Bad Connections Dog Google's Mountain View Wi-Fi Network

itwbennett writes "Google launched its Mountain View, CA public public Wi-Fi network in August 2006. It was one of the first public wireless Internet services in the U.S. and was intended to provide free service across the city. But in 2012, one year after Google signed a 5-year agreement to continue the service, it started a slow decline to the point of being unusable. 'We started noticing it in very large files, things like operating system updates, but now it's on files as small as 500 kilobytes,' said Rajiv Bhushan, chief scientist of pharmaceutical startup Livionex and a long-time user of the network. A recent test by IDG News Service resulted in a total failure to get a working Internet connection at a dozen sites around Mountain View, including in the city's main downtown area and directly in front of Google's headquarters." I've had disappointing results trying to connect to several other public wireless nets around the U.S., both privately sponsored and municipal. Do you know of any that work especially well?

Comments

The solution

[TechyImmigrant]

Just unplug it and plug it back in again.

Re:The solution

[Richard_at_work]

No no no, they are holding it wrong!

Re:The solution

[slashmydots]

You forgot, they also have to strap it to a blimp.

Re:The solution

[auric_dude]

That worked for Kyle https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckIMuvumYrg

Re:The solution

[jones_supa]

Not enough. You have to take out the battery and put it back.

Re:The solution

[Man On Pink Corner]

"In other news, something made by Google turns out to be a half-assed implementation of a good idea, unfavored by management and consequently determined to be a career-limiting move for Googlers unfortunate enough to be assigned to it. Consequently it is allowed to fall into disrepair, and will be scheduled for decommissioning at a time carefully calculated to maximize user inconvenience. Ric Romero has film at 11, so stay tuned for that."

Re:The solution

[AmiMoJo]

That's not actually a completely daft suggestion. A lot of wifi gear tries to automatically pick the clearest channel, but usually sucks at doing it while in operation. Rebooting disconnects all clients and gives it a change to do a full scan of all channels before selecting one, possibly switching to a less congested frequency.

Re:The solution

[TechyImmigrant]

Yes. A lot of cheap network equipment seems to leak state slowly and eventually slow down and fail until rebooted.

Re:The solution

[AlphaWolf_HK]

Or perhaps it's just oversaturated. Wifi doesn't have unlimited bandwidth you know. After enough people find out that they can stop paying for their regular ISP and just hop on a free wifi you'll start to run into problems.

Re:The solution

[Que_Ball]

Would it shock anyone to know I actually did this reboot to a malfunctioning public Wifi base station recently and it worked?

I had a client moving into a new commercial location where the local cable company (Shaw) has one of their public Wi-Fi terminals installed.

They did not have their own network connection yet (booked for a few days later) so we just joined their computer to the public network but it was horrible. The connection showed moderate to high packet loss which was strange because the base station was in the roof a few feet away. Even doing a ping test to first hop (the base station) was showing the packet loss problem. Increasing the packet size on the ping tests showed the problem was got worse as you increased the packets so anything that wanted a sustained download and not small little transactions was suffering worse effects.

So I went into the back, found the power injector for the base station and cut the power. Plugged it back in, and after the reboot it was working well. No more packet loss, and a usable connection.

Maybe Shaw needs to update the firmware on these Cisco base stations they are using.

Re:The solution

[tlambert]

Maybe Shaw needs to update the firmware on these Cisco base stations they are using.

More likely you need to enable blackhole route MTU TCP probing by writing a 1 or to 2: /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_mtu_probing

to deal with the fact that Shaw blocks ICMP for PMTU autodiscovery, just Like Cox and TCI do, and then runs PPPOE so an MTU of 1500 fails any time you get close to the actual 1500 bytes being sent. Like, oh, say if you foolishly were using Facebook, which likes to pile cookies into your HTTP header until it gets to the point where you're sending 9 packets back and forth just to get one HTTP request through.

Impacts all Linux based systems that take the default and don't change it away from 0, which basically means Android tablets, phones, and Linux desktops, if the vendor hasn't figured out the issue ahead of time.

PS: I'm the one who fixed the default for Chrome OS so it didn't have the problem any more.

Re:The solution

[lsatenstein]

Or perhaps it's just oversaturated. Wifi doesn't have unlimited bandwidth you know. After enough people find out that they can stop paying for their regular ISP and just hop on a free wifi you'll start to run into problems.

===
This network problem is one which I call "teething". At low internet speeds (700-1.2kbits) everything is tuned for arrivals of packages and the queuing of packages for forwarding.

At higher speeds, the buffering of packets must be much much larger, as the number of queued packets can vary from instant to instant. Ergo, forwarding and resending of packets takes more cushioning. Peeks and valleys in buffering need to be placed at every interchange point. Timeouts and the like are also important.

In effect, to go up in speed from dsl/cable to fibre, takes some serious tuning and learning a new system management paradigm.
     

Re:The solution

[zizzo]

I can tell you as a bonafide resident of Mountain View the net work is not over saturated. It is simply unusable. There was a brief time where the secure variant worked passably well but that doesn't even work now. I honestly suspect the problem is just the access points are not receiving any physical maintenance and are falling into disrepair. There's enough alive to maintain the visible SSID but that's about it.

isn't wifi like the old layer 1 hubs?

[alen]

you transmit into the air and everyone receives the signal and the receiver has to filter out any traffic that is not meant for itself

too much data being transmitted by people in the area and the connection is useless. even my home wifi is almost useless during peak times at night since i have two dozen or so other people with wifi around me

Re:isn't wifi like the old layer 1 hubs?

[alen]

the receiver still receives on that frequency, so my guess is that its still going to spend time filtering the signal

Re:isn't wifi like the old layer 1 hubs?

[deanklear]

(These are general ideas and may not be technically accurate... feel free to correct me)

There are several problems with WiFi technology itself. First, there is no contention management for wireless. When you're wired in, collisions are detected quickly, so you can saturate the connection near its theoretical limits without too many errors. (There's a promotional video about this from Meru Networks, but it is fairly educational.) By contrast, WiFi will roll through a larger bit of data and then ask for confirmation of receipt, which can lead to a lot of problems as radios talk all over each other. This is not a problem in regular office environments, where walls, floors, and furniture can provide separation so the radios can "hear" things that are closer. However, get into an open air environment and add a bunch of devices at once, and everything flatlines as the access points attempt to orchestrate several hundred devices in range, including interference from other radios within "hearing" distance on the same channel.

