drvnbysound
Senior Member
I've noticed that a LOT of baby monitors run on 2.4GHz
How many IP devices do you have?
- Thread starter jkmonroe
- Start date
tmbrown97
Senior Member
Interesting topic. For the OP - running those Meraki devices - the 8-port switch is ungodly expensive, and the AP's are pretty ridiculous as well. I can say that because I run Meraki nationwide for the enterprise network I run - but there's a specific set of criteria within the business that makes Meraki a default choice. For most businesses and all homes I'd never recommend it purely because of the whole cost and licensing aspect.
The above said, I'm wildly curious about your background in all this and what lead you to those products!!
I've been around this for a horribly long time - running networks from worldwide to SOHO simultaneously for a decade and a half now and I know the needs are vastly different. There are some common threads, but overall, what I'd swear against in one environment can be my go-to in another.
So to answer the initial question - I have kids but all too young to be using IP devices... and my wife and I are around 75 IP devices right now. It'll be over 100 in the next year as more cameras and smart devices come online - many I already have sitting in boxes.
I'm also surprised about the comments towards Apple AirPort being a weak link - I'm genuinely curious what I've missed because I have considered them to be 2nd best to an enterprise wifi setup for a while. they're so easy to setup and run multiple AP's in a single house. I like Ubiquiti UniFi a lot (but their AC gear is overpriced crap ATM)... I never mix router and wifi - and I'm currently running a Netgear UTM device as a router, but I miss my old Cisco stuff. I have Mikrotik and Ubiquiti with a lot of clients and have been happy. Every environment dictates something different.
Now back to the OPs comment about the dropcam... This is where it gets important. The very nature of Wifi is that a single radio is going in circles asking all connected devices what they need to transmit. This isn't as efficient as TDM like in the cell world but lets the radio make its rounds to all connected devices. The more devices, the longer the delay because it's constantly going in circles hoping each time just for a quick couple packet transmits. For a computer on the web its fine - you hit a page then stop to read it so theres a burst of traffic then all idle until the next burst.
Now take a camera that's running 30 FPS - it's transmitting constantly - trying for real-time video blasting the living hell out of the wifi. Now your radio is having to run circles but focus on this neverending stream of video.
The short answer is, try not to run video over Wifi. If you must, a separate AP/Radio dedicated and out of the interfering range is the way to go.
Once again, that said, I do have a client who runs 100% wifi... we have a 70' tower in the middle of 2300 acres and we have backhaul radios running over 5Ghz and local wifi on 2.4 and loads of cameras communicating back to the tower then to a single PTP link to an office that records everything. It's taken a lot of time and effort to get that balanced out but its working quite well, so it's possible... but my original point stands in that video puts seriously high demands on any network, and if its even remotely possible to hard wire it, it's far better for more reasons that I can type tonight.
The above said, I'm wildly curious about your background in all this and what lead you to those products!!
I've been around this for a horribly long time - running networks from worldwide to SOHO simultaneously for a decade and a half now and I know the needs are vastly different. There are some common threads, but overall, what I'd swear against in one environment can be my go-to in another.
So to answer the initial question - I have kids but all too young to be using IP devices... and my wife and I are around 75 IP devices right now. It'll be over 100 in the next year as more cameras and smart devices come online - many I already have sitting in boxes.
I'm also surprised about the comments towards Apple AirPort being a weak link - I'm genuinely curious what I've missed because I have considered them to be 2nd best to an enterprise wifi setup for a while. they're so easy to setup and run multiple AP's in a single house. I like Ubiquiti UniFi a lot (but their AC gear is overpriced crap ATM)... I never mix router and wifi - and I'm currently running a Netgear UTM device as a router, but I miss my old Cisco stuff. I have Mikrotik and Ubiquiti with a lot of clients and have been happy. Every environment dictates something different.
Now back to the OPs comment about the dropcam... This is where it gets important. The very nature of Wifi is that a single radio is going in circles asking all connected devices what they need to transmit. This isn't as efficient as TDM like in the cell world but lets the radio make its rounds to all connected devices. The more devices, the longer the delay because it's constantly going in circles hoping each time just for a quick couple packet transmits. For a computer on the web its fine - you hit a page then stop to read it so theres a burst of traffic then all idle until the next burst.
