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Baby Monitors Killing Urban Wi-Fi
Barence writes "Baby monitors and wireless TV transmitters are responsible for slowing down Wi-Fi connections in built-up areas, according to a report commissioned by British telecoms regulator Ofcom. The research smashes the myth that overlapping Wi-Fi networks in heavily congested towns and cities are to blame for faltering connection speeds. Instead it claims that unlicensed devices operating in the 2.4GHz band are dragging down signals. 'It only requires a single device, such as an analogue video sender, to severely affect Wi-Fi services within a short range, such that a single large building or cluster of houses can experience difficulties with using a single Wi-Fi channel,' the report claims."
Frank: A lot of people are bugging their babies these days. I guess babies can't be trusted.
Posts not to be taken literally. Almost everything is sarcasm.
They're just trying to slow down the net for their parents so they'll have time to play with them!
MidnightBSD: The BSD for Everyone
Do away with the babies, then we don't need baby monitors anymore. Voila! Better wi-fi. I'm willing to sacrifice all your babies for better wi-fi.
And it was interrupting my raiding schedule. So I hired a hitman to take out my neighbors baby, execution style. Problem fixed itself soon after.
... yet.
I had him plant some weed on the infant to make it look like a drug deal gone bad but I was still questioned at the trial. Thank god Warcraft can't be considered a motive
My work here is dung.
Why not use some awesome alternate firmware to use a channel (14, anyone?) that nobody else in the area is likely using and thus avoid interference?
Isn't it interesting how you come to recognize posters based solely on their sigs???
(or are we using code words like "baby monitor" and "urban" to mean something racist?)
Or are you just following up an otherwise interesting post with a flamebait comment?
Posts not to be taken literally. Almost everything is sarcasm.
Won't someone thing of something besides the children!?
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
I've somehow been able to run Wi-Fi with a baby monitor at home in the same general vicinity without a problem. I'm in a fairly dense suburban apartment complex with at least 10-12 WiFi hotspots when I look, it stands to reason other similar baby monitor devices, cordless cellphones, etc. are probably around. I also have a cordless landline phone, but it's on 5.8ghz and annoying everything but my WiFi there :-)
If this becomes a problem, I imagine they'll make baby monitors actually run on Wifi. Imagine your baby monitor being an internet device even if it's only relaying packets back and forth through your hub with nothing special. Maybe as a side benefit you can capture baby audio noises to Wifi network as MP3 or something for posterity, with a noise detector to catch anything significant (I envision emailing grandma 12am baby babble heard through the monitor).
...in bed
Wireless telephones work around the same frequencies. Not true mobile phones, but the house ones that need a basestation. Ours used to interrupt the network when a call came in, or ring when there was a large transfer going on. Until we ditched it.
Isn't that what being part of the unlicensed, open, free spectrum means though? Anyone can use it for anything?
that children do not belong on the internet!
The research smashes the myth that overlapping Wi-Fi networks in heavily congested towns and cities are to blame for faltering connection speeds. Instead it claims that unlicensed devices operating in the 2.4GHz band are dragging down signals.
Since WiFi is yet another one of those "unlicensed devices" that operates in the 2.4GHz frequency range, how exactly does this smash the myth? We all knew that all these various devices operating in the same frequency range would stomp all over each other once there were enough of them.
Packets in the country are friendlier and more courteous than those goldang city packets.
2.4GHz is known "garbage" band, precisely because it is the frequency for microwave cooking ovens.
Consequently, due to obviously low channel availability, licensing was and is unnecessary. Wi-Fi was intentionally designed to use this unlicensed band to avoid over-regulation. Wi-Fi was never meant to be a Metropolitan Area Network technology it now tries to be, but to achieve some kind of "no pigtail" LAN connectivity inside single room/office instead, just a little bit more then Bluetooth. It's main competitor at the time was IrDA!
All devices in the 2.4GHz ISM band are unlicensed devices. Baby monitors and wireless TV bridges are just as legitimate users of the bandwidth as Wifi networks. You can use the relatively free 5Ghz band, but it's only a matter of time until other applications also start to crowd that frequency. That's why the ISM bands have power limits, so that interference is limited to the vicinity of the device.
Does the article not realize that "Wi-Fi" devices are also unlicensed? By definition any device operating in the 2.4GHZ UNLICENSED BAND is an unlicensed device! Wi-Fi devices have the exact same priority as any other device using this frequency band. And really, there's nothing wrong with this. Since this frequency band is unlicensed the FCC is basically saying "use at your own risk, anyone can use this frequency for any purpose they like, and there is no guarantee of any quality of service". If you want something that's more reliable and guaranteed to work shell out the $$$$ for some spectrum and equipment that works on a licensed piece of spectrum that you own.
I moved ½ a year ago from a apartment to a house. I moved from a place where I could se 20x SIDS to a place where I could see 2-3.
I had some connectivity problems with my different devices + a lot of bluetooth dropouts on mouse and keyboards.
When I was done moving in I got around to setup Wi-Spy to monitor for an entire day.
Channels 6 and 11 was populated with 2-3 access points that did not really make much traffic and I had placed my on channel 1. But all channels from 1 to 11 has a lot of signals that you need at tool like wi-spy to see, signal that looked like cordless phones, baby monitors etc and then cell phones with bluetooth enabled(on top of my wireless keyboard and mouse)
And since I can use channel 13, I moved my AP up there even though it had a bit overlaps with the APs on channel 11.
