The bottom line or TLDR, was that yesterday,
AFTER a power-failure-recovery,
my Pixel 7 phone couldn't find the 6Ghz Wifi with both of its teeny antennas.
Then, it could, and no amount of fooling with settings has messed it up again.
- Bandwidth?
- PSC Channels?
- Country-Code? (Router changing its own country code (based upon an unseen invisible force?)
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So maybe an 802.11d router from Zimbabwe (wherever)
*Could* have been broadcasting a no-no country code???
??
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They wake up, see no one else (for a little bit) and start singing their own national anthem?
Which scares the pants off of routers like mine? (OMG, "USSR")
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A hoary router,
in the library,
with a candlestick |
I don't understand this yet, but I wanted to make copious notes just in case:
"The full list of PSCs is: 5, 21, 37, 53, 69, 85, 101, 117, 133, 149, 165, 181, 197, 213, and 229" (Says some guy)
and somewhere else it says
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Someone somewhere said that the channel-numbers change,
spending upon the width |
The above dinky chart pairs up the channel numbers, something most router users cannot do (They must PICK a single channel.) The mercurial rules I was mentioning (somewhere) apply here.
Plus I gotta figure out what channel "Puncturing" is.
Apparently (I am totally not sure) the mac address can include data telling the systems to avoid certain channels, due to noise (or something)
But, assuming the phone is smart enough to figure things out for itself,
the Pair "101/117" is the one I should use, except different apps mention slightly different channel-numbers.
Lemme go double-check-see,
but I'd swear the App will say my channels do NOT match any rule.
In case I never come back, I'll forward this to the last entry I wrote, whatever it is.
Step 1, connect.
Step 2, run a damn app and look at the channel numbers it says I am using!
OK, It says in typical Greek, CH 101(111) so, NOT 117, hmm
Now let's try the PC:
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101, says Windows.
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"Turbo WiFi": Useless crap.
"Acrylic" is a godsend:
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Wait, so it's on 101, 111 but not 101/117
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I certainly do not know what channels I am using except MAYBE 111 appears to be important somehow.
It was really supposed to be 101, I'll doublecheck but, yeah.
Channel 101, 6ghz (from 105) elicits this message.
Say What?
DFS encroaching upon 6Ghz, or is it speaking of my 5Ghz settings (which are offline right now?)
Power-cycling the router "fixed" the DFS message.
And I'm not so dense as to force a non-PSC channel again (it may be what triggered the cryptic DFS message in the first place.)
So I set it to "101" and everyone seems happy.
For Now.
My best guess (and it's only a guess): The Pixel
Blacklisted the router and ignored the signal, until I changed the signal enough to get it to recognize it again.
There's also this:
My Wi-fi region is grayed out and cannot be changed by myself.
But SOMETHING changes it!
Yesterday it said "Canada" (I swear)
And today it says "United States"How does it know which region to dictate?
From neighboring routers, some of whom may have been confused by the outage?
I'm going waay out on a limb of a very tall tree here.
But since I cannot change the region myself,
Since the firmware is Up-to-date as of a couple days ago,
Something makes it change.
But that only becomes relevant If my PC card was Also unable to use it, and it did Fine at 6ghz.
Anecdotally, the most-restrictive router's default rules are overridden programmatically.
But then they sort of say, stuff is ignored, yada-blah, but I keep coming back to my PC network card running perfectly during the crisis. No, something about the signal the PHONE did not like, which has been fixed.
Fixed how?
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| 59x20, OK |
and if anything earthshaking turns up, I will edit this.
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| (Still reading) |
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I wanna add, concerns about noise/interference grow with the width of a channel.
... |
THEN The article sort of gets mathematical but the take-away seems to be, Wi-Fi is overrated (beeecause interference, phases of the moon, etc)
Airports, weather stations, the number of "Streams".
I hate it when articles get technical, obfuscating the obvious...we're not about to build routers, so we might not care what the individual (through the entire spectrum) channel widths are.
SOME stuff is great to know, other stuff is snorable.
My WAN link-speed is exciting, not something to dismiss, but like everyone everywhere, I just made sure the labels "2.5g" on the router matched up, to my PC and to the T-Mobile modem.
Actually, T-Mobile does not label their ethernet ports except to say that one is "1" and the other, "2".
WHY am I bringing this up?
LINK SPEED, which right this second is only 1000, not 2500.
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| A girl asked why I was only getting ~900Mbps download, and this could explain it. |
Now I need to go read f'ng tomes on the ethernet ports of the Arcadyan router.
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2xgbe means 2 1-gig ports,
(1 gig, not 2.5)
Is there another tome about "Aggregation"? |
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Abandon all (aggregation) hope.
But then why does everyone and their brother insist you buy 2.5Gbps equipment?
Well, that was never the primary problem; stuff is "pass/fail" not fast/slow. |
My router-to-router ethernet cable is Cat 6A, if any picky people wondered, but it's never been verified by me. It's thick, ugly, IDK, it should work.
