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Baby Monitors Killing Urban Wi-Fi

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the along-with-my-full-night's-sleep dept.

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."

23 of 348 comments (clear)

  1. Baby Monitors by Spazztastic · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.
    1. Re:Baby Monitors by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Funny

      This is Britain. If we don't monitor them from birth, how will they grow up to be well adjusted members of society?

  2. Think of the children? by laffer1 · · Score: 5, Funny

    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
  3. You know what that means... by Crashspeeder · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

    1. Re:You know what that means... by frieko · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's so sad that everybody has to squeeze everything from microwave ovens to wireless into 1% of the useful airspace. With basically every computer on Earth having WiFi, the government should stop kissing the corporations asses and allocate a slice of free spectrum where CSMA/CA (collision avoidance) is mandatory. Problem solved.

    2. Re:You know what that means... by KillerBob · · Score: 5, Informative

      They could be in the same part of the spectrum, but designed by sane people. If your router is newer, for example, it probably supports frequency scanning and self-configuration for channel. Routers which have that ability will scan the usable channels, and pick the one that has the least interference, and are able to change channels on the fly when somebody opens up and starts cluttering your channel.

      Likewise, higher end baby monitors are able to broadcast/receive on at least a dozen channels, and I've seen ones that are capable of using 48 different channels and more. These will pick a frequency where there's less interference in order to work.

      You could be being affected by engineers who actually knew what they were doing when they designed your hardware, in other words. I know. it's rare. But things will be ok.

      --
      If you believe everything you read, you'd better not read. - Japanese proverb
    3. Re:You know what that means... by GigG · · Score: 5, Insightful

      As the father of an 18 YEAR OLD who was at one time a 9 month old I hate to be the one to tell you but you have been trained. He won't stop working himself into those huge fits until you stop running into the nursery every time he wakes up.

      --
      Is buying a Harley Davidson as your first motorcycle since you were 16 at age 49 a midlife crisis issue?
  4. I Had This Problem by eldavojohn · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

    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 ... yet.

    --
    My work here is dung.
    1. Re:I Had This Problem by ukyoCE · · Score: 5, Funny

      I was in an instance last weekend and a guy has to go AFK because of the baby crying. Came back and said

      "Wife took over, have a newborn"

      I jokingly asked if he was still at the hospital:

      "Yep, wifi on a laptop. Baby was born 9:00 server time"

  5. Channel 14 by Kulaid982 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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???
    1. Re:Channel 14 by phoxix · · Score: 5, Informative
      Channel 14 is entirely illegal to use in the USA (and many many many other countries) because it exists outside of the 2.4Ghz spectrum that is allocated for consumers to go nuts on. So yes, you're Wifi will be awesome because nobody is using that spectrum .... but you'll really piss off the FCC, ask your local HAM why this is a bbbaaaddd idea.

      That being said ...

      Using channel 14 in the USA (and other non-channel 14 countries) can be done via a DD-WRT compatible router, and Wireless cards where you can change the CRDA to Japan (like Atheros cards that work with ath5k and ath9k on linux.)

      The linux command to change your regulatory domain is:

      bash# iw reg set JP

      The issue with channel 14 is that it is reduced power, meaning in most cases you'll only get 802.11b speeds with it.

      Now why something is critical as wifi has to exist with stupid consumer shit is the real crux of the issue ...

  6. OMG by idontgno · · Score: 5, Funny

    Won't someone thing of something besides the children!?

    --
    Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
  7. "Smashes" the myth? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  8. Nothing to see here by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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!

  9. "Unlicensed devices" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  10. All 2.4Ghz devices are unlicensed! by tjhayes · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  11. WHAT!!!!???? WiFi KILLING BABIES!!!!???? by Philip+K+Dickhead · · Score: 5, Funny

    This is how rumors get started, Beavis!

    --
    "Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
  12. More PERTINENT Post... by TrisexualPuppy · · Score: 5, Informative

    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!

  13. Time for a "semi-licenced" band? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  14. Re:Why 2.4GHz? by marquis111 · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  15. "Unlicensed"? by John+Hasler · · Score: 5, Informative

    > 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.
  16. Re:I see it red by Hal_Porter · · Score: 5, Funny

    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;
  17. Baby crying by Roger+W+Moore · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.