In the recent past, I've defined good (at least: acceptable) wifi as when a
single device can maintain sustained throughput of 25Mbps downstream under
typical conditions with no undue additional latency: enough for a Netflix
to serve 4K Ultra HDR video. Less than that and other services like game
downloads and FaceTime can start to suffer as well, and more than that
isn't really useful... even a person watching the video and doing something
else on the same device is either no longer paying enough attention to the
movie to notice when Netflix downgrades the video quality or doesn't mind
that whatever they downloaded in the background took a little longer,
because they were watching a movie. A device can multitask effectively, but
a person's attention is finite.

I like thinking this way rather than in terms of things like signal
strength because it helps keep me focused on results. Obviously signal
strength has a lot to do meeting that goal everywhere, as does radio
placement and configuration, etc. But this also gives me permission to miss
a goal at the end of a hallway, if I can see connections are still good
enough for functional use. Obviously we can meet this goal without
provisioning 25Mbps of bandwidth for every device, and in most places
meeting this objective everywhere means the vast majority of locations you
can do **MUCH** better most of the time.

One challenge here is the "typical conditions" part of the definition,
because that changes every year. Going forward, I also need to think more
about this in terms of upstream bandwidth, too, as covid has taken the
already-common two-way video chat services and kicked it up a notch or
three.

Joel Coehoorn
Director of Information Technology
York College of Nebraska


On Thu, Sep 23, 2021 at 6:17 PM Oliver, Jeff <jeff.oli...@uleth.ca> wrote:

> Hey Dave,
>
>
>
> And a follow up question would be ‘what makes it bad?’
>
>
>
> We have had wifi blues during semester startup a number of times over the
> years. Some have been coverage related, some have been throughput related,
> some have been router/DHCP related, and we have even had some that were
> protocol related. Really depends on what your complaints are and what
> they point to…
>
>
>
> Having the right tools to validate or invalidate concerns are important
> whether they be vendor supplied or 3rd party.
>
>
>
>
>
> Cheers,
>
> Jeff
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv <
> WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU> *On Behalf Of *Kushner, Jeff
> *Sent:* September 23, 2021 3:13 PM
> *To:* WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU
> *Subject:* Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Wi-Fi expectations/service levels and
> validation
>
>
>
> Caution: This email was sent from someone *outside of the University of
> Lethbridge*. Do not click on links or open attachments unless you know
> they are safe. Suspicious emails should be forwarded to phish...@uleth.ca.
>
>
>
> It is interesting, when I started doing wireless almost 20 years ago,
> before lightweight really existed, wireless was always positioned as a best
> effort and wired was definitely the way to go if a reliable connection was
> required. Today, wireless has become a replacement for wired in many
> locations, but our success is almost our downfall, the proliferation of
> wireless devices and interferers makes the delivery of quality wireless
> connections a constant battle. Not to mention the wide variety of client
> devices. And lets not even mention the manufacturers and issues with the
> firmware and software. I guess we can call all the aggravation a form of
> job security.
>
>
>
> *From:* The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv <
> WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU> *On Behalf Of *Enfield, Chuck
> *Sent:* Thursday, September 23, 2021 5:02 PM
> *To:* WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU
> *Subject:* Re: [WIRELESS-LAN] Wi-Fi expectations/service levels and
> validation
>
>
>
> *Message sent from a system outside of UConn.*
>
>
>
> The jury is still out on whether there is such a thing as good WI-Fi..
>
>
>
> *From:* The EDUCAUSE Wireless Issues Community Group Listserv <
> WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU> *On Behalf Of *LaPorte, David
> *Sent:* Thursday, September 23, 2021 4:33 PM
> *To:* WIRELESS-LAN@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU
> *Subject:* [WIRELESS-LAN] Wi-Fi expectations/service levels and validation
>
>
>
> Hi All,
>
>
>
> Coming out of a very rough fall semester start that left many of our users
> suffering with “bad” Wi-Fi, we’ve since (understandably) been asked what
> constitutes “good” Wi-Fi.  We have not previously published information to
> our community on what they should expect or on how they can validate those
> expectations.  Does anyone have any knowledge articles or links they could
> share?
>
>
>
> Thanks!
> Dave
>
>
>
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