal level from each sits at around -60dBm where they overlap, and got everything 2.4GHz-only either wired with ethernet or replaced.

Now I just wish my neighbors would do the same, but I am not going to be the one to suggest it. If I fix up their networking, I will forever be on the hook if anything goes wrong or they face intermittent outages. Been there, done that, didn't even get a t-shirt. Unpaid network janitor is not something I need to add to my resume.

Perhaps one could make work as a network tech for home users, but I feel like people either don't want to pay for it, or don't care because it's "good enough".

Terretta• 5 years ago

On the contrary, turn 2.4 way up, and only use one channel on one AP, not mesh. Then 3 homes can co-exist.

By contrast, for 5 GHz, turn it to minimum and use one AP per room with wired (Ethernet or MOCA not Powerline) backhaul, and ideally APs with smart DFS.

GekkePrutser• 5 years ago

Yeah this is what I do. I have 3 WiFi aps and obviously they are on different channels (though one of these is 5ghz only). But I have the power set to minimum. This actually helps proper roaming around the house.

walrus0114• 5 years ago

You should see 2.4 GHz noise floor when viewed from a spectrum analyzer in a densely populated, 5-floor, wood framed condo/apartment in a major urban area. Prototypical example would be some place in south lake union seattle.

https://archive.curbed.com/2018/12/4/18125536/real-estate-mo...

https://crosscut.com/2015/04/the-new-seattle-where-everythin...

a "one plus five" looks like this, structurally: https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DZ2BLyticQE/VRMjELb1DYI/AAAAAAAAX...

Since 2.4 GHz goes through wood fairly effectively to moderate distances, it's a total half duplex CSMA hell...

One possible mitigation if you have older 2.4 GHz only devices is to run your own wifi on a 20 MHz channel, sacrificing throughput for better SNR. As channel sizes get narrower it cuts through the noise floor a little bit better. And of course to use your own choice of the cleanest 5.x GHz channel for everything you care about.

Lammy2• 5 years ago

They propagate signal about as well as they propagate fire

foota• 5 years ago

My understanding is that wood structures compare similarly to others in a fire: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF01095562

manuel_w• 5 years ago

Fun fact: Wooden doors propagate fire less then metal doors. That's because metal doors just heat up and set what's behind the door on fire, while wooden doors consume the heat. The opposite side of the doors stays cooler than a metal door would.

walrus0114• 5 years ago

when under construction and all the wood is exposed, they burn very effectively...

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-langley-f...

https://twitter.com/JSchenderling/status/1384384802715934721...

throwaway189262• 5 years ago

Not sure why downvoted. For nearly a century large multi family wood structures were banned in most countries due to fire risk. These huge apartment buildings are all 2X4's, not timber framing. They're incredibly flammable.

The only thing keeping them safe is fire sprinklers. There's been many infernos that burned the things to the ground when sprinklers failed.

SilverRed2• 5 years ago

I wonder if future apts buildings will build RF blocking mesh in to the roof and floors and then have a phone signal repeater in each room.

walrus0114• 5 years ago

in practical use it's really not necessary, since a lot of those apartments are small enough in square footage to be well covered by one $80 5.x GHz capable 2x2 or 3x3 802.11ac AP. You can still get 400-700Mbps speeds through a 5 GHz channel, such as around 5150MHz, on any dual band equipment. Although 5 GHz goes through wood framed walls/floors a tiny bit, it doesn't go very far, to the point where you might see your neighbor's 5 GHz AP at a signal of -87.

crimony• 5 years ago

I clicked on those links to see Spectrum Analyser noise floor plots and was sorely disappointed.

walrus0114• 5 years ago

at the cheap end, looks something like this:

https://help.ui.com/hc/en-us/articles/204950584-airMAX-Using...

you can see how bad 2.4 GHz is using an old ubiquiti rocket m2 802.11n 2x2 radio ($70) and a small $85 omni 2x2 antenna.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNxXyP6QOqo

or any of the older 802.11n 2.4 GHz based ubiquiti products such as the nanostation loco m2 mentioned in the video

sushisource• 5 years ago

Why are your first two links just about buildings looking the same? I was thinking they'd spectrum visualizations per your lead-in which would be really fascinating to see...

walrus0114• 5 years ago

probably not the best links, they're meant to be reference to a construction style of putting five wood framed floors on top of a concrete first level/foundation, called a "five over one". Then when the wood walls are divided up into 450 to 750 sq ft apartments, it's a LOT of individual 2.4 GHz APs all packed into a dense noisy space, with only wood between them.

https://www.google.com/search?channel=fs&client=ubuntu&q=fiv...

cheap 2.4 GHz spectrum analyzer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wc47pkUsLe8

kozak• 5 years ago

I chuckle when Americans say that their "5 over 1" buildings "all look the same". This is nowhere near the level of sameness that I'm accustomed to see here in Eastern Europe. To my eye, these buildings look very distinct from each other.

wffurr2• 5 years ago

Run Ethernet for everything you care about; problem solved.