Now take a camera that's running 30 FPS - it's transmitting constantly - trying for real-time video blasting the living hell out of the wifi. Now your radio is having to run circles but focus on this neverending stream of video.
The short answer is, try not to run video over Wifi. If you must, a separate AP/Radio dedicated and out of the interfering range is the way to go.
Once again, that said, I do have a client who runs 100% wifi... we have a 70' tower in the middle of 2300 acres and we have backhaul radios running over 5Ghz and local wifi on 2.4 and loads of cameras communicating back to the tower then to a single PTP link to an office that records everything. It's taken a lot of time and effort to get that balanced out but its working quite well, so it's possible... but my original point stands in that video puts seriously high demands on any network, and if its even remotely possible to hard wire it, it's far better for more reasons that I can type tonight.
pete_c
Guru
RF is RF is RF is RF
Radio frequency (RF) is a rate of oscillation in the range of around 3 kHz to 300 GHz, which corresponds to the frequency of radio waves, and the alternating currents which carry radio signals. RF usually refers to electrical rather than mechanical oscillations; however, mechanical RF systems do exist (see mechanical filter and RF MEMS).
Although radio frequency is a rate of oscillation, the term "radio frequency" or its abbreviation "RF" are also used as a synonym for radio – i.e., to describe the use of wireless communication, as opposed to communication via electric wires.
Radio propagation is magic and its mysteries have over the years been logically explained; well even though you cannot see a radio wave.
Radio propagation is the behavior of radio waves when they are transmitted, or propagated from one point on the Earth to another, or into various parts of the atmosphere. As a form of electromagnetic radiation, like light waves, radio waves are affected by the phenomena of reflection, refraction, diffraction, absorption, polarization, and scattering
A dumb analogy here would be explaining how an anesthetic works. At the turn of the century (well late 1800's) giant squids with large axons and dentrites were looked at but still the little electronic spark of a nerve impluse couldn't get figured out. It has been theorized that the substrate of a nerve uses channels that passes the conductivity of a nerve impulse in a mixture of a physiological gradient at almost light speeds. Geez how does that spark jump from an axon to dentrite (synapse). Could it be some sort of mixture of isomerism? No one really knows. Like the unique (yet common) gradient of a nerve; mother earth's atmosphere provides a similiar yet unique grandient of transport for a radio wave.
My Ubiquiti AP is in the attic and have occassionally looked and do see some 20 or so AP's. I manually chose a channel that wasn't seen in the list of scanned local access points. Easy to do as most folks leave that channel stuff alone and utilize whatever the default.
Personally I like the magic of RF. TMI for those interested....
Lightning scattering has sometimes been observed on VHF and UHF over distances of about 500 km. The hot lightning channel scatters radio-waves for a fraction of a second. The RF noise burst from the lightning makes the initial part of the open channel unusable and the ionization disappears quickly because of recombination at low altitude and high atmospheric pressure. Although the hot lightning channel is briefly observable with microwave radar, no practical use for this mode has been found in communications.
Rain scattering is purely a microwave propagation mode and is best observed around 10 GHz, but extends down to a few gigahertz—the limit being the size of the scattering particle size vs. wavelength. This mode scatters signals mostly forwards and backwards when using horizontal polarization and side-scattering with vertical polarization. Forward-scattering typically yields propagation ranges of 800 km. Scattering from snowflakes and ice pellets also occurs, but scattering from ice without watery surface is less effective. The most common application for this phenomenon is microwave rain radar, but rain scatter propagation can be a nuisance causing unwanted signals to intermittently propagate where they are not anticipated or desired. Similar reflections may also occur from insects though at lower altitudes and shorter range. Rain also causes attenuation of point-to-point and satellite microwave links. Attenuation values up to 30 dB have been observed on 30 GHz during heavy tropical rain.
Airplane scattering (or most often reflection) is observed on VHF through microwaves and, besides back-scattering, yields momentary propagation up to 500 km even in mountainous terrain. The most common back-scatter applications are air-traffic radar, bistatic forward-scatter guided-missile and airplane-detecting trip-wire radar, and the US space radar.
