[Starlink] [LibreQoS] [Bloat] [Rpm] On FiWi

[Mike Puchol]

I can give you a practical example of this not working. A company in Kenya, with copious funding from investors, laid out fiber to literally every single building in a area of Nairobi, I estimate some 500 apartment buildings, with one ONU per building.

They then proceeded to install a PoE switch fed by the ONU, and anywhere between two to six TP-Link WiFi APs on the hallways of each floor of each apartment block. A quick wardrive around the main streets revealed some 1000 unique APs, so I estimate the total build to be around 4-5k APs total.

The model behind this, of course, is to avoid costly per-home installs, you deploy infra once, and you're done.

Reality was that most people could not connect to the APs in the hallways, or if they did, the connection was quite poor. Imagine the noise and interference levels of such an unmanaged WiFi network!

End result: whenever a customer wanted service, they would unplug the nearest AP from the hallway, run the ethernet cable into their house, and install a cheaper AP inside. And they still have to maintain a network of kilometers of multi-core ADSS and drop cables everywhere.

Another of the big lessons I've learned through my career is that anything wireless is an uncontrolled medium, even if you have licensed spectrum only you can use. The only way to guarantee the medium is to use wire/fiber - and even then you have other things that can get in the way, but I digress.

Best,

Mike
On Mar 15, 2023 at 18:42 +0100, dan via Starlink <starlink at lists.bufferbloat.net>, wrote:
> Trying to do all of what is currently wanted with 1 AP in a house is a huge part of the current problems with WiFi networks.  MOAR power to try to overcome attenuation and reflections from walls so more power bleeds into the next home/suite/apartment etc.
>
> In the MSP space it's been rapidly moving to an AP per room with output turned down to minimum.    Doing this we can reused 5Ghz channels 50ft away (through 2 walls etc...) without interference.
>
> One issue with the RRH model is that to accomplish this 'light bulb' model, ie you put a light bulb in the room you want light, is that it requires infrastructure cabling.  1 RRH AP in a house is already a failure today and accounts for most access complaints.
>
> Mesh radios have provided a bit of a gap fill, getting the access SSID closer to the device and backhauling on a separate channel with better (and likely fixed position ) antennas.
>
> regardless of my opinion on the full on failure of moving firewall off prem and the associated security risks and liabilities, single AP in a home is already a proven failure that has given rise to the mesh systems that are top sellers and top performers today.
>
> IMO, there was a scheme that gained a moment of fame and then died out of powerline networking and an AP per room off that powerline network.  I have some of these deployed with mikrotik PLA adapters and the model works fantastically, but the powerline networking has evolved slowly so I'm seeing ~200Mbps practical speeds, and the mikrotik units have 802.11n radios in them so also a bit of a struggle for modern speeds.   This model, with some development to get ~2.5Gbps practical speeds, and WiFi6 or WiFi7 per room at very low output power, is a very practical and deployable by consumers setup.
>
> WiFi7 also solves some pieces of this with AP coordination and co-transmission, sort of like a MUMIMO with multiple APs, and that's in early devices already (TPLINK just launched an AP).
>
> IMO, too many hurdles for RRH models from massive amounts of unfrastructure to build, homes and appartment buildings that need re-wired, security and liability concerns of homes and business not being firewall isolated by stakeholders of those networks.
>
> > On Wed, Mar 15, 2023 at 11:32 AM rjmcmahon <rjmcmahon at rjmcmahon.com> wrote:
> > > The 6G is a contiguous 1200MhZ. It has low power indoor (LPI) and very
> > > low power (VLP) modes. The pluggable transceiver could be color coded to
> > > a chanspec, then the four color map problem can be used by installers
> > > per those chanspecs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_color_theorem
> > >
> > > There is no CTS with microwave "interference" The high-speed PHY rates
> > > combined with low-density AP/STA ratios, ideally 1/1, decrease the
> > > probability of time signal superpositions. The goal with wireless isn't
> > > high densities but to unleash humans. A bunch of humans stuck in a dog
> > > park isn't really being unleashed. It's the ability to move from block
> > > to block so-to-speak. FiWi is cheaper than sidewalks, sanitation
> > > systems, etc.
> > >
> > > The goal now is very low latency. Higher phy rates can achieve that and
> > > leave the medium free the vast most of the time and shut down the RRH
> > > too. Engineering extra capacity by orders of magnitude is better than
> > > AQM. This has been the case in data centers for decades. Congestion? Add
> > > a zero (or multiple by 10)
> > >
> > > Note: None of this is done. This is a 5-10 year project with zero
> > > engineering resources assigned.
> > >
> > > Bob
> > > > On Tue, Mar 14, 2023 at 5:11 PM Robert McMahon
> > > > <rjmcmahon at rjmcmahon.com> wrote:
> > > >
> > > >> the AP needs to blast a CTS so every other possible conversation has
> > > >> to halt.
> > > >
> > > > The wireless network is not a bus. This still ignores the hidden
> > > > transmitter problem because there is a similar network in the next
> > > > room.
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