New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Why is it so hard for devices to determine WiFi network health?
Ask HN: Why is it so hard for devices to determine WiFi network health?
11 by jc_811 | 4 comments on Hacker News.
I routinely run into the below scenarios: - As I’m leaving a zone with WiFi, the signