IT Shops Coping With Overloaded 2.4GHz WiFi Band 165
alphadogg writes "Of the 470,000 Wi-Fi connections made on a recent day at Abilene Christian University, fully 94% used the 2.4GHz band, representing an extreme example of how today's surging number of Wi-Fi clients is crowding the band least able to accommodate them. At ACU, this is not considered a problem, at least not yet. In part, that's because of careful wireless LAN design and capacity planning. And partly because a goodly percentage of mobile devices that can run on the alternative 5GHz band, do so: on that same day, 47% of the school's laptops and desktops, and two-thirds of its iPads cruised on 5GHz, via either 802.11a or 802.11n. Yet relatively few of today's Wi-Fi clients support 5GHz."
Re:5 GHz sucks (Score:3, Informative)
No, hes not doing it wrong. 5 GHz is shit for anything but open-air.
Re:WTF?? (Score:3, Informative)
At least RTFS - 94% of all connections used 2.4GHz, while 47% of iPads used 5GHz. Most devices are either G only or 2.4GHz N. People generally avoid 802.11a and dual-band 802.11n often isn't turned on. So those numbers are not surprising.
Re:Channel 14 (Score:2, Informative)
Radio controlled watches and clocks use that to set the time. My watch checks that signal every day at 2am and adjusts itself to the correct time.
Re:Christian "University"?? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Channel 14 (Score:5, Informative)
Anyone knowledgeable about the conflict is 2.5GHZ that led the US FCC to limit wifi from using channel 14 (2.484 GHz)?
According to the FCC spectrum chart [doc.gov] the top of the 2.4 wifi band abuts the "Standard Frequency and Time Signal" Band at 2.5 GHz. What is that used for?
You're a factor of 1000 too high for WWV.
The problem with channel 14 is if it were used it would pretty much wipe out the BRS/MMDS service right above the wifi band.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multichannel_Multipoint_Distribution_Service [wikipedia.org]
MMDS never really went anywhere, which is a shame. For at least 30 years some areas have had some MMDS gear; my local school district linked the schools together in the 80s. Back when a decent pro-grade VCR cost $2500 a $1000 MMDS link between schools to share the VCR sounds like a good idea.
You'd be crazy to set up a MMDS system now, with the wifi wanna be hackers trying to use channel 14 to get away from the noise and some microwave oven interference. So that chunk of bandwidth is kind of a wasteland that no one can use, more or less.
Advanced AV stuff like that was kind of the "ipad of the 80s" where merely spending dough on silicon would magically make the kids smarter, or something.