If only wired ethernet was considered standard wiring like coax and power outlets, and installed during construction.

ajdude2• 5 years ago

I recommend just running conduit to everything during your next renovation, that way you could easily upgrade down the road. I wish conduit was used for all of these coax lines in my house.

wayoutthere2• 5 years ago

In 2021, if you’re running network in the walls, run fiber to switches with SFP adapters. We maxed out twisted pair copper years ago (you can squeeze more over shorter runs, but that hits diminishing returns quickly) and home internet speeds are going above 1gbps. If you install in-wall cat6 it’ll probably be obsolete by the end of the decade.

yardie3• 5 years ago

And make sure a low-voltage electrician installs it. Half my ethernet are daisy chained. Some of it is stapled to the studs of the wall. Of the 5 drops in my condo only 3 lead back to the IDF. Fixing it is going to be damn near impossible.

nonameiguess2• 5 years ago

Yeah, I wish. I wanted to do this in a townhouse where we have RJ-45 ports in every room, but for some reason, they aren't actually internally connected to each other. Only I found the walls are all completely filled with insulation and running any new wiring at all requires pulling some of that out first and then putting it back in after, otherwise the nice noise barrier I currently enjoy from my walls shared with neighbors suddenly goes away. This means instead of making one hole upstairs, dropping a weighted cable, and making a second hole downstairs, I now need to tear out entire sections of wall.

HeyLaughingBoy• 5 years ago

I thought it was. My house was built in 2003 and has CAT-5 to every room with RJ45 jacks on the walls. When I sold my previous house to a builder, he planned to open the walls and run CAT5 also, because "everyone expects that these days."

I guess newer houses might be expecting everything to be WiFi now, though.

ortusdux• 5 years ago

I did my undergrad in Seattle and had this issue. I eventually made 10 or so unprotected wifi printers spit out the "how to turn off wifi printing" page of their manuals. Definitely cleared up a bit of 2.4ghz room.

pomian• 5 years ago

Interesting reading. The results, and the issues with housing, remind one of the post war building boom in Central Europe, Communist enforced 'blocks'. We would visit from Canada and marvel how everything was the same. Obviously a very efficient use of planning and construction. Almost assembly line. Actually impressive how many people they had to house, quickly. The amount of design work that went into the community was more impressive. Years later, I could appreciate how everything was coordinated to have nearby playgrounds - so that you could watch your kids from your apartment. Schools, grocery stores, medical clinics, were all nearby in a logical efficient pattern. ( Communist system though, meant there was little to eat, or buy, or drugs, in those facilities.) The wiring, (and plumbing) was all prebuilt into the concrete walls and floors, ready to be connected, upon assembly. The ideas and designs were great. Of course, the actually performance, and construction, were prone to the usual Communist era woes of graft, theft, and shortages. To get back to the topic, phone wires were installed, but phones were not available for another 20 years. Imagine if Ethernet wiring was installed that way?

xvector3• 5 years ago

I wish Zigbee didn’t pollute the WiFi frequency space either. Looks like Z-Wave is my only option, despite it being an inferior, closed protocol. It looks like the home automation community prefers Z-Wave for critical, high availability devices for this reason.

ashneo76• 5 years ago

It is "open" now. Except the certification process is centralized which gives better ux compared to zigbee

http://embedded-computing.com/articles/z-wave-opens-up-as-sm...

motiejus3• 5 years ago

You may want to consider mqtt-based devices like tasmota or shelly, if you prefer off-the-shelf products.

I have a few dozen stock shellies in my apt., all controlled via mqtt. All of them are disconnected from the internet. Works well.

meepmorp3• 5 years ago

What does mqtt have to do with 2.4GHz spectrum congestion?

lancepioch2• 5 years ago

How is it inferior? Seems better in most ways to me.

* 800-900 MHz only

* every z-wave device works with every z-wave controller

* z-wave signals travel further

* z-wave requires aes-128

* power consumption is roughly the same as zigbee

* z-wave is an open standard contrary to what you say

011000112• 5 years ago

I heart z-wave. After having worked for a company that was heavily gaming the IEEE standards process I have lost faith in many 'design by committee' protocols. I use Z-Wave at home and it works great. Low power and reliable.

Oh and HDMI as well. I spent at least a year of my life working out interoperability issues for a major DVR mfg. If only HDMI certification had been controlled by a single company...

novok2• 5 years ago

Z-wave does not require aes128, it can't even handle multiple messages that well and gets congested very, very easily. The more z-wave secure devices you have the more easily your network gets congested, and god help you if every device also reports their power usage. If you want to remove a device from the network to move it to another network, you often have to go through an explicit dejoin process vs just start a new join process with something else.

Still overall a shit experience.

perryizgr82• 5 years ago

I am willing to cede the entire 2.4GHz spectrum to IoT devices. We can use 5GHz and 6GHz for full-fat internet devices (TV, laptop, phone). This is what I've done at my home.

otabdeveloper4• 5 years ago

Good idea, but 5Ghz doesn't work for many building materials. I had to go back to 2.4 to get reception further than 1 meter from the AP.

perryizgr82• 5 years ago

A single AP is useless with 5GHz. You should look into mesh systems, and try to get one with a wired backhaul for even better coverage. I splurged a bit on my mesh, but I'm glad I did. I have never experienced Wifi coverage so good in my life.

dfoxinator• 5 years ago

Same thing happens in my apartment, so much congestion it's ridic.

crmrc114• 5 years ago

I have over 80 IOT devices and three aps. I also live in the middle of nowhere. That being said, I like how all the commenters just go straight to de-auth attacks. The proper solution is to get up knock on the door and talk to them about their signals, ask if they can clear one channel for you. Work with them. OR just you know, buy a router made in the last five years that supports decent 5ghz range and mount it up high.

gnarbarian• 5 years ago

Talk to your neighbor!?! What is this 1950?

k3liutZu• 5 years ago

What year is this, 2019?

walrus0114• 5 years ago

On the other hand, somebody so uninformed on the fundamentals of half-duplex wifi that they would choose to use mesh network extenders everywhere all on the same channel, is a person that I would rate as highly unlikely to listen to a logically reasoned technical explanation.

recursive2• 5 years ago

so uninformed on the fundamentals of the FCC part 15 that ...

