As with others, we're pretty much stuck in a combination of awareness
campaigns followed by a foxhunt and knocking on doors.
Personally, I think one of the few things that can be done to save what's left
of the 2.4 band is to start putting pressure on the wifi alliance to withhold
certificate from any device acting as an AP (actual APs, hotspots, printers,
etc) if it defaults to transmitting on anything other than 1, 6, 11 (or the
equivalent in other regulatory domains).
I know it wouldn't be much, but it would at least make a statement.
Non-standard channels cause ridiculous performance drops, and I've caught too
many home printers and carrier provided hotspots doing it. I had half a greek
house getting dial-up class speeds due to nothing more than an HP printer that
was happily blaring out its beacons at max power on channel 4, all while the
front panel swore up and down that wifi was disabled.
It's far from a perfect fix. It's not like the wifi alliance has the power to
pull product off shelves, and there will always be misinformed users who don't
understand channel overlap, to say nothing of how many crappy devices area
already out on the market.
But damnitall, at least it would be doing *something* to push back on these
crappy default configurations.
Frank Sweetser fs at wpi.edu | For every problem, there is a solution that
Manager of Network Operations | is simple, elegant, and wrong.
Worcester Polytechnic Institute | - HL Mencken
On 10/6/2014 10:58 AM, Thomas Carter wrote:
We seem to be having more and more wireless interference from devices that are
not wireless routers/APs. HP printers and their obnoxious setup wireless are
becoming more common, and this semester we've seen a few devices using WiFi
Direct (basically an ad-hoc wireless network) - the PS4 has the ability to
connect to other Sony devices, and Roku players that used WiFi for its remote
control.
This forks from the "FCC just declared WLAN quarantine features illegal"
thread, but how are you dealing with these other forms of wireless interference. We've
essentially had to resort back to physically locating them and knocking on doors. We
printed up an information sheet to slide under doors, and communicate with residential
staff, but it seems to have mediocre success. We've also tried to communicate to students
that the cause of slow wireless is most likely interference from other devices in an
attempt to utilize peer pressure as well. Unfortunately it seems to all be very time
consuming to track down and communcate.
Thomas Carter
Network and Operations Manager
Austin College
903-813-2564
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