The second issue is one of limited channels. Originally WiFi was designed to move a tiny amount, and I think you could actually split off 802.11b into 11 discrete channels. As data needs grew, they consolidated 11 channels into 3 discrete channels for 802.11g (4 in the EU, I believe) and that's where it stands: a 3 lane road for 2.4GHz. 5GHz has more channels, depending on where you are in the world, but right now they are unreliable as the requirement for many of them is to be compatible with DFS, which means that if there is a certain signal being broadcast, your access points are expected to abandon that channel immediately. I think there are changes in the works from the FCC and although it only introduces 30% or so of new spectrum, it happens to cross multiple channels, so it may be like going from 9-12 channels to 20 or so. Combined with the more limited range of the higher frequency, having 20 discrete channels opens up a lot of options for basic broadband in public spaces. (Well, it did until the new ac standard came out, and I haven't even bothered to read it because these massive spectrum widths are going to be a nightmare, and I'm in a different line of work these days.)

However, none of this solves the "microcell" design of WiFi, where the client makes the decision on what radio to connect to instead of the access point. Your cell service, for instance, works well because the tower instructs the client so it can perform handoffs, reduce the data rates, and make other adjustments to keep things from choking up. I have sat and watched an iPhone cross over multiple access points and hundreds of feet to connect across a stadium for no explicable reason. (That's true for every wireless device, but I'm picking on iOS because they are notoriously noisy, always flooding the air with useless beacons, trying desperately to connect to stored wireless networks even when they aren't around.)

I have deployed Xirrus, Aruba, Extricom, Unifi, and some other products in dense situations, but as far as I know, the only pseudo non-microcell options available are from Extricom and Meru. Although I haven't used Meru, I can say that Extricom has been the most reliable in very dense environments, since they use some tricks to keep the air quiet, and they do not introduce beacon traffic with the addition of more radios. (Disclaimer: I have worked with the guys from Extricom quite a few times, and I think they are very capable, so take that opinion with a grain of salt.) Xirrus works pretty well in corporate environments, and their reporting interfaces are great, but I was disappointed that their sales staff continued to deny problems in 2.4GHz long after it was obvious that they didn't have a workable solution for super dense deployments. But maybe they just didn't know.

Anyway, ignoring all of that technical garbage, the

Re:isn't wifi like the old layer 1 hubs?

[egamma]

Very informative, nice post. A couple of comments.

First, there are three nonoverlapping channels for 802.11b/g. So there's 11 channels, but transmitting on channel 1 means that you are putting noise on channels 1-5; transmitting on channel 6 means that you are putting noise on 1-10; and transmitting on channel 11 puts noise on 7-11. If you transmit on channel 3, that means you are disrupting 1-8, so it's best to simply use 1, 6, and 11.

5Ghz doesn't have as much of a saturation problem because of the smaller distance that a usable signal travels. Sure, 24Ghz would be even better, but then I wouldn't be able to use the signal on my driveway or probably even my bedroom. I can see 24Ghz being good for apartment use, or college dorms, although dorms should have their own wifi.

Re:isn't wifi like the old layer 1 hubs?

[Immerman]

Each channel is a slightly different frequency - and somewhat like an FM radio a decent wireless router/card will "tune in" on the frequency it's connecting on,and tune out the others, preventing neighboring signals from "talking over each other". IIRC it's recommended to leave one or two "dead" channels between overlapping hotspots to minimize crosstalk, but even adjoining channels have much better signal rejection that trying to establish two independent datalinks over the same frequency, which is what happens if your neighbors router is operating at the same frequency as yours. The situation is actually even worse than a hub - imagine you have multiple *completely unrelated* networks all trying to simultaneously talk over the same wire.

Of course with a few dozen overlapping hotspots you're going to have some unavoidable crosstalk, there's less than a dozen different wi-fi channels. However most hotspots are factory configured to run on the same channel, so moving a few channels away from the congestion can allow for a much better connection, especially if you're at a decent range from anyone sharing the same channel. There's even free software available (I forget the name) that will show you the number and strength of the signals on the various channels so that you can make an informed decision about which channel will likely have the least interference.

Re:isn't wifi like the old layer 1 hubs?

[jandrese]

One thing you didn't touch on: A lot of Wifi chips are really really bad. Like they'll crash randomly and repeatedly when connected to certain kinds of access points. Sometimes it is the access point that crashes. For the most part the chips reset themselves and continue on, so it's just a momentary interruption, but when it happens over and over you'll really start to notice.

Re:isn't wifi like the old layer 1 hubs?

[bruce_the_loon]

No, once you change the channel, you change the RF and IF tuning so the radio's analog signal stages effectively ignore the other frequencies. Only the demodulated data wave from the frequency on that channel gets through to the digital processing part of the WiFi device.

To be physics correct before some expert goes postal, the antenna does receive the other frequencies, but the RF stage (2.4Ghz level) eliminates them by speed-of-light physics, not by digital processing of anything.

Re:isn't wifi like the old layer 1 hubs?

[AmiMoJo]

One major problem I see is that many APs default to channel 11, and their auto-channel-selection code only seems to pick channels 1, 6 or 11. Those kinda made sense for 802.11b, but now they just waste available spectrum.

802.11g is 20MHz wide, so should use channels 1, 5, 9 and 13. 802.11n can go up to 40MHz, in which case we pretty much just have channels 3 and 11 left...

There is also channel 14. It is only supposed to be used in Japan and only for 802.11b (10MHz channel width), but I find you can usually activate it for 802.11g in any part of the world with a few simple software tweaks. Probably a bad idea but because channel 14 is spaced 12MHz above channel 13 instead of the usual 5MHz it is usually uncongested, even if channel 11 is flooded.

Re:isn't wifi like the old layer 1 hubs?