Tropospheric scattering
At VHF and higher frequencies, small variations (turbulence) in the density of the atmosphere at a height of around 6 miles (10 km) can scatter some of the normally line-of-sight beam of radio frequency energy back toward the ground, allowing over-the-horizon communication between stations as far as 500 miles (800 km) apart. The military developed the White Alice Communications System covering all of Alaska, using this tropospheric scattering principle.
Tropospheric ducting
Sudden changes in the atmosphere's vertical moisture content and temperature profiles can on random occasions make microwave and UHF & VHF signals propagate hundreds of kilometers up to about 2,000 kilometers (1,300 mi)—and for ducting mode even farther—beyond the normal radio-horizon. The inversion layer is mostly observed over high pressure regions, but there are several tropospheric weather conditions which create these randomly occurring propagation modes. Inversion layer's altitude for non-ducting is typically found between 100 meters (300 ft) to about 1 kilometer (3,000 ft) and for ducting about 500 meters to 3 kilometers (1,600 to 10,000 ft), and the duration of the events are typically from several hours up to several days. Higher frequencies experience the most dramatic increase of signal strengths, while on low-VHF and HF the effect is negligible. Propagation path attenuation may be below free-space loss. Some of the lesser inversion types related to warm ground and cooler air moisture content occur regularly at certain times of the year and time of day. A typical example could be the late summer, early morning tropospheric enhancements that bring in signals from distances up to few hundred kilometers for a couple of hours, until undone by the Sun's warming effect.
Tropospheric delay
This is a source of error in radio ranging techniques, such as the Global Positioning System (GPS).
A Doppler radar is a specialized radar that uses the Doppler effect to produce velocity data about objects at a distance. It does this by bouncing a microwave signal off a desired target and analyzing how the object's motion has altered the frequency of the returned signal. This variation gives direct and highly accurate measurements of the radial component of a target's velocity relative to the radar. Doppler radars are used in aviation, sounding satellites, meteorology, police speed guns, radiology and healthcare (fall detection and risk assessment, nursing or clinic purpose), and bistatic radar (surface-to-air missile).
Partly because of its common use by television meteorologists in on-air weather reporting, the specific term "Doppler Radar" has erroneously become popularly synonymous with the type of radar used in meteorology. Most modern weather radars use the pulse-doppler technique to examine the motion of precipitation, but it is only a part of the processing of their data. So, while these radars use a highly specialized form of doppler radar, the term is much broader in its meaning and its applications.
Personally I played making a crystal radio many many years ago and was amazed (well with the magic of RF). Ahh...the ultimate wake on wireless LAN....wondering if Intel has been working on this stuff...no reponse from them a few years back as they were into the ultimate automobile OS when I asked...
A crystal radio receiver, also called a crystal set or cat's whisker receiver, is a very simple radio receiver, popular in the early days of radio. It needs no other power source but that received solely from the power of radio waves received by a wire antenna. It gets its name from its most important component, known as a crystal detector, originally made from a piece of crystalline mineral such as galena. This component is now called a diode.
Galena was used as a point-contact diode capable of rectifying alternating voltages and current and when used in a hence to detect the radio signals.
One of the oldest uses of galena was as kohl, which, in Ancient Egypt, was applied around the eyes to reduce the glare of the desert sun and to repel flies, which were a potential source of disease.
Galena is the primary ore of lead which is mainly used in making lead-acid batteries; however, significant amounts are also used to make lead sheets and shot. Galena is often mined for its silver content (e.g. the Galena Mine in northern Idaho).
Also known as "potters ore", galena is used in a green glaze applied to pottery.
Crystal radios were the first widely used type of radio receiver, and the main type used during the wireless telegraphy era. Sold and homemade by the millions, the inexpensive and reliable crystal radio was a major driving force in the introduction of radio to the public, contributing to the development of radio as an entertainment medium around 1920.
Radio frequency (RF) is a rate of oscillation in the range of around 3 kHz to 300 GHz, which corresponds to the frequency of radio waves, and the alternating currents which carry radio signals. RF usually refers to electrical rather than mechanical oscillations; however, mechanical RF systems do exist (see mechanical filter and RF MEMS).