You mean... basically everyone?

Taniwha2• 5 years ago

Not everyone can use 5Ghz - if you have one of those 50s/60s/70s houses that were build with plaster/chicken wire (rather than lath&plaster or drywall) then at 5GHz you're basically living in a bunch of faraday cages

(at a company I used to work at we once had to abandon a 5GHz product when we discovered that an appreciable numbers of customers would take it home and not be able to make it work reliably - it would have been a support nightmare)

astrange• 5 years ago

Not all IoT products support 5ghz - some of mine say they don't (Nest Protect) and some say they do but don't work (Nest thermostat, Netatmo). The only way I could get a stable IoT network in my apartment was to set up a 2.5ghz guest network and put all of them on it.

trhway• 5 years ago

50s/60s/70s houses that were build with plaster/chicken wire

the new townhouses being built near by in MV are exactly this.

NullPrefix• 5 years ago

People living in Faraday cages rarely complain about radio pollution

Cthulhu_• 5 years ago

I live in a relatively modern house (<15 years old) and the 5Ghz signal doesn't make it up the stairs. 5Ghz is 'same room' wifi, and I have Problems with it. It's the same with mobile 5G data, it needs so much more signal towers / transmitters to be effective.

I've hit 'forget' on my home 5Ghz network because it's just unstable upstairs, and my phone isn't smart enough to pick the network with the stronger signal for some reason.

yesenadam• 5 years ago

I have over 80 IOT devices

This is a lot to ask, but.. what are all those things?! (My house has 0..I think)

dheera3• 5 years ago

Every light bulb in my home is on Wi-Fi and has its own IP address. And then several outlets have their own IP address. Door locks. Robots. My Christmas tree had an IP address when it was up. My air purifier. My air quality monitor. Security cameras. Lots of things. Seems pretty normal.

irjustin• 5 years ago

If you want to run your own IoT devices then you're largely stuck in the 2.5 ghz range.

I'd like to know what 120-ish devices they're running. That's a lot of devices.

gaudat• 5 years ago

The mad scientist in me says to use a microwave magnetron pointing at the neighbor's house to fry all their 2.4 GHz stuff.. Could that work in principle?

011000112• 5 years ago

I doubt you'd damage anything permanently but you'd swamp the frontends and cause it to temporarily stop working.

I used to fantasize as a kid about doing this to a satellite. Phased array of cheap magnetrons and all that. I doubt that would work though.

8128js8121• 5 years ago

also no, you use 5ghz, its shit

lrvick2• 5 years ago

I have maybe around 100 ESP32s. Sensors, bulbs, switches, power monitors, etc.

If someone came at me with a deauth attack I would be incredibly amused and probably make a new friend.

korethr3• 5 years ago

I'm probably romanticizing and projecting, but I imagine that scenario going something like this:

* lrvick knocks on guilty neighbor's door.

* guilty party's non-technical brother answers

Brother: Yeah?

lrvick: Hey, I notice you guys have an antenna on the east side of your roof pointed at my house, is that yours?

Brother: Huh? No, that's my sister's.

lrvick: Is she around? It's messing with my Netflix and I'd like to talk to her about it.

Brother: Oh, um, yeah. hold on...

* Brother leans away from door into house and shouts inside, "Hey sis! Neighbor at the door for you!"

* lrvick waits.

* Guilty sister walks up to door

Sister: Can I help you?

lrvick: Is that your antenna on the east side your roof?

Sister: Yes.

lrvick: So, the past month, someone's been messing with my wifi with deauth attacks.

Sister: *mildly indignant* I'm not doing that.

lrvick: Well, The past week, I spread a bunch of sensors around my property and a couple of the neighbors and logged the 2.4Ghz spectrum for the area. I correlated everything and triangulated the attacks to that antenna of yours, which just so happens to be aimed at my house. Here's the logs and spectrum heat maps if you'd like to see.

* lrvick offers Sister the printouts he brought with him.

* Sister takes, looks them over and starts to get that embarrassed flush in the cheeks and ears characteristic of someone who knows they're busted.

Sister: I mean --

lrvick: I'm actually not even mad. It's kind of illegal, but it's also ballsy and I respect that. But I'm not the kind of person to go snitching to the FCC first thing. You do know if we're competing for spectrum, you can come talk to me, and we can coordinate a plan over a couple beers, right?

* Three months later lrvick and Sister are co-presenting a talk at the local hackerspace on counterattacks to deauth attacks.

grep_name• 5 years ago

Wait, you have 100 IoT devices, all DIY? What's the time trade-off for managing all that?

hansvm• 5 years ago

that supports decent 5ghz range

What does that gain exactly? The 5ghz band is so crowded around my apartment that most devices can't connect at all. Is there some fundamental reason it should work better?

dvdkon• 5 years ago

There are many more WiFi channels in the 5GHz range and the signal drops off faster, so you should have both fewer APs "visible" and more room for them to spread.