[AmiMoJo]

I wish there was better software available. The most often recommended one is InSSIDer, and here it recommends channel 1 has having only one other distant AP. If I use channel 1 I get constant drop-outs. Channel 4 is fine for me, although my neighbour's wireless subwoofer used to drop out when I was using it. He stopped using it a while back, so it's a double win for me.

Re:isn't wifi like the old layer 1 hubs?

[sjames]

Only sort of. Packets from adjacent channels are attenuated significantly, but they do get in. If you put the card in monitor mode one channel off from your AP, you'll see for yourself.

Re:isn't wifi like the old layer 1 hubs?

[Thor Ablestar]

Forget the 802.11b. The b-only devices are for museum or landfill. So you have 4 distinct channels - 1,5,9,13. And you should have a community wide policy to use only them and strongly discourage any use of other ones as well as use of b. You may interpret "strongly discourage" as you like. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_WLAN_channels

Re:isn't wifi like the old layer 1 hubs?

[AK Marc]

1-4-8-11 in the US. No 12 and 13 for us.

Re:isn't wifi like the old layer 1 hubs?

[tibit]

Of course it's entirely irrelevant whether processing is done by analog or digital means, it's the same processing in the end. Even when you're running a software-defined radio, there's a fixed allocation of resources that is not dependent on what is actually transmitted/received on a channel. I've seen some professional WiFi access points that are completely digitally tuned with fixed frequency heterodynes. It's pretty much a double-conversion wideband receiver where the A/D converter sees all of the channels, and channel selection is done on the digital representation of the signal. Heck, the particular one I've seen had the first IF way above the received signal's frequency - more like you'd have in a spectrum analyzer than in a radio where the 1st IF is usually lower than the received signal.

Re:isn't wifi like the old layer 1 hubs?

[Thor Ablestar]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_WLAN_channels

In the USA, 802.11 operation in the channels 12 and 13 are actually allowed under low powered conditions. The 2.4 GHz Part 15 band in the US allows spread-spectrum operation as long as the 50-dB bandwidth of the signal is within the range of 2,400–2,483.5 MHz[10] which wholly encompasses both channels 12 and 13. A Federal Communications Commission (FCC) document clarifies that only channel 14 is forbidden and furthermore low-power transmitters with low-gain antennas may legally operate in channels 12 and 13.[11] However, channels 12 and 13 are not normally used in order to avoid any potential interference in the adjacent restricted frequency band, 2,483.5–2,500 MHz,[12] which is subject to strict emission limits set out in 47 CFR 15.205.[13]

Channels are 5 MHz apart. Channels 1-4 and 8-11 are 15 MHz apart - less than 20 MHz required by 802.11g or 802.11n in 20-MHz mode. It means that your list 1-4-8-11 will generate interference and make both channels unusable. If you cannot use 12 and 13 - use 1-5-9 and leave 13 for low-power applications and the people who can observe restrictions above.

Re:isn't wifi like the old layer 1 hubs?

[AK Marc]

Channels are 5 MHz apart. Channels 1-4 and 8-11 are 15 MHz apart - less than 20 MHz required by 802.11g or 802.11n in 20-MHz mode. It means that your list 1-4-8-11 will generate interference and make both channels unusable.

By excluding your comments to g and n, you are indicating that you think I'm right for b? Note, I didn't include n in my comments, and g falls back to b when required, so for something to be called g, it must do DSSS in the presence of interference. So g will work as well, as I describe, but not necessarily at speeds above 11 Mbps.

That, and because 12/13 are "illegal" for b, and g should fall back to b for compliance, how do you make something fall back to DSSS on a channel where the settings would be illegal? You don't, so you can't run g on 12/13 and remain compliant and legal at the same time. So you've complained a lot, but not contradicted me. Though maybe they've relaxed the standards on g to allow non-compatibility with b, but often that's just a software setting, much like I used channel 14 for years. It's rarely more than a firmware flash away, and much better performance, as nobody else uses it. FCC never complained.

Re:isn't wifi like the old layer 1 hubs?

[PlusFiveTroll]

Add some portable phone handsets and it gets even worse. I had a client with an older Panasonic 2.4GHz handset that would immediately take any wireless connection it was with in a few hundred feet of to a few Kbps. The problem with public wireless is anyone, either accidentally or maliciously can make the entire network useless.

WiFi with anal probe

[Animats]

The vast majority of attempts didn't even get as far as the log-in screen, which requires signing into a Google account to connect.

That's Google. "Public" WiFi with data mining.

Re:WiFi with anal probe

[djupedal]

+1 ...if they'd throttle back on the mining and auto-completes, it might be useable.

Re:WiFi with anal probe

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe we need a "free beer" type quip to help people distinguish public-access and public-ownership. and probably to understand the difference between them,

Re:WiFi with anal probe

[BoRegardless]

That's Google. "Public" WiFi with data mining.

Hey, Google "mined" all the local users and has no more need for them, so grind down the speeds.

Re:WiFi with anal probe

[Thor Ablestar]

1. There is NO legal restrictions for everybody else to install their own network. 2. Anybody wishing to install their own network may migrate to 5 GHz. There are LOTS of 802.11a and 802.11an cards. I bought 3 second hand 5-year old Lenovo books and they all had both 2.4 and 5 GHz. There are lots APs too. 3. Everybody who wants a good service may^W can use a satellite dish looking directly to AP in order to overpower them all. 4. If you use Google then nothing stops you from using a VPN you like, and I believe that VPN should be a standard practice for now.

Re:WiFi with anal probe

[tibit]

Everybody who wants a good service may^W can use a satellite dish looking directly to AP in order to overpower them all.

That's actually very bad since WiFi by default suffers from hidden node problems. It'll break down the performance for everyone. In WiFi, the collision detection only works when nodes can all hear each other. Someone who knows better, feel free to correct me.

Re:WiFi with anal probe

[Thor Ablestar]

Your provider should look for TDMA solution where the AP controls the access and where no collision detection is needed. For instance, Ubiquiti AirMax devices. I've also read about implementation of TDMA in FreeBSD. At least, man ifconfig tells that wlanmode parameter may be tdma. I've also read an article "TDMA for Long Distance Wireless Networks" by Sam Leffler, Errno Consulting. TDMA is not applicable in usual networks but in this network where there is only one provider who can coordinate channel distribution internally it's acceptable. It's the case in Google-only network.