I got much better sustained throughput because of much less background noise.
I also monitored the 5 GHz band and it was dead quiet compared to 2,4. So I would move everything there if only my stupid airport extreme(old version) could run both channels at the same time, but I have 2 devices that does not support 5 GHz.
I think you're just reading this whole thing with the wrong emphasis. The interesting part of this is not that a baby monitor can cause interference for WiFi. The interesting aspect is more that the interference many people experience in urban areas is because of devices like baby monitors.
Lots of people in big cities find trouble maintaining a stable WiFi network because the signal keeps dying even though everything is well within range. The assumption has been that it's a result of too many people having WiFi in too great a concentration, and so they're all interfering with each other. So the news here is the idea that, no, it's not other WiFi devices, it's baby monitors.
Part of the problem is, being in a city, it's not easy to tell what the problem is. If at random times of the day your WiFi cuts out, how are you to know that one of your neighbors is turning on the baby monitor? If you live out on a farm with nothing in range but your own house, you're probably going to figure it out much more quickly.
This is how rumors get started, Beavis!
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
So after reading the article, I can't really agree on this. I have "lots of EE friends in high places" and they also disagree to a large extent.
Back in 03 when I was deploying my company's first wireless networks, this article explained a lot.
And further reading here...funny how this has already been covered this year.
And remember, the ISM band *was allocated because of microwave ovens* as in...it wouldnt be fair to license out this band because it is interference prone, so they made it a sort of free for all...if a baby monitor is interfering with your cordless phone or WiFi, that is probably the least of your problems!
The story of wifi is an excellent demonstration of the virtues of a technology that, while sucky, is cheap, fairly easy to use, and freely usable without any sort of licensing hassle(beyond that undergone by the manufacturer, of course). The fact that just anybody can set a system up has made wifi ubiquitous. Unfortunately, this only works because wifi uses a rather nasty bit of unlicensed spectrum, which isn't all that great in physics terms, and is shared with all sorts of sources of noise.
Perhaps, with subsequent spectrum allocations, we should (rather than selling it off to the phone company) create blocks of "semi-licensed" spectrum. Like the unlicensed spectrum, anybody would be able to set up a device anywhere, without legal interference; but, unlike the 2.4GHz band, only devices compliant with a wifi-like open industry standard would be allowed to use it, preventing interference from arc welders and microwaves and horrendous super-noisy legacy designs and things. Since RF devices have to be tested and licensed anyway(to prevent interference with licensed bands) the additional regulatory overhead on the manufacturers of these wifi-like modules would be fairly small. It seems to me that this would preserve the virtues of wifi, while simultaneously protecting that slice of spectrum from severe interference.
> Why the heck are baby monitors on 2.4GHz anyway?
It is an unlicensed band. Anyone can use it, and no one can (legally) complain, since they "knew" that it was a free-for-all (it is hidden in the fine print in your router directions, probably).
> Why can't they operate on lower frequencies, like
> the 900MHz bands? 900MHz goes through walls better, too.
Because those are all licensed bands, with only the selected providers allowed to operate their (your cell phone can use it only to connect to a licensed provider) equipment in your area.
My old 915MHz WaveLAN network I still have set up at home hasn't been bothered at all by the baby monitors. Last I checked, 902 to 928 MHz is still open for unlicensed ISM use in Region 2.
> Because those are all licensed bands, with only the selected
> providers allowed to operate their (your cell phone can use
> it only to connect to a licensed provider) equipment in your area.
> Instead it claims that unlicensed devices operating in the 2.4GHz band are dragging down
> signals.
Um, WiFi devices _are_ unlicensed devices. They use the 2.4GHz band on the condition that they do not interfere with authorized uses of the band and accept any interference with their operation. Baby monitors have just as much right to use the band as do your WiFi devices and both must yield to authorized uses.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
I would have got first post if it wasn't for those goddamn BREEDERS and their filthy RUGRATS JAMMING my wifi.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
I don't buy 2.4GHz wireless phones any more. Not worth the trouble.
I don't call the RV park across the street and ask them to change channels on any of the 6 Aps I can receive. I set up a cantenna and blasted their nearest AP until they changed the channel. ps- their 'Internet Guy' is the owner's brain-damaged nephew. He means well.
I don't bug my neighbors about their changing channels almost weekly. I just rig the cantenna again and blast 'em. They change. Life is good. ps- they do NOT understand that the RV park has 9 APs, and we can easily get 6 of them. They don't know it's me trying to use a channel they chose. pps- they moved in 3 months ago, and just got their AP running. They barely know what to do, and I profess ignorance - I'm not into unpaid support any more. Their 9-year old son is handling the admin duties, I think.
My niece has a baby monitor, but it's probably a 27MHz one, never hurt their WiFi.
WiFi has its limitations. At least here in the US, we let the NSA handle the surveillance, and thyey usually don't interfere with the signal. Nice guys there. Kinda wierd, but nice.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
If I found a baby monitor feed broadcast where I live, I think my first reaction would be to override it with a stronger goatse/tubgirl feed.
Forget that, just override the audio with prerecorded sounds of a baby crying. Send that 4 times a night at random times and I'm sure it won't be very long before you don't have to worry about any interference.