PietdeVries2• 5 years ago

I can't imagine it's the high number of (IoT) clients that is the problem - it is the high power that the AP's use that causes the issue.

WiFi goes two ways - the AP talks to the client, and the client has to talk back. Clients don't have the high transmitting power that an AP has, and actually the AP won't need this high power. After all, if you use a bullhorn to reach your backyard, but the guy over there can't talk back, there is still no communication.

The solution would be to set the AP's to a lower transmitting power, enough to cover the house but not the street.

bserge2• 5 years ago

That would be the ideal solution, but they'd have to adjust tx power on all of their devices. Or at least a significant number of them. Which might prove problematic, since most of them don't allow manual adjustment.

bserge2• 5 years ago

Well, if you talk to them first and negotiations break down, they'll immediately suspect you if you start a deauth attack :D

bartread• 5 years ago

The poster on devrant has joined the discussion and it seems like this is exactly what has happened: they spoke to their neighbours, and their neighbours have refused to make any changes.

It does seem like getting some 5GHz hardware would be a relatively straightforward solution but the poster is unwilling to do that. My take is if you want good quality home networking then you need to be willing to pay the price to get that within the constraints of where you live: sometimes that means spending more money than you might like. Such is life.

raducu• 5 years ago

How many channels are there on 5ghz?

To me, the problems seem to be those devices use too many channels, continously?

I recently tried checking some TPMS sensors that I bought with rtl_433 and was amazed by how many sensors can get along just fine in my 10 story appartment buiding, but those messages are really short and only transmitted once every couple of minutes.

vertis• 5 years ago

What I got from this article was "Person using WiFi complains about another person using WiFi".

I agree with your sentiment. It requires communication. De-authing is not going to solve the problem just make enemies if they work out what the OP is doing.

IntelMiner2• 5 years ago

Many years ago I lived in an apartment complex mostly populated by Comcast employees, with those horrid Comcast modems that broadcast two 2.4Ghz AP's a piece (Yours and the "xfinitywifi" hotspot)

My laptop picked up about 140 AP's from the couch. I could copy files from my NAS over Wi-Fi at a blistering 6KB/s! Sometimes bursting to 25KB/s

bscphil4• 5 years ago

That's kind of surprising, actually, I'd expect a bunch of techy types to be running their own routers or at least to have manually configured their router. At least, assuming everyone in the building has Comcast as an ISP, I'd expect the number of xfinitywifi APs to be inversely related to the number of Comcast employees who live there.

IntelMiner2• 5 years ago

It was next to a large call centre so "techy types" is pushing it for most of them

Indeed they were surprised I DIDN'T want a Comcast modem, instead opting for a Surfboard/PFsense combo setup

billh• 5 years ago

I'm a techie type and have one of those comcast modems. I also have a descent Ubiquiti setup that rides behind it, but I'm kind of shoehorned into using their provided modem or alternatively paying for a modem myself and then paying another $35/month for "unlimited data" (Really crappy comcast policy but that's beside the point).

Long story short, this modem will reset itself and require me to not only become aware that it's once again broadcasting the "xfinitywifi" hotspot, but to also redownload the xfinity app, configure the app with my information and try to remember where they buried the setting to disable this "feature". After disabling it somehow takes up to 24 hours to actually happen....

samus• 5 years ago

So... what about jamming back? The 2.4GHz spectrum is pretty much unusable anyways.

XorNot4• 5 years ago

Deliberately jamming the channel is an FCC violation. The FCC is very effective at coming down like a ton of bricks on people who mess with the spectrum.

ShroudedNight3• 5 years ago

Does it become deliberate if one is informed of the effect ones devices are having on said spectrum?

peanutz454• 5 years ago

Build a Faraday cage?

151552• 5 years ago

The FCC isn't coming out to investigate your neighbor's suspected deauthentication flood report.

And in some imaginary reality where they are: there's almost no scenario where they're going to successfully fox hunt the source of random 2.4Ghz deauth frames.

Flood the entire 2.4Ghz spectrum above EIRP limits, constantly? Maybe visitors will come.

fouc• 5 years ago

Perhaps in scenarios like this, people will need to be responsible for putting up a basic faraday fence around their property in order to prevent polluting the neighbourhood with their radiation.

irrational2• 5 years ago

I wonder how effective ICF construction is in blocking signals (both incoming and outgoing)? With the high price of lumber right now, maybe more people will opt for ICF which might help with this problem if enough people adopt it.

procombo• 5 years ago

I love ICF, but concrete alone doesn't block radio very well at all. Best to go with steel studs -- it's found in all modern commercial buildings where I live. Use steel joists between floors and a metal roof and you've got yourself a building full of tenants who have great wifi, but terrible 4g cellular.

https://www.scafco.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/iphone-bac...

topspin• 5 years ago

Wi-Fi 6E would solve this for you. 1,200 MHz of bandwidth is now available at 6 GHz. Wi-Fi 6E routers exist now. Here[1] are some devices that are Wi-Fi 6E capable.

It's an expensive, possibly inconvenient solution, but from the perspective of RF spectrum it has a high probability of success; your 2.4 GHz neighbor is unlikely to appear at 6 GHz for some time, and even then the reduced 'range' of 6 GHz will work in your favor.