In such a network the client dishes, panels and other directional antennae are really preferred (See Ubiquiti Nanobridge). And also they can be used to separate networks spatially.

Secondly, the WiFi collision detection works in such a way that both sides should hear each other (CSMA/CA). So it's not necessary for clients to hear each other. If AP hears one of clients it gives it CTS which is heard by the second one and inhibits it's transmission without any need to hear other client.

And also, do you understand the difference between "may" and "can"?

Seems to be a systemic problem.

[doubledown00]

This is just one user's opinion, but slow gradual declines seem to be the hallmark of Google projects. They work well when they're shiny and new, but over time the projects are neglected and deteriorate. Similar things have happened with Google Voice and Google Docs.

Re:Seems to be a systemic problem.

[Anonymous Coward]

As both a Docs and Voice user, I can't related to your comment of deterioration. However, they don't get much in the way of new development, which I suppose could be considered neglect.

Though compared to Maps where there is significantly development and "improvement," they also don't makes sure a new version has the same feature set as the old. Navigation in particular has really taken a nosedive on Android.

Re:Seems to be a systemic problem.

[eclectro]

I wouldn't necessarily agree with you, look at google maps which have improved in quality, But this happened through a dedicated commitment to the project.

But in the other hand I have noticed that there are google "quality control" issues which I have experienced. A few of the patents in Google Patents have bad and unreadable pages (especially with the drawings) or are scanned crooked as an example.

I suspect that the wireless network is oversubscribed where you have people jamming each other (and the router) to get into a local router. This can be a problem with any radio technology when you have too many users on a channel. And google probably does not make money on this project and hence allocate resources for other things.

But this is a larger issue with WiFi networks in general. People think it's an infinite resource and can replace traditional wires everywhere. I assure you, it is not and can not.

Re:Seems to be a systemic problem.

[peragrin]

the trick is marketing teams that should know better argue otherwise and say wifi networks can replace everything a wire can do.

At my apartment i can see nearly 2 dozen wifi access points on 2.4 ghz. So I adjusted my router to broadcast b/g on 2.4ghz on an off channel and on 5 ghz I setup an N only system. My older smart phone can't connect to the N router but my laptop and shiny new nexus 7 can. The best part is there are no other 5ghz routers nearby.

Re:Seems to be a systemic problem.

[pspahn]

Though compared to Maps where there is significantly development and "improvement,"...

Funny thing is, I still use Voice every single day, but the only times I use Maps is when it runs as the map platform for some other service. If I want to look something up on a map, I use Bing Maps now. Google maps have become too slow and clunky in the last year. Tiles simply do not update fast enough.

If that's what you call "development and improvement", I'll stick with "neglected" just about every single time.

Re:Seems to be a systemic problem.

[LinearBob]

I have had many discussions with my co-workers regarding their wi-fi usage. For myself, I use wired networks as much as I can, leaving wi-fi as my fall back in case I have no other option. My co-workers think I am old fashioned, but when it comes to network speed, 100 Mbps Cat5e wire beats wi-fi hands down, especially when there are lots of folks trying to use their wi-fi gear all at the same time. I guess they never heard of QRM and how to avoid it.

Re:Seems to be a systemic problem.

[trdtaylor]

Agreed, first week out of the gate it was a feature stripped train wreck that also crashed every half hour.

The problem I have with Google products is the one of constant reinvention. Every 6 months - 1 year they roll out the next Gmail, due to the next "A-team" developer group working on reinventing web email.

Youtube post google-buyout is the worst, they reinvent the website, ignore the actual common problems people experience from the service. They just now, in the past month, added a play icon to show which tab was playing a video. They will never fix the oddities with the buffering and streams until they actually sink some serious dev time into HTML5 (and better) video player logic. I personally have to fight with my Youtube quality setting because it doesn't understand how and when to switch quality settings.
But god help them they'll redesign the way you can roll over videos on your intro page. Every god damn update.

Re:Seems to be a systemic problem.

[tlhIngan]

The problem I have with Google products is the one of constant reinvention. Every 6 months - 1 year they roll out the next Gmail, due to the next "A-team" developer group working on reinventing web email.

Youtube post google-buyout is the worst, they reinvent the website, ignore the actual common problems people experience from the service. They just now, in the past month, added a play icon to show which tab was playing a video. They will never fix the oddities with the buffering and streams until they actually sink some serious dev time into HTML5 (and better) video player logic. I personally have to fight with my Youtube quality setting because it doesn't understand how and when to switch quality settings.
But god help them they'll redesign the way you can roll over videos on your intro page. Every god damn update.

It's a problem of "shiny shiny". If you don't do any shiny overhauls, you get tarred as "old and tired". Take iOS, for example, or OS X - almost everyone complains that the launcher and Finder are tired and old because they haven't had a significant visual overhaul in ages. Whereas Windows and Android are "fresh" and "new" because every version looks different. (Yes, and we have iOS7, whose new and shiny brings about a whole new pile of problems).

Ignoring the fact that users probably prefer a UI that doesn't change annually - they get used to doing something one way and all of a sudden it changes, annoying the heck of everyone.

And the YouTube changes - it doesn't even work given I use Flashblock. Where it seems it's essential for one reason - it keeps YouTube videos from auto-playing! Yes, I often open new tabs to YouTube videos, and would like to not have to switch to them to click Pause.

Every other video site seems to at least wait for you to click on the video before they start playing, and embedded YouTube videos do the same. Why can't anyone believe that you might click on a YouTube link and not want to watch it immediately?

Re:Seems to be a systemic problem.

[noh8rz10]

who modded this troll? seriously, my new wifi gives me 100mbps from my bed, 140mbps from the couch. is that good or not? I don't know.

Why should be any different?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should it be any different than many other high visibility projects? Ribbon cutting at 11.
Hurry, it's getting closer to 12 now, everybody get on the wagon, move on to the next big thing.

