By Charles Miller
It was a surprise to me to learn that among my clients I apparently now have a new moniker. I was consulting with a new client whose wireless internet was really unreliable. I told her that connecting a short ethernet cable between her laptop and her router that was sitting on the same desk a meter away would easily fix her problem. She rolled her eyes and said, “Oh yeah, my friend warned me you’re the anti-Wi-Fi guy.”
I want to go on record saying I am absolutely not anti-Wi-Fi. I use my own wireless devices every day; I understand their limitations and much more importantly I have realistic expectations.
A refrain I hear frequently is, “It use’ta work just fine!” and I do not doubt that to be the truth. Several years ago, a user might have had one computer in their house connected using Wi-Fi. Today they could have two laptop computers, three tablets, two smart phones, one Apple watch, three smart TVs, two wireless printers, four sets of wireless headphones, plus a long list of Internet of Things (IoT) devices including thermostats, security cameras, light bulbs, kitchen appliances, garage door openers, and many other devices all connected wirelessly to their internet connection. Even if they do not possess such a long list of wireless-enabled devices, their next-door neighbor probably does, and the radio signals from all those devices contributes to the saturation of everyone’s available radio spectrum throughout the neighborhood.
Perhaps it would help to understand the physics behind this. When devices are connected to your home network with a properly-installed wire, they can be completely free of radio interference. And your router should be able to handle up to the maximum Class C network limit of 253 devices at the same time. That means you would have to own more than two hundred internet-connected devices before running into the problem of one interfering with another.
Wi-Fi on the other hand is much more limited. It is far slower than a hard-wired connection. While in theory a Wi-Fi system could possibly be able to handle up to that limit of 253 devices, inexpensive home routers simply lack the processing power to do that. So a lot of router manufacturers limit Wi-Fi connections to what the router can efficiently handle; and that is often only 20-30 connections. Worst of all, the IEEE 802.11 standard for Wi-Fi provides for only three non-overlapping 2.4 GHz radio frequencies, meaning that multiple devices must share the available radio spectrum, and that includes your nearby neighbors. In your neighborhood there could be many dozens of devices competing to use those three radio frequencies. The more wireless devices there are on a frequency, the slower and less reliable the connection becomes for everyone.
None of this is meant to imply that using Wi-Fi is wrong. Many devices today only connect wirelessly. But in a situation where you do have the option of connecting a device using a cable, you can usually realize a big improvement in speed and reliability by using an ethernet cable.
Charles Miller is a freelance computer consultant, a frequent visitor to San Miguel since 1981 and now practically a full-time resident. He may be contacted at 415 101 8528 or email FAQ8@SMAguru.com.