1. https://www.cnet.com/home/internet/wi-fi-6-devices-top-compa... (the distinction between 6 and 6E is crucial; you want 6E)

techrat2• 5 years ago

We're currently running into the same problem now with 6E as we had with 5Ghz.

All of those dinky cheap shit little IoT devices DON'T USE IT. They're all on 2.4Ghz.

5Ghz promised more spectrum and more usability and mostly gave that to us. Not quite as good range but it's great... IF we replaced everything we had that used 2.4Ghz.

We're still waiting for legacy devices to die... and new devices to stop using 2.4Ghz before that can happen.

And now you're suggesting 6E? Gonna take a while.

Havoc3• 5 years ago

You don't need everything on 6E to benefit. Just your main devices and router

speedgoose• 5 years ago

My hundreds of neighbors and I pollute the 2.4ghz spectrum with all kind of devices. If you want a descent speed, use another spectrum like 5 or 6Ghz.

throwaway888abc• 5 years ago

Buy bigger antenna - make yours bigger than theirs! :)

agogdog• 5 years ago

This guy seems overly angry and judgemental about something he could just talk to his neighbor about.

Also seems like some minor changes could avoid the issue entirely. I live in a large building amongst other large buildings and depending on which way the wind is blowing I can see over 100 wifi access points, not to mention devices.

bosswipe2• 5 years ago

All of us fighting over tiny slivers of bandwidth while telecom monopolies gobble up giant chunks of spectrum. The amount of value generated by the tiny unlicensed spectrum dwarfs the value that "5G" could possibly ever generate for society. Our public resources have been stolen, again.

parineum• 5 years ago

I assume you're walking the walk with your edge network flip phone, right?

msh• 5 years ago

Its more or less fixed when wifi 6E is rolled out. That gives a massive amount of spectrum.

bosswipe2• 5 years ago

Nice! I wasn't aware of this new unlicensed spectrum. It will take years to become widely available but it's great news.

totallyabstract• 5 years ago

It will be interesting see if the next waves of wifi products solve this. For Wifi 6 and Halow there's a new feature called 'target wake time' that will let these devices sleep (and not pollute spectrum) for longer.

Wifi 6 also brings OFDMA which will let stations use much less of the channel at a time (instead of a 20MHZ+ chunk they can just use 2MHZ while other stations use the rest). 2.4GHz being stuck on old Wifi 4 (or worse) devices hasn't helped the situation.

adriancr• 5 years ago

So, pick a band, 20mhz, set power to max allowable by country and pollute yourself as well.

Go for 3/9 or something in between which would get noise but not significant.

You'd be doing more damage yourself, 120 IoT devices would be kind of fragile if noise is introduced.

KingMachiavelli• 5 years ago

My apartment had so many issues/complaints they just had the local ISP install AP access points in each apartment. It's one network but has VLAN segmentation and per apartment PSK. This way routers are way smarter at time sharing and power levels for 2.5Ghz are very low plus you can roam anywhere in the complex.

Of course I run my own network and do those steps my self. (they were nice enough to give me a port with a public IP). Ethernet is still king for many critical but WiFi seems great despite there still being 35+ SSIDs around.

TBH most SSIDs you see have so little traffic 90% of the time so I can't imagine they would decrease the SNR that much (e.g. printer setup networks...) My guess is their neighbor in this case does have a lot of traffic besides the IOT. # of devices and heavy usage just tend to corelate for obvious reasons.

londons_explore3• 5 years ago

Zero traffic networks do put a bunch of congestion load on the network, because the various Auth/advert frames are transmitted at 1Mbps with very legacy modulation and framing. That ends up using a lot of channel time.

r1ch• 5 years ago

One of the first things everyone should do on a new network setup is disable 802.11b, this raises the minimum modulation in beacons from 1mbps to 6mbps which helps a little.

ShroudedNight3• 5 years ago

I've ruminated over 2.4Ghz spectrum contention for a long time now, and, while I claim nothing more than ignorance on the physical side of things, it's not obvious to me why we have moved to bonding ever larger blocks of that frequency allocation together when from my experience, contention has been an issue for 15 years. As far as I can tell, most applications of ambient connectivity are fairly low throughput: push notifications, MQTT, and whatnot. The 'original' 5Mhz channels should be more than adequate.

londons_explore3• 5 years ago

From a theoretical perspective, using double the bandwidth and half the transmittion time causes the same congestion, as long as everyone is using the same strategy.

mhandley2• 5 years ago

That's not quite true with CSMA-CA. The minimum medium aquisition time is effectively a constant, no matter the bandwidth. Wider channels mean you've got the same duration of deadtime across more channel bandwidth for each transmission. In fact it's worse than that - wider channels mean more senders compete during each medium aquisition, so collisions are more likely, further reducing capacity. The use of AMPDUs in 802.11n (and later) goes some way to mitigating this, but our measurements show it doesn't do a great job in practice with many workloads. In the end, if things are really congested, you'll get more total capacity with narrow channels, at the expense of not being able to burst at high bitrates when things are quiet.

dschuetz• 5 years ago

"The future is wireless" ends right about here.