Abuse of tool?

[Tablizer]

"I cannot download a new OS or Gone with the Wind in HD on free wi-fi."

Shocking!

Re:Abuse of tool?

[spire3661]

Did you know that HP printer drivers are now up to 160 MB? its not just movies that are large files anymore.

Re:Abuse of tool?

[alen]

how often do printer drivers change and people have to download them?

Re:Abuse of tool?

[spire3661]

I was just giving a quick and dirty example of something i encountered recently. My mother-in-law has a wifi capable printer (1102w), and so i was definitely in the 5% needing the bloated driver package.

Re:Abuse of tool?

[jones_supa]

I have the wireless HP 3070A printer/scanner and the basic drivers package (which includes full support for wireless printing and scanning) is only 22MB.

Re:Abuse of tool?

[chuckinator]

Do you have a win7 64 bit driver from 20 years ago?

Re:Abuse of tool?

[godel_56]

how often do printer drivers change and people have to download them?

What happens to your argument when it's a piece of software that's more pervasive and necessary, like Acrobat Reader or Java? Sorry, those are probably bad examples of "small", as even those have gotten fucking huge over the last few years. (Adobe Reader v5 installer was about 6MB)

My bitch is with the big open office suites such as Apache Open Office and Libre. Surely they could build a package upgrader that just downloads the few files that have changed, when there's only a minor security upgrade required, instead of a 200 MB file?

Re:Abuse of tool?

[Tablizer]

More like SpamWare.

Re:Abuse of tool?

[Thor Ablestar]

Did you know that HP printer drivers are now up to 160 MB? its not just movies that are large files anymore.

Sorry? My bright and shiny color HP printer easily accepts

$ sudo cat file.ps >/dev/ulpt0

Where are the 160 MB drivers here?

Re:Abuse of tool?

[AK Marc]

There aren't for your example, but the scan sucks.

Re:Abuse of tool?

[jones_supa]

Yeah, you can fit quite a lot x86 code in 22MB. :)

Re:Abuse of tool?

[gander666]

I just downloaded and installed the latest version of the display drivers for my on-board Intel HD-3000 GPU on my laptop. Total size: 338MB, For fuck's sake, what the hell in a graphics driver needs to be so big?

Re:Abuse of tool?

[PlusFiveTroll]

>It doesn't work that way with binary installs,

Um, yes it does. They call it a file delta, and many games have done this for 15+ years, rather then download a huge file, they just do a binary patch on it.

consumer products

[fermion]

Pretty much Google's consumer products seem never to be improved or maintained. At first the consumer products were critical because this is why people like me allowed Google to set cookies, while 2o7 and the like were blocked. Of course we are now in world where tracking on the web goes beyond cookies, so maybe Google does not think it needs to provide a service beyond search to entice users.

In any case the decline of the WiFI is not surprising. It is like Google docs, now Drive, that started off as a really competitive product, but the office applications has never been updated so the features continue to lag. OpenOffice makes it look like vintage 1990.

Seriously. If MS were competent they could destroy Google with Bing and MS Windows Phone. But that is how the game works. Google does not have outrun the bear, it only has to outrun MS, which isn't that hard.

It's free. C'mon.

[skidisk]

I live and work in Mountain View (not for Google). Look, the thing is free. What do you expect? I can log in and use it reasonably well. I certainly wouldn't depend on it for my only connectivity, but it works well enough when I need a quick piece of data or need to send something and don't have cell service or am using a wifi device. Just chill.

Re:It's free. C'mon.

[ttucker]

The only people that can reasonably be complained to, are those that you are paying.

Re:It's free. C'mon.

[Reeznarch]

The only people that can reasonably be complained to, are those that you are paying.

The total amount of caring about complaints is inversely proportional to the total money received by said people.

Re:It's free. C'mon.

[ttucker]

Isn't the price of free usually a huge waste of your personal time too?

Re:It's free. C'mon.

[Reeznarch]

They don't call it free time for nothing!

Re:It's free. C'mon.

[gl4ss]

...they can complain to google and to the city buying from google all right.

to top it of, you need to log in to google to use the service.

What I have seen

[Groo Wanderer]

While I haven't used the Google service yet, I see similar problems in a lot of public areas like airports where I happen to find myself a lot. It seems to be more of an issue with the non-direct data traffic like the auth services, ads/gateway tasks, and DNS. More often than not it is one of these 'services' that are unrelated to the traffic that are acting up.

One example is the wi-fi networks in the Minneapolis or San Fran airports. You can log on, and then getting an IP, getting on the "I agree" screens, the videos you have to watch etc etc are all dog slow to one degree or other. The Delta lounge in the Minneapolis and San Fran airports are very extreme examples of this problem especially when they were T-Mobile (damn their black souls). You would 'get on' and then nothing or something trivial really slow.

Once on you would have decent ping times and some speed tests would be OK but anything that needed 'extra services' was pain. Changing your DNS to something you have or a know fast provider helped a lot which tells me the NAS/Radius/whatever server they use was overwhelmed. Now that I am thinking about it I should do a traceroute next time I am on to see what is happening in more detail, I am curious.

My first bet is that the majority of these services go through a single auth/security box that is under-CPUd and forces everything out a single overloaded link. If anyone has the time. I also wouldn't be surprised if DPI had a hand in it too, especially from Google.

41 kbps download, 2 kbps upload

[theodp]

Google Groups: Complaint to the City of Mountain View about Google WiFi Service. And, from January: Amid complaints, Google promises WiFi upgrades.

"Bad Connections Dog"

[terminalhype]

What is a "Bad Connections Dog" and why is it Googling Mountain View's wi-fi Network? Possibly it is looking for a Good Connections Cat?

Re: "Bad Connections Dog"

[TheGratefulNet]

not to worry, its bark is worse than its byte.

Re: "Bad Connections Dog"

[slashmydots]

Yo dawg. I heard you like bad connections so we found you a dog that has a bad connection, dawg.

Project Loon promises 200+ kbps download

[theodp]

So, would Mountain View be better off with the balloon-powered Internet of Project Loon, which offers 3G speed or better?

