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Has 2.4 GHz Reached Maximum Capacity?
An anonymous reader writes "There's been a lot of talk lately about the concept of Personal Area Networks. At CES Intel and Connectify both released software that turns Windows laptops into Access Points for file transfers, wirelessly syncing pictures from cameras, and Internet sharing. This is good, maybe great, if you're a road warrior, but what about the rest of us holed up in apartment buildings and small neighborhoods? We already have to deal with the wireless chatter of the 50 or so other Linksys routers in the vicinity. What will happen when every laptop also acts as a software router? To add fuel to the fire, Intel and Netgear also announced the Push2TV device that allows you to stream your display, including Netflix videos straight to your television. Isn't this going to kill lower powered 2.4 GHz devices, like Bluetooth mice and headsets? When does the 2.4 GHz band collapse completely? Why can't we push all this short range, high bandwidth stuff onto 5 GHz?"
Yup, none of the access points are actually smart enough to switch channels and optimize frequency/power usage. So you end-up with the problem I encountered this December, when a neighbor across the way got a wireless router, and suddenly my internet stopped working. You couldn't even *see* my access point anymore, it was just overpowered.
My access point configuration was set to "Auto," but this just meant it kept trying to use channel 1 like an idiot. So I forced it to use channel 6, and the problem was solved.
But this isn't how things should be. The devices and the protocol should be smart enough to optimize spectrum, both by analyzing the noise at various frequencies and choosing the band with the least automatically, and by playing nice with other devices and dialing-down the power to that needed by the connected device furthest from the access point.
Too bad the above is just a pipe dream. I can't imagine how bad it is living in dense residential/apartments, where these users still don't know how to configure things, but there are 2 dozen within range instead of 5.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
The problem is dumb receivers, not lack of spectrum.
Channel capacity is determined by the MIMO form of Shannon's Theorem. Add more antennas and smarter processing in the receivers, and the capacity in a channel with lots of multipath (eg. in an apartment) increases approximately linearly.
The problem is that most hardware is a decade (or more) behind state of the art, and that people aren't prepared to pay for a more complex, and costly receiver.