Although radio frequency is a rate of oscillation, the term "radio frequency" or its abbreviation "RF" are also used as a synonym for radio – i.e., to describe the use of wireless communication, as opposed to communication via electric wires.
Radio propagation is magic and its mysteries have over the years been logically explained; well even though you cannot see a radio wave.
Radio propagation is the behavior of radio waves when they are transmitted, or propagated from one point on the Earth to another, or into various parts of the atmosphere. As a form of electromagnetic radiation, like light waves, radio waves are affected by the phenomena of reflection, refraction, diffraction, absorption, polarization, and scattering
A dumb analogy here would be explaining how an anesthetic works. At the turn of the century (well late 1800's) giant squids with large axons and dentrites were looked at but still the little electronic spark of a nerve impluse couldn't get figured out. It has been theorized that the substrate of a nerve uses channels that passes the conductivity of a nerve impulse in a mixture of a physiological gradient at almost light speeds. Geez how does that spark jump from an axon to dentrite (synapse). Could it be some sort of mixture of isomerism? No one really knows. Like the unique (yet common) gradient of a nerve; mother earth's atmosphere provides a similiar yet unique grandient of transport for a radio wave.
My Ubiquiti AP is in the attic and have occassionally looked and do see some 20 or so AP's. I manually chose a channel that wasn't seen in the list of scanned local access points. Easy to do as most folks leave that channel stuff alone and utilize whatever the default.
Personally I like the magic of RF. TMI for those interested....
Lightning scattering has sometimes been observed on VHF and UHF over distances of about 500 km. The hot lightning channel scatters radio-waves for a fraction of a second. The RF noise burst from the lightning makes the initial part of the open channel unusable and the ionization disappears quickly because of recombination at low altitude and high atmospheric pressure. Although the hot lightning channel is briefly observable with microwave radar, no practical use for this mode has been found in communications.
Rain scattering is purely a microwave propagation mode and is best observed around 10 GHz, but extends down to a few gigahertz—the limit being the size of the scattering particle size vs. wavelength. This mode scatters signals mostly forwards and backwards when using horizontal polarization and side-scattering with vertical polarization. Forward-scattering typically yields propagation ranges of 800 km. Scattering from snowflakes and ice pellets also occurs, but scattering from ice without watery surface is less effective. The most common application for this phenomenon is microwave rain radar, but rain scatter propagation can be a nuisance causing unwanted signals to intermittently propagate where they are not anticipated or desired. Similar reflections may also occur from insects though at lower altitudes and shorter range. Rain also causes attenuation of point-to-point and satellite microwave links. Attenuation values up to 30 dB have been observed on 30 GHz during heavy tropical rain.
Airplane scattering (or most often reflection) is observed on VHF through microwaves and, besides back-scattering, yields momentary propagation up to 500 km even in mountainous terrain. The most common back-scatter applications are air-traffic radar, bistatic forward-scatter guided-missile and airplane-detecting trip-wire radar, and the US space radar.
Tropospheric scattering
At VHF and higher frequencies, small variations (turbulence) in the density of the atmosphere at a height of around 6 miles (10 km) can scatter some of the normally line-of-sight beam of radio frequency energy back toward the ground, allowing over-the-horizon communication between stations as far as 500 miles (800 km) apart. The military developed the White Alice Communications System covering all of Alaska, using this tropospheric scattering principle.
Tropospheric ducting
Sudden changes in the atmosphere's vertical moisture content and temperature profiles can on random occasions make microwave and UHF & VHF signals propagate hundreds of kilometers up to about 2,000 kilometers (1,300 mi)—and for ducting mode even farther—beyond the normal radio-horizon. The inversion layer is mostly observed over high pressure regions, but there are several tropospheric weather conditions which create these randomly occurring propagation modes. Inversion layer's altitude for non-ducting is typically found between 100 meters (300 ft) to about 1 kilometer (3,000 ft) and for ducting about 500 meters to 3 kilometers (1,600 to 10,000 ft), and the duration of the events are typically from several hours up to several days. Higher frequencies experience the most dramatic increase of signal strengths, while on low-VHF and HF the effect is negligible. Propagation path attenuation may be below free-space loss. Some of the lesser inversion types related to warm ground and cooler air moisture content occur regularly at certain times of the year and time of day. A typical example could be the late summer, early morning tropospheric enhancements that bring in signals from distances up to few hundred kilometers for a couple of hours, until undone by the Sun's warming effect.