artiscode• 5 years ago

Reading the comments under the article made me think when I'll become the bad neighbour and suffer from deauth attacks without knowing it. I have two AP's and 3 SSID's, one 2.4ghz for my 15 IoT devices, a 5Ghz using the same network, and a separate 5Ghz for "serious" devices that I use only for work. However I live in an apartment building and I have both most devices and SSID's. I've pondered before whether I am causing inconvenience to someone and how to solve it if complaints ever arise.

sgtnoodle• 5 years ago

If you want to be a good neighbor, disable support for "legacy" rates in your access points. The periodic beacon frames are transmitted at the slowest supported rate so that the least capable client devices can receive them. For 802.11b, that means something like 1Mbps. At such a low rate, the beacon frames consume a non-trivial amount of bandwidth. Each access point you see could be consuming over 3% of the channel. Turning off 802.11b/g support (if you can) will significantly reduce the cost of each access point broadcasting. If you're really nice you could decrease the frequency of beacons, but that's not really worth it due to buggy clients sometimes not coping well.

The channels around my house are so busy that in order to make wifi reliable, I have three access points, each one on its own non-overlapping 20Mhz 2.4Ghz channel. Two of them listen in on 80Mhz 5.8Ghz as well. I have them all set to the same SSID, so that my devices just choose whatever they think has the best signal strength. I also ran cat6 to my TV and desktop so that they don't need to go over wifi. I disabled 802.11b/g on all but one of them to keep the amount of overhead down from all the beacon frames.

This is why the Comcast SSIDs everywhere are so annoying. They make the spectrum tangibly worse just by existing. Same thing for wifi printers that broadcast their own AP. Something like 30 APs sending beacon frames is enough to completely trash 20Mhz of 2.4Ghz.

Sebb767• 5 years ago

It's not exactly on-topic, but why does all IoT stuff use 2.4Ghz? Basically every router has 5Ghz nowadays, even the cheap ISP ones, and spectrum pollution is an obvious problem. Is there any reason to prefer 2.4Ghz or to avoid supporting both?

fogihujy4• 5 years ago

Because there's a shitload of cheap surplus 2.4 GHz parts in stock now that everyone wants 5 GHz capability?

Also, many people have really, really crappy routers, walls that 5 GHz signals have issues penetrating, and so on.

TeMPOraL2• 5 years ago

ESP8266. Good news: everyone can have a cheap Wi-Fi chip to put in their project. Bad news: everyone can have a cheap Wi-Fi chip to put in their project.

fomine3• 5 years ago

IoT devices (except something like NVR cameras) uses very little bandwidth and little time, so why you need 5GHz?

2.4GHz is better for range, all AP/Client supports same frequency on worldwide, cheap, and so on. I suspect that there are few reason to implement both 5GHz and 2.4GHz for IoT devices. Supporting all 5GHz band would increase cost.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_WLAN_channels#5_GHz_(8...

jfim• 5 years ago

Because ESP8266 and ESP32 chips are really cheap, and they only do 2.4GHz.

zejn• 5 years ago

Yes.

1) 5GHz modules are more expensive.

2) 2.4GHz has channels 1 - 11 globally, with 12 and 13 in some countries.

5GHz only has channels 32 - 48 globally. Depending on country of distribution it then can support other channels too, but which channels are legal varies significantly. To support those, you need to know which regulatory area you are distributing to. So - additionally to HW being more expensive, you have to have different SKU for different regulatory areas, meaning production runs of different hw - more costs added. Limiting yourself to channels 32 - 48 to claim 5GHz compatibility will just cause you support pain & public image when people will complain your device does not really work with 5GHz.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_WLAN_channels#5_GHz_(8...

c12• 5 years ago

I never really understood why IoT devices don't communicate via the power cable; at a guess it's because the hardware needed is too bulky or more expensive than wifi.

varjag4• 5 years ago

Do you really want your sink leakage sensor be connected to mains?

renewiltord• 5 years ago

No, but I also have a lamp, and I don't mind my smart lamp connected to mains.

relaxing• 5 years ago

Optoisolation for safety.

superice• 5 years ago

In Europe we have internet providers who 'helpfully' send you boxes you plug into your wall sockets and allow you to use your electrical infra as network cables. Lovely concept, you don't have to run your own network cables.

Ofcourse proper network cables are twisted in pairs and shielded for a reason: so no signal gets in, but also next to none comes out. All the copper in your house essentially acts as one big antenna if you use these powerline communication boxes. You would not believe what the spectrum looks like next to one of these houses. Ask any HAM operator, they have a deeply rooted hate against these things.

Thank goodness they seem to die out slowly since powerline communications doesn't seem to be able to keep up with increasing broadband speeds. As it turns out you need proper network cables to get halfway decent speeds.

viklove• 5 years ago

In the US we just call this a powerline adaptor

https://www.amazon.com/Powerline-Computer-Network-Adapters/b...

hawski• 5 years ago

Or infrared with radio connected repeaters.

lmilcin• 5 years ago

I live in a densely populated area. I see 250 distinct SSIDs belonging to about as many APs. 2.4GHz is basically unusable. People try to increase power of their emitters (I see some weird devices that emit way more power than they should legally be able to), but this is only making the problem worse.

Our flat is top of the building, we can assume middle is even worse.

We use 5GHz for our WiFi needs which does not penetrate through walls as readily which means we only see 3 other APs.

DoubleGlazing• 5 years ago

Depending on where you live, this could be something you could report to your local radio spectrum regulator.

