Dave Pinwell

Dave Pinwell

Dave Pinwell is a prolific blogger and IT enthusiast and has kindly allowed us to reproduce his popular weekly IT Talk column first published in the Solihull News. Dave is also CEO of Colebridge Trust and SUSTAiN which play a key role in providing strategic support to Solihull’s Voluntary & Community sector. Dave has extensive experience in the IT sector, with roles including IT Director with Fujitsu Telecommunications Europe Ltd.
Tech News 23rd October 2014 1952

Solution To Signal Traffic Jam Will Be Needed In Future

The cobwebs were blown from the wallet last week, when a new router at home replaced its ageing predecessor.

Incredibly, that router had been pressed into service almost a decade ago, when broadband first flowed chez nous.

However, it now needed too frequent a reboot and I got increasingly frustrated that its wi-fi signals would not reach distant parts of the house.

Routers have definitely improved.

Better models now broadcast on dual radio bands, adding 5Ghz transmission to the old 2.4Ghz frequency, leaving the user to decide which to use.

In reality, though, this seems to be Hobson’s choice.

In theory, the new 5Ghz band is faster but does not reach as far as the earlier channels. However, those old 2.4Ghz airways are used by far more devices, especially older routers, baby monitors and cordless phones, so there is much more interference.

As a result, the further from a 2.4Ghz router transmission, the more its signal degrades as a result of contention with others.

Consequently, at my place at least, both bands on the new router have about the same reach in practice, no matter what the textbook might say.

As a result of three woofing great aerials, though, our new Nighthawk will just about transmit all around the house and garden on either channel.

Meanwhile, this leaves me pondering the future.

As we all get more powerful routers and start to deploy more and more wi-fi enabled smart home technology, wi-fi traffic will boom and will generate more interference with neighbouring devices.

Solutions to managing the contention from stray signals, or a greater allocation of radio bandwidth, will be needed in order to cope.

Dave Pinwell

Dave Pinwell is a prolific blogger and IT enthusiast and has kindly allowed us to reproduce his popular weekly IT Talk column first published in the Solihull News. Dave is also CEO of Colebridge Trust and SUSTAiN which play a key role in providing strategic support to Solihull’s Voluntary & Community sector. Dave has extensive experience in the IT sector, with roles including IT Director with Fujitsu Telecommunications Europe Ltd.

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