It's WiFi, what did you expect?

[DigiShaman]

Public WiFi sucks absolute balls!!! IANAP, but I'm certain it has to do with the radio technology not scaling like cell phone technology does. It's been my experience that heavily populated areas with lots of WiFi routers out there, the SNR level goes to shit. Beyond shit. As in so-fucking-bad-carrier-pigions-are-preferred, level of shit.

I laugh at Google. How could they be be so fucking stupid as to think WiFi would work at that scale? Hahahahaaa.... (dumb asses).

Re:It's WiFi, what did you expect?

[AK Marc]

It's mainly from shit-planning. WiFi is hard. The problem is that people see cellular "just works" and if you live in a free-standing house on a 1/4 acre, even if all your neighbors were on the same channel of 802.11b, your WiFi would still work, though not necessarily well, so how hard is it to set up an airport to serve 10,000 people?

Turns out, very hard, with very little overlap in skill or process to what most people have experience with (using a multi-node wireless, or setting up a single or dual AP setup).

hmmm

[slashmydots]

This wasn't a story about a dog getting a bad connection because a mountain that google owns was viewing wireless data. So disappointing. Seriously, who wrote that technically correct but stylistically garbage headline?

Not Surprising

[sigipickl]

There are dozens of reasons why Wi-Fi doesn't scale to the masses. Especially outdoors or in large spaces. Here are a few:
- Wi-Fi is half-duplex. Only one transmitter can broadcast on a channel at any given time. If the transmitting radio is slow (weak connection, older technology, bad-driver, etc...), then all other devices must wait for the transmission to end before they can get their airtime to transmit.
- A Wi-Fi radio that conforms to the Wi-Fi spec must co-operate when on the same channel as other wireless networks near it. This means that the google APs should be honoring the management traffic and broadcasts from other Wi-Fi radios near them. In a place like Mountain View, there is a *LOT* of Wi-Fi.
- 802.11n performance is dependent on multi-pathing. An AP on a pole in the middle of a park doesn't give much in the way of surfaces to reflect a signal off of. You end up at my first point- slow transmission, lower cell capacity.
- While two clients on an AP each can "hear" the APs transmissions, they may not "hear" each others'. Collisions galore.
- The ISM bands that Wi-Fi operates in are full of non-Wi-Fi interference. Wireless baby monitors are notorious for killing Wi-Fi, as are cheap wireless video cameras. Cordless phones,motion detectors, microwave ovens, remote control toys all play a part in the general noise within these RF bands.

Re:Not Surprising

[vriemeister]

As a reference for "good" wifi, the new 49ers stadium is claiming some crazy real-world useability. Something like every single person in the park will be able to fully utilize their 802.11n or 802.11g bandwidth. If this actually turns out to be true it could be the model for how to do large wifi projects right.

Re: Not Surprising

[DigiShaman]

Even managed access points are a hack to work around the limitations of WiFi spec. SonicPoints from SonicWALL work beautifully in a rural office. Put this solution in a building on the 20th floor downtown...,forget about it! Dropped connections and packet loss galore. Even the SonicPoints will tell you it's a noisy environment. Aside from breaking the spec, you can't fix that with any solution. Well, except one. Use WiFI canceling material in the wall surrounding the parameter of the office and some metallic window tinting.

Re:Not Surprising

[Thor Ablestar]

- 802.11n performance is dependent on multi-pathing. An AP on a pole in the middle of a park doesn't give much in the way of surfaces to reflect a signal off of. You end up at my first point- slow transmission, lower cell capacity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OFDM_system_comparison_table#OFDM_system_comparison_table states that the symbol length of 802.11a is 3.2 uS (which is about 1 kilometer of length) and the guard interval is 1/4 of symbol length. It means that path length difference should be at least bigger than 100 meters to create problems. I believe 802.11n has similar parameters. And you can easily use a directional antenna to suppress such bad paths.

- While two clients on an AP each can "hear" the APs transmissions, they may not "hear" each others'. Collisions galore.

Then, you all forget about TDMA profile of WiFi. It's rarely implemented but some implementation exist. For instance, Ubiquiti AirMax and afaik FreeBSD. If you have a single network in your area (as Google has) then TDMA is an option since it's the AP that manages the access.

Re:Not Surprising

[tibit]

In WiFi, the "collision galore" is even worse with directional antennas, since the collision detection protocol requires all nodes to hear each other, IIRC. There's RTS/CTS, but I'm not sure what kind of gear implements it, and if there are any deployments that enforce RTS/CTS and if it does help there.

Re:Not Surprising

[tibit]

I think that simple ISM band devices that are point-to-point should simply use broadband transmission with a gold code, like GPS does. Heck, they should use a keystream code, so that your neighbor won't be able to listen to your baby monitor. This would allow for very graceful degradation, since such transmissions look to everyone like an increase in the noise floor, not like narrowband interference. If there are two monitors in the household, they'll only have shorter range, there'll be no other signs of interference.

Of course there is a trade off: you lower the usable range for everyone. When the devices cooperate in a CSMA/CD scheme, the range is unaffected, but the bandwidth suffers. But then you have to have a coordinated scheme where everyone participates. This may be hard, as I doubt that cheap consumer devices like baby monitors or phones really want to be ad-hoc WiFi nodes...

Re:Not Surprising

[AK Marc]

The only way to get something like that is to turn every AP to the lowest transmit setting, and pack them in as compact as needed (and no more) for full coverage. Simply put, for *everyone* to get full 802.1g bandwidth requires one radio per person, or about 70,000 radios, no less, is needed to get that stated level of throughput (less any "assumed" oversubscription).

Re:Not Surprising

[PlusFiveTroll]

> If you have a single network in your area (as Google has)

Google does not have a single network in that area. They share with every other 2.4 GHz device in their range. Portable phones, baby monitors, Users AP's, etc. Also, every device that connected to Googles network would have to support TDMA wi-fi.

What is a bad connections dog?

[Arancaytar]

And what's so bad about it googling the Mountain View Wi-Fi Network?

Re:What is a bad connections dog?

[R3d M3rcury]

Maybe it's sort of like a Fail Whale?