Usually there are regulations that state your radio devices can't interfere with someone else's. It doesn't matter if they are off-the-shelf type approved devices, you still have to operate them responsibly.

I live in Ireland and there are have a few cases where the local regulator ComReg has intervened when someones wireless networks and devices affected others.

lxgr5• 5 years ago

I doubt this would get anywhere. Usage of the spectrum as designed is not "interfering", and fairness at the physical layer/medium access level works at the per-device, not the per-household or per-person level.

There isn't even a requirement for "802.11-like fairness" on 2.4 GHz, which makes legacy analog wireless headphones that blast the entire spectrum without any listen-before-send policy as legitimate to use as a state of the art 802.11ax device.

I wonder if a dedicated "Wi-Fi only" chunk of spectrum would make sense, but it's not like such rules couldn't be bent by having multiple access points and spreading traffic over these as well.

FinlayDaG33k5• 5 years ago

Hii all, the original poster of the devrant thread here (made an account sjust for you guys). I've read some of your comments and wanted to address some things.

I've seen people tell me to get a 5GHz capable AP and a dongle. But this shouldn't be needed. I already own a hAP AC3 (MikroTik) but to the way our house is built (it's pretty much all solid brick between each room), 5GHz doesn't go that far, so I'd need to buy an AP for pretty much every room. When sitting behind my desk (about 2M from my AP), everything is fine and dandy but when I leave the room, 5GHz basically dies.

Next, I saw people recommend "working it out with my neighbours" by having them turn down the power or use cables to hook up all the APs (I even offered to pay for all the cabling myself), but they are not willing to do so. And just saying "Would you stop using all this smarthome junk so we can have a decently working wifi" also isn't really gonna cut it for them.

And finally, I saw a comment or two to just jam the living shit out of it, but well... I'd rather not get my own ass into legal trouble for this.

unionpivo3• 5 years ago

Mikrotik, has great support for mesh networks and managing multiple AP, if you want to go that route. (and combine 2g with 5g)

Another route might be using ethernet over power lines, and then have 5g points in rooms that need it.

But essentially , everywhere I need to do things that require bandwidth, I just pull 1gb ethernet cable. Sure it's not as convenient, and pulling cables is a pain, but once you do those things it just works.

FinlayDaG33k5• 5 years ago

I know, my AP is wired up to my core infra. But even then it'd still not solve the issue at hand. It's treat the symptoms not the disease.

Havoc3• 5 years ago

get a 5GHz capable AP and a dongle. But this shouldn't be needed

Don’t think you’ve got much of a choice if you value your sanity.

You could also try powerline adapters in combination with 5ghz

lxgr5• 5 years ago

I've seen people tell me to get a 5GHz capable AP and a dongle. But this shouldn't be needed.

You can't have the cake and eat it too: 2.4 GHz propagates through walls, so you share the spectrum with your neighbors; 5 GHz is much more easily blocked by walls, but that also means you have the (much larger) spectrum to yourself.

5GHz doesn't go that far, so I'd need to buy an AP for pretty much every room.

Well, for every room that you need a stable connection in. If you can see your neighbor's signals that well through (presumably) multiple walls, I suspect that you'll also be able to cover at least one extra room per 5 GHz AP so that calls don't drop while you're moving between rooms.

FinlayDaG33k5• 5 years ago

No, I can only see their 2.4GHz networks. Well, I can see 1 5GHz network when sitting downstairs and that's the one they have in their backyard.

femto• 5 years ago

Consider moving to 5GHz and installing a few metal reflectors/surfaces to direct the signal that comes though doorways and other openings about the house. If your ceilings are plaster you might be able to get up in the roof space and set up a bunch of reflectors to direct the energy though the ceilings and over the tops of the walls. The total cost could be a roll of aluminum foil, as used in cooking.

jarofgreen• 5 years ago

Kind curious; you have obviously talked to the neighbor. What's their attitude? Do they just not care about the problems that are causing you and others?

FinlayDaG33k5• 5 years ago

They generally do not care no and often try to brush it off as "as long as it's legal, I'm fine with it"... and I'd have no ground to stand on with that since it's technically legal here...

HelloMcFly• 5 years ago

I've seen people tell me to get a 5GHz capable AP and a dongle. But this shouldn't be needed.

And yet, it sure sounds like it is! If your neighbor won't change the situation, and your outcomes are entirely dependent on them or you doing so, then you're left with taking an action that you normally wouldn't have to.

Or, depending on your needs, perhaps you can use Powerline adapters to some rooms.

willis936• 5 years ago

As someone who works in a physics lab, I offer you the piece of advice that all physics labs go to first: try wrapping it in foil.

alexpotato• 5 years ago

I was thinking: take a larger canvas picture and put aluminum foil or window screen on the back. If you hang it in the right spot, it might block out a large portion of your neighbor's wifi signal.

dariusj182• 5 years ago

Or buy WiFi blocking paint and painting the shared walls with it.

151552• 5 years ago

De-auth until they get the picture: good luck fox hunting for whoever is emitting these frames.

FinlayDaG33k5• 5 years ago

Well actually... If they know that someone is shitting around with de-auth frames, they probably will find out in no-time (I'm the only one around this block that is known to have knowledge of anything tech related).

Quarrelsome• 5 years ago

And just saying "Would you stop using all this smarthome junk so we can have a decently working wifi" also isn't really gonna cut it for them.

then fuck em, pwn their network.

