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Sluggish WiFi Connections Hurt Everyone

Posted by timothy on from the salt-well-the-sluggish-users dept.

MindNumbingOblivion writes "Wireless technology has revolutionized access to local area networks when one can't always be close to an ethernet jack. But a recent research paper from the French Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique tells how one slow user accessing a hot point can hurt the whole group. Apparently the very nature of CSMA/CD guarantees such anomalies. Here's the story, and here's the release from CNRS (in French)."

2 of 232 comments (clear)

  1. 2mbps is plenty by vandel405 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    If your in a public location using a hotspot the only transfers your most likely going to be doing are to/from the internet, not to/from your 1337 mp3 s3v3r box. Chances are the hot spots inet connection is ~1mbps anyway.

  2. nothing new by tarzan353 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This is nothing new. This sort of flaw is inherent in CSMA/CD, the WiFi problem is just another example of it. Before CSMA/CD was even rolled out people knew about this situation. The pros just outweigh the cons, for what this network design philosophy is used for.