Comment on But my WiFi is just fine!

• Aux@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  WiFi 5 latency on a decent router (not the shit your ISP gives you for free) is only 0.6ms. Yes, that’s less than 1ms.

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  • uis@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I just tested ping between my weak computers, one of which supports only 100mbit ethernet and are sequentially connected via cheap 2$ dumb switch and ISP-provided router and got 0.187ms average, while ping via same system, but using 802.11ac for one device got 8.16ms with standard deviation of 11.9, maximum of 67ms and minimum of 1.44ms.

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    • Aux@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      You have a very shitty WiFi over there. I haven’t seen anything over 1ms ever.

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      • uis@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        I just don’t live on the moon, neighbours use WIFI too.

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  • MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Maybe…

    your latency on your network might be 0.6ms, but for most practical use-cases, it will be orders of magnitude more. Partly due to the interference and half duplex nature of wifi, but also because of CSMA/CA (carrier sense multi access / collision avoidance) algorithm, which listens before transmitting to ensure the channel is clear, and waits when it’s busy until it’s clear before transmitting. The actual transit time for each frame is very short, but getting to the point where you can actually transmit is the main challenge for wifi.

    Propegation time for a 1500 byte frame on gigabit Ethernet is approximately 12 µs, or 12 microseconds, aka 0.012 ms. So the argument is kind of squished here. Given that you have a dedicated channel to the switch (and not needing a carrier sense, collision avoidance of detection algorithm with ethernet) the frame can be immediately sent, so the total transit time from a computer connected by ethernet to a router or switch is orders of magnitude faster.

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    • Aux@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Here’s the thing - it won’t in real life.

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      • MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        This comment does not make sense to me

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  • quadropiss@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Right. Like even in the shittiest scenario that’s not a major difference. There’s stuff like interference and the speeds are lower, sure, but 1 gigabit is plenty for non enterprise situations

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    • Aux@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      There’s no interference unless you live in a Soviet block.

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• regbin_@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Not even 5 ms. I have a properly set up Wi-Fi at home and you’ll feel no difference in gaming. Wi-Fi only adds like 1-2 ms latency at most.

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  • WindowsEnjoyer@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Unless you have no choice - a good WiFi will not add noticeable latency.

    Myself I am playing over 5ghz wifi. I would say I don’t feel much difference, but prefer cable any time!

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  • tfw_no_toiletpaper@feddit.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Is the notebook or desktop wifi NIC and antenna important or only the router? Because when I had a shitty laptop a few years back the latency sucked ass, both at home and at my university (where I hope they had good network components but idk)

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    • MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      With wifi, everything is important, even the number of people connected on your channel… not the number of wifi networks on the channel, the number of total nodes using the same channel. The ap hardware factors in, your wifi card (client) factors in, even drivers and other things can factor in. The band (2.4/5/6 GHz), the non-wifi traffic, spurious emissions from other harmonic frequencies, even electrical noise from gadgets and other devices nearby. You can even factor in distance to the ap and cosmic background noise.

      On top of that, it’s half duplex, so only one node can successfully transmit at a time. So it interferes with itself.

      It’s a complete mess of unknowns and unknowable things, unless you have a very good spectrum analyser to look into it.

      IMO, this is what makes WiFi so terrible. There’s simply too many factors that can be slowing you down, most of which you can’t see and aren’t obvious.

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• MooseBoys@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Your experience varies massively depending on your RF environment. In my suburban neighborhood, I’m getting a stable 3.4ms to my router. The same hardware when I was in a dense urban environment was around 11ms. I’ve never looked at retry counters, but if I had to guess, I’m getting close to zero right now, but was getting considerably higher in a dense area.

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• uis@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  How would you get an entire 5g BTS without frequency regulating agency hunting your ass?

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  • quadropiss@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    I meant to say 5ghz

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