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

[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.

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?

[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

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.

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.

[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: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.

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.

"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?

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.