Internet for free?

[iocane4me]

They are using 5 GHz Alvarion BreezeAccess VL's at 54mbs for their short backhauls. (The diamond looking things on the telephone poles) Alvarion is dead and the BreezeAccess is dead. My experience using that hardware is that is can be a little flaky and it takes someone in the know to get them running adequately. I always got a lot of dropouts and could never stream YouTube reliably through an Alvarion pipe. There are a couple hundred of them in Mountain View. Also, the original agreement was back when Google needed Mountain View for all that space on Shoreline and Charleston, the new park, fire station, and ways to deal with traffic, Google needed to keep Mountain View happy. Mountain View needed a big company to replace all those dead ones in 2008 So the free Internet looked good for all to get what they wanted. It was the first Google municipal installment and there was much to learn. The hardware they are using is from a dead company and Google is going fiber to the home now, but everything is paid for. Why not renew for another 5 years, it doesn't have to work it just needs to garner press so that Kansas City (and others) does not get the drift that Google will pull out after five years. The same is true of Milpitas. Google bankrolled that in 2008 through a non-profit when Earthlink bailed on that project.. How is Milpitas doing, they are still upgrading. Everyone knows if you want free Internet in Mountain View you go to a cafe on Castro that doesn't change their passwords.

It's never just one thing.

[Anonymous Coward]

Disclaimer: I work as a sales engineer for a distributor of several wireless vendors and related products, which include Wi-Fi portal hardware/software. There are many ways to skin a cat in this game and I've seen it done right and wrong. I have the benefit of not being required to drink the vendor kool aid by virtue of one degree of separation and the need to sell what actually works.

There's a lot of FUD around Wi-Fi from the uneducated (i.e. those that never underwent the education to actually understand things like MIMO, radio chains, antenna design, RF signal encoding, etc.); Although there is a theoretical "ceiling" (i.e. unachievable in average cases) which is the one normally pitched in datasheets and advertising, the capabilities of today's 802.11n and upcoming 802.11ac chipsets and implementations are getting closer and closer to the theoretical maximum by way of cutting out interference. sigipickl mentioned a number of valid interference scenarios I won't repeat, but Wi-Fi is not the only equation when dealing with Public Wi-Fi. For high-density scenarios, a number of enterprise-grade Wi-Fi vendors can deliver 100+ effective connections per AP, using intelligent antenna design and signal delivery to cut out most common noise factors. 802.11ac is going to be a game changer with it's multicast extensions.

Two major caveats for getting best client performance that are outside the service's control are the multitude of client Wi-Fi implementations that limit performance (1x1 radio chains, single polarisation, poor firmware) and the ongoing presence of 802.11b (and to a lesser extent 802.11g) devices that are the equivalent of allowing horse-drawn carriages in random lanes on an 8-lane highway.

Keep in mind that even peak AP performance won't deliver full bandwidth to each client: (~300Mbps/100 client ~= 3Mbps per client). Expecting better than theoretical per-user performance during peak operations is a user-education problem as much as a technical one. "You get what you pay for" is something increasingly forgotten with service delivery.

Wi-Fi interference and local bandwidth bottleneck aside, In the vast majority of scenarios, the actual bottleneck is the backhaul link from the local/municipal network to the internet backbone (common case: ADSL2 backhaul -> 1.5/24Mbps to serve 100 connected users; some places may have the option for a 10/10 or better link but it's not always available or cheap enough for free Wi-Fi ). If ANYTHING your service relies upon (DNS lookups, landing page content of any kind) is behind the bandwidth bottleneck, then service responsiveness/availability WILL suffer from increased contention. In this case, what is serving and managing the bottleneck is critical. The designs and solutions are varied, but the fundamental principle is that you have to balance out the bandwidth as evenly as possible when the link is oversubscribed. I find this can't be done effectively when statically configured at the client-level (it's not the bottleneck) and should be done at the NAT/router/firewall level for best user experience. Every v1.0 product I've seen is clunky and it takes a few iterations to get things working well under load.

I haven't delved into Google's Mountain View Wi-Fi deployment, but over-subscription on the back-haul looks to be the first place to look judging from the reported symptoms. If Google is rolling their own infrastructure, then I would unfortunately expect their engineers' cloud-mentality to cause them to forget everything that has been learnt in the last 10+ years of rolling out open access Wi-Fi and to make the same mistakes all over again.

What most people don't realize is that it costs real money to deliver a Wi-Fi network with Internet and there are ongoing costs in the back-haul link(s) that go up with increased usage. You can skimp in lots of places, but it comes down to getting better service with more investment. Google's Wi-Fi has to get its money from somewhere. Without ongoing revenue, the service will die under its own weight.

Re:It's never just one thing.

[Eunuchswear]

in summary - wfi is shit, so why is anyone supprised thar googles wifi is shit?

Re:It's never just one thing.

[Eunuchswear]

I would have corrected the "wfi" to "wifi" but I'm using a shitty android tablet and it sometimes goes crazy with slashdot

Comma Comma Comma Comma Chameleon...

[VortexCortex]

Bad Connections, dog, Google's mountain, view Wi-Fi network.

Bad connections, Dog, Google's Mountain View Wi-Fi network.

Bad Connections Dog Googles, "Mountain View Wi-Fi Network."

Bad, Connections Dog, Google's Mountain View Wi-Fi Network!

A counter-example

[Brett Buck]

Just down the road from Mountain View, the old (now defunct) Sunnyvale minicipal Wi-Fi worked pretty well when it was running. I was a long way away from the nearest transceiver but I never had any significant problems with connecting or with throughput.

    It went defunct because the funding went away, I think, not because it didn't work.

        Brett

Videos ... I wonder ....

[Ungrounded Lightning]

... [on the] wi-fi networks in the Minneapolis or San Fran airports. [...] the videos you have to watch [when going through authorization/configuration steps] are all dog slow ...

Which got me thinking...

Lately (at work with a company-IT-mandated Chrome browser and thus no flashblock/noscript/...) I've noticed that advertisers on many services I look at (typically due to following news links from Slashdot) are feeding multiple, self-starting, full-motion videos per page.