Tropospheric delay
This is a source of error in radio ranging techniques, such as the Global Positioning System (GPS).
A Doppler radar is a specialized radar that uses the Doppler effect to produce velocity data about objects at a distance. It does this by bouncing a microwave signal off a desired target and analyzing how the object's motion has altered the frequency of the returned signal. This variation gives direct and highly accurate measurements of the radial component of a target's velocity relative to the radar. Doppler radars are used in aviation, sounding satellites, meteorology, police speed guns, radiology and healthcare (fall detection and risk assessment, nursing or clinic purpose), and bistatic radar (surface-to-air missile).
Partly because of its common use by television meteorologists in on-air weather reporting, the specific term "Doppler Radar" has erroneously become popularly synonymous with the type of radar used in meteorology. Most modern weather radars use the pulse-doppler technique to examine the motion of precipitation, but it is only a part of the processing of their data. So, while these radars use a highly specialized form of doppler radar, the term is much broader in its meaning and its applications.
Personally I played making a crystal radio many many years ago and was amazed (well with the magic of RF). Ahh...the ultimate wake on wireless LAN....wondering if Intel has been working on this stuff...no reponse from them a few years back as they were into the ultimate automobile OS when I asked...
A crystal radio receiver, also called a crystal set or cat's whisker receiver, is a very simple radio receiver, popular in the early days of radio. It needs no other power source but that received solely from the power of radio waves received by a wire antenna. It gets its name from its most important component, known as a crystal detector, originally made from a piece of crystalline mineral such as galena. This component is now called a diode.
Galena was used as a point-contact diode capable of rectifying alternating voltages and current and when used in a hence to detect the radio signals.
One of the oldest uses of galena was as kohl, which, in Ancient Egypt, was applied around the eyes to reduce the glare of the desert sun and to repel flies, which were a potential source of disease.
Galena is the primary ore of lead which is mainly used in making lead-acid batteries; however, significant amounts are also used to make lead sheets and shot. Galena is often mined for its silver content (e.g. the Galena Mine in northern Idaho).
Also known as "potters ore", galena is used in a green glaze applied to pottery.
Crystal radios were the first widely used type of radio receiver, and the main type used during the wireless telegraphy era. Sold and homemade by the millions, the inexpensive and reliable crystal radio was a major driving force in the introduction of radio to the public, contributing to the development of radio as an entertainment medium around 1920.
pete_c said:
I think the additional APs that @linuxha observes during thunderstorms is due to rain scattering rather than lightning scattering. The skip effect that results from lightning disappears far too quickly to be observable this way. Rain, on the other hand, can result in RF skip that persists for a much longer time.
pete_c
Guru
Thank-you Gary. I do not have dependencies on wireless at this time. Scope of wireless IPs is tiny and related to tablet/laptop use for browsing internet more than managing HTML interfaces.
Here is what I see using the Ubiquiti tools. Yes adjacent Channels are worse than co Channels.
Here is what I see using the Ubiquiti tools. Yes adjacent Channels are worse than co Channels.
pete_c
Guru
I manually configured my stuff versus letting the AP configure itself. I did follow the documented stuff about this; though I haven't really looked in a while and never much pay attention these days.
I configured 3 of the neighbors AP's anyways such that we get the best bang for the wireless buck. (IE: DD-WRT, radio / antenna tweaking stuff. - way back set up a wireless bridge for the neighbors internet tapping in to my internet until they got internet established - worked well across the court). I did build tiny little sort of parabolic antennas made from paper and aluminum. Works wonders with those little rubber ducky antennas.
Here is the stuff I put together....well actually a couple of hours ago and then went off to WAF stuff....
Note too that I have no real dependencies on wireless here...media players, IP cameras, tablets, phones et al type of stuff....play though...use of is different if that makes any sense...I do not need use my wireless tablets or phones; but that is me.
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