Wi-Fi cheatsheet: The basics of current standards
Wi-Fi cheatsheet is too big to reprint, (and too full of arcane data,
that No one will test you on except maybe in Reddit)
I was hoping maybe to slice off a piece, but it isn't looking good.
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Not that I'm wanting yet another lecture,
BUT
you can see from the chart that axe vs "be",
"Be" is magically faster somehow.
This is the defining moment of WiFi7, and they sort of dropped it
(from the chart.)
Basically, (no folderol,)
Data is crammed into blocks ("packets", for the insanely picayune, geez) (Think, first-class letter from a cousin)
And the more you can cram, the more data per block "Packet" (happy?), magically faster (see?)
Now you prolly wonder WHY in hell they didn't apply meatier blocks
(better envelope-cramming)
To ALL standards, but then they wouldn't be standards anymore.
Still, it's a thought. |
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OFDM and QAM are related, I swear, but I don't do math.
It just *seems* that way to me. |
"Wifi Analyzer"
"(Open Source)"
By Vrem Software development.
Easy to read, shows Bandwidth (I think), anyway compared to the first one I tried, it's fantastic.
Now if they make a version for windows, that'd be perfect. I'm still looking.
The one I have now is on the phone.
IPV6 on T-Mobile is a nightmare even if you can hack through all their jargon.
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Relay/passthrough=Bust (read below)
Bridge mode (OMG) super bust
(sq-whut?)
Well anyway I've been reading platitudes and histories-of-the-world all evening, to no avail. |
The thing that worked was putting the T-Mobile thing onto the invited guest list. ("Access control")
Before that it was being stopped at the door.
It's bizarre sort of; the internet worked, just not any instructions for IPV6, although IPV4 worked just fine (That's what makes it bizarre)
Once stuff started working, it's true that "Pass through" was the answer, keeping the modem and the router happy.
With even *more* research I could probably have gotten one of the other modes to work as well, but this will do for now.
My trains of thought have cleared this station, new ones are moving in.
Like ok, I wanna run a "speed test" to bask in my newfound glory, wallow in my wifi-ishness (except I just reminded myself, I'm still on Wi-Fi and want to waste it on Wired speed)
But won't running speedtests eat up my new billing cycle?
How much does T-Mobile Really want, for unlimited data??
Unlimited-unlimited-data, not the marketing bullshit they only call unlimited?
and six more plans having to do with you using your phone outside your house.
Unlimited "PREMIUM" data (as opposed to great-unwashed poor tired hungry data?)
Not Net Neutral, says I, to which in my head they laugh and say (whatever business lawyers say,) "Neutral? Communist!!"
Nothing to brag about, but it's my personal best, hmm
And in the middle of a very very hot afternoon, uhm,
presumably thick with whatever-the-hell people do on hot afternoons (
Both tests are "wired," not "wiFi")
WPS?
Do you feel underdressed when approaching a new feature on a router?
Like you were asleep when they announced the feature?
How about a feature that came and went bye-bye while you were sleeping?
"Don't use WPS!
say the wise ones.
WP-whut?
Well, *&^%, if you're not supposed to use it, why did they include it?
https://community.netgear.com/t5/Nighthawk-with-WiFi-6-AX-and/WPS-link-in-web-interface-on-Nighthawk-RAX70-6-6gb/m-p/2337378
And, why is it so hard to use?
OK, All radios must be on and transmitting, and then the unusable feature wakes up. O!
OK, nevermind, go back to sleep.
A note to myself, why they don't use "Easy Connect" or whatever.
Is "Easy Connect" easy to get or do you need a different router?
Never Ever admit you're dumb as toast (in 2021):
https://www.google.com/search?q=%22wi-fi%22+%22easy+connect%22+%22netgear%22&oq=%22wi-fi%22+%22easy+connect%22+%22netgear%22A much more expensive Wi-Fi system from Netgear has "Easy connect"
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Questions for another day:
I've been concentrating so much on the 6Ghz frequency, I've neglected the other bands.
Specifically, ALL channels in the complete Wi-Fi spectrum are composed of 20Mhz channels, right? Because it's confusing when people start talking fast and using acronyms and shorthand-speak. An 80MHZ channel (eg) is really 4 twenty mhz channels, right? There must be another way to refer to "Channels" besides "Channels" (20 MHZ ones) and "Channels" (biggie 40, 80,160, 320)
Well, then there's Bands (2.4, 5, 6ghz)
I'm pretty sure 802.11be is not restricted to one band, so in theory,
a guy could maybe contrive a 2.4ghz, 20mhz-wide channel that talks a language foreign to the other users (They all being 802.11g,AC,AX, etc)
WHY you'd do this is a little hard to explain, it's like sitting on a bus and listening to foreign languages being talked loudly.
Plus you would be cramming more data per channel,
than anyone else around you,
PLUS you'd be getting long range wi-fi 7.
It's a thought.
Would it actually work?
I'm soo not sure.
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