Videos require ENORMOUSLY more traffic than text, or even fancy (but non-moving) graphics. This trend ENORMOUSLY multiplies the bandwidth requirements to browse such pages.

Combine that with the fact that WiFi is essentially a collision-based protocol, which means it goes 'WAY inefficient when approaching its "theoretical" bandwidth maximum.

Perhaps this, rather than more users or decaying infrastructure, is the (or a major) explanation for the deteriorating service in Mountain View.

Anderson, Indiana

[globaljustin]

Do you know of any that work especially well?

Yep. It's a small post-industrial midwestern town, but its electric meter system is WiFi based: http://www.cityofanderson.com/wifi.aspx

Don't expect any technical details in the link, but essentially every household utility meter is WiFi enabled and networked to send the data to a central server downtown.

The network is slow, obviously, but it works for email and youtube better than dial up. Faster with a better signal but still ADSL speeds.

Dogs can Google?

[Time_Ngler]

Who is "Bad Connections Dog" and why is he interested in the Mountain View Wi-Fi Network?

Bad antennaes?

[Maxo-Texas]

I recall an article here that wifi antennaes degrade within a few years.

I've had to replace wifi antennae after three or four years because they longer had a strong enough signal across the house.

Re:Bad antennaes?

[tibit]

Where exactly are those antennas that you've replaced? Do you use access points or nodes with external, removable antennas?

Re:Bad antennaes?

[Maxo-Texas]

The wifi router. It's the built in antennas that go bad.

Started with a strong signal and degraded. Read an article about it. Replaced it-- fixed the problem. Few years later-- same thing, same solution.

http://ask.slashdot.org/story/12/10/21/1335208/ask-slashdot-why-does-wireless-gear-degrade-over-time

Re:Bad antennaes?

[tibit]

Crazy. Perhaps I need to try that on my router/NAS - it seems to have slowly decayed as well.

1-6-11 vs. 1-4-8-11, B vs. G vs. N.

[billstewart]

The most common channel choice recommendation is to only use channels 1, 6, and 11, for entirely non-overlapping operations. There's an alternative, 1-4-8-11, that's pretty low interference. Back when people used 802.11b, or most of the time with 802.11g, I didn't get much interference from my neighbors, especially since I picked a relatively quiet channel. But when 802.11n came out, I started getting a lot more interference. Part of that was just changes in what channels they were using, so that helped a bit, but eventually I bit the bullet and got my own 802.11n router (and was startled to find that it didn't do IPv6 yet.)

Google, of course, is smart enough to have allocated channels in some optimal manner to reduce interference between their equipment; I don't know how much they paid attention to what other users were doing.

Re:1-6-11 vs. 1-4-8-11, B vs. G vs. N.

[AK Marc]

1-4-7-11 or 1-4-8-11 (or 1-5-8-11) are "better" than 1-6-11. 1-6-11 guarantee no frequency overlap, at a cost of greater in-band interference (As fixed numbers of devices fight for a smaller number of channels). And, as the frequency falls off, so does power, so that, for a reasonably spaced network, 1-4-7-11 are non-overlapping.

One of the other oft ignored issue is that other 802.1b clients are not "interference" but "contention". Bandwidth goes down only slightly worse than linearly. But with "real" interference (something that doesn't practice CSMA/CA), you'll get worse performance because the interference won't ever back off.

Re:1-6-11 vs. 1-4-8-11, B vs. G vs. N.

[billstewart]

1-4-8-11 is theoretically better for most people than 1-6-11, because you get more useful channels, but unfortunately that only works if you can get everybody to go along. In a business with one IT department you can do it; in an apartment complex with random people you can't stop people from randomly choosing 6. A couple of my neighbors are on 6, one's on 8, one's on 10, a couple of high-power 1s, and usually mine's the only one that goes to 11.

If all of your equipment can support it, there's also slightly-illegal-in-US use of channel 13, or of course the 5 GHz band which has non-overlapping channels and usually nobody actually using it. (Unfortunately, while my router supports 5 GHz, it doesn't support using 2.4 and 5 simultaneously; I suppose I could drag out the old 2.4 travel hub and hang it off an Ethernet port for the older laptop to talk to and switch the rest to 5.)

Re:1-6-11 vs. 1-4-8-11, B vs. G vs. N.

[AK Marc]

I like the people with enough information to be dangerous. They are all on 3 or 5 or 7 or 10 because "if everyone else is on 1/6/11, I'll use one of the other ones with nobody on it. And pick 5 when 6 is the most used in their area, but nobody else is on 5.

Does wireless gear degrade over time?

[fa2k]

http://ask.slashdot.org/story/12/10/21/1335208/ask-slashdot-why-does-wireless-gear-degrade-over-time

Don't think there was a consensus, but some ideas

(You can thank firefox's nice address bar for me being able to find this in less than a minute. Maybe google would have done it too, though)

Nitpick

[Comboman]

So there's 11 channels, but transmitting on channel 1 means that you are putting noise on channels 1-5; transmitting on channel 6 means that you are putting noise on 1-10; and transmitting on channel 11 puts noise on 7-11.

Nitpicking here, but I think you meant to say "transmitting on channel 6 means that you are putting noise on 2-10", otherwise 1 & 6 aren't nonoverlaping.

Re:Nitpick

[egamma]

Yep, I saw that after I posted.

Great garden path sentence there

[neminem]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_path_sentence

Who or what is "Bad Connections Dog"? Is that like the Bad Idea Bears?

Re:Seems like an opportunity for someone

[PlusFiveTroll]

>Can the problems be ameliorated with faster, higher capacity nodes?

Probably not.

>More nodes?

Probably, but set all the nodes at a much lower power to reduce their range and reduce conflicts.

> Is data being throttled at the link to the internet?
People would have to test from many non-busy nodes to find that out. It also depends if radio-backhaul is used that gets transported thru busy nodes that end up losing traffic.

>Do they need more links to the internet?

This is Googles home, probably not.

The network theory is well known. In this case it is a tragedy of the commons. Outdoor wireless networks suck in any place with lots of nodes.