Google, Microsoft, Comcast Say Verizon’s New Cellular Tech Could Wreck Wi-Fi

Re:Google, Microsoft, Comcast Say Verizon’s New Cellular Tec... by qb45 on Monday December 07, 2015 @03:08PM (#10692292)

That's true. Most 2.4GHz networks beacon at 1Mbps, which is because they are typically configured for compatibility down to 802.11b and beacons are transmitted at the lowest enabled speed.

Here [1] somebody collected measurements of time eaten by beacons at few configurations. Not a complete disaster, but still somewhat significant. For example, at the place where I am now, I'm receiving 67 beacons per second (all at 1Mbps), which, according to those calculation, wastes 17% of airtime.

[1] http://wifinigel.blogspot.com/2013/08/its-well-known-rule-of...

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Re:Google, Microsoft, Comcast Say Verizon’s New Cellular Tec... by ploxiln on Monday December 07, 2015 @03:24PM (#10692407)

That's a great link / experiment, thanks.

By just counting the literal airtime of the beacons, I think it underestimates the effects a bit, because it doesn't account for the contention of the remaining air time, which would be reflected in increased collisions and small delays which (sorry to be hand-wavy again) can add up. I think if he ran some application-level tests at the same time (perhaps iperf, perhaps something more sophisticated) he would see a bigger impact to "good-put".

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