SquibblesRedux• 5 years ago

Personally, I use a combination of wireless and physical cables. Not necessarily the most elegant solution, but it works.

Wireless has been great for a while, but I found it does not scale the way I would like it to, especially given the explosion of wireless devices out there.

blikdak2• 5 years ago

devrant looks like bullshit to me. Just saying.

blikdak2• 5 years ago

devrant.com looks like bro low pants to me.

devit2• 5 years ago

This is why you should use wired Ethernet and not Wi-Fi at home.

boomboomsubban2• 5 years ago

And just run ethernet to USB adapter cables to every place you use your phone? The author says they wire what they can, but they want WiFi for the laptop and phone.

devit2• 5 years ago

The phone can use the cellular network when not docked and usually both laptop and phone are only used/docked in 1-3 different places (desk, bed, some other place).

benhurmarcel• 5 years ago

I wire every device I can, but I still end up with more devices on wifi. Just the phones and tablets outnumber the computers and TV already.

tibbydudeza• 5 years ago

What ever happened to using Zigbee or Z-Wave ???.

I guess since the EP32 does not support it and you need a compatible router you are stuck with normal WiFi.

jaimehrubiks• 5 years ago

For the past more than 10 years I could see more than 50 APs from my room in my 12 floor building, and this even before IoT was so popular. Wifi has never been reliable for more than browsing or chatting.

bernardv• 5 years ago

First world problem... what makes me chuckle is the need for someone to start a dev rant site. Sigh.

fabbari• 5 years ago

OK - I didn't want to be 'that guy', but here I go: DevRant is garbage! I like the concept, but the execution is a marketing black hole.

First of all: the linked page doesn't scroll on an iPad - they are trying to be clever with scrolling and it actually breaks scrolling.

Secondly: they take pushing their app to an insane level: none of the links works, they all point to 'Get the app'. This fact alone has just gained the site a place in my DNS blackhole.

Archive.org link - that actually works better than the original site: https://web.archive.org/web/20210420050504/https://devrant.c...

arjonagelhout• 5 years ago

Secondly: they take pushing their app to an insane level: none of the links works, they all point to 'Get the app'.

I agree. Its “use our app”-push is similar to Twitter or Instagram, but these platforms offer a lot of functionality in their apps. Devrant on the other hand, seems to be quite simple in functionality. Why would I need to download an app for that?

stevewodil• 5 years ago

How else will they send you push notifications after you forget about the app for an hour?

34679• 5 years ago

It doesn't scroll on an Android Galaxy Tab either.

sly010• 5 years ago

You should post this on devrant [0]

[0] https://devrant.com - "Share and bond over successes and frustrations with code, tech and life as a programmer"

prima-facie• 5 years ago

Turning down the transmit power of the AP might help in this situation. I use the 2.4GHz band only for legacy/unimportant devices so I've turned its transmit power to the lowest setting available. All of the legacy devices are in the same room with the AP so this is not a problem in my case.

Since 2.4GHz penetrates through walls quite well this has the added benefit of limiting the radius of the coverage and to some extent improving security. But this is not a perfect solution (it's more like an unintended side-effect).

The 5GHz band has lower penetration through walls so leaving it on highest transmit power should be fine.

I found the following article and its comments to be quite helpful: https://metis.fi/en/2017/10/txpower/

croutonwagon• 5 years ago

It definatley helps if you have space/property. If you live in a relatively close density (apartment, zero lot line homes) it very well may not.

I have some rtsp cameras. To keep them from being dumb and randomly roaming to like aps (and overloading the antennas and causing breakups in the stream)I setup different SSIDs on each ap for them so I can control what ap the cameras use and prevent bad roaming decisions.

This also means I have an SSID on each non overlapping 2.4 GHz channel.

However I live on a couple acres. If I’m interfering you are trespassing.

I probably would take a different approach on a higher density area, such as getting an AP with 2 dual-port, dual-polarity antennas dedicated to 2.4GHz and sticking them all on the same AP dedicated to the task, also assuming i would need to cover fewer doors and RSSI wouldnt be an issue.

bob10293• 5 years ago

Why doesn't anyone make a variant of drywall that has copper mesh embedded in it? You could theoretically make it thin enough to cut with almost the same level of difficulty.

You would only want the shielded variant on your exterior walls & upper floor ceilings. All you would need to do is make sure you clearly label/color the shielded vs non-shielded drywall appropriately so the construction crew doesn't get em mixed up.

nickthenerd• 5 years ago

1. Copper is expensive

2. This would block your cell phone signal

bob10293• 5 years ago

WiFi calling or nano cell?

bagacrap• 5 years ago

3. no wifi in your back yard

DigitallyFidget• 5 years ago

As someone with an irresponsible amount of IOT devices, I try to hardwire everything to avoid being 'that asshole' on the block. I have my wifi decluttered to being just my phone, work laptop (when I bring it home), my boyfriend's phone, and two bluetooth wireless headsets for our two computers.

I have 3 music receivers (for android casting), 7 TVs, weather station, coffee maker, fridge, google home controlled lights (40ish), and other stuff all hardwired. A lot of which I had to modify or build the controllers myself to get them off wifi. The lights all run off POE.

Neighbour manages to pollute the 2.4 ghz spectrum with his 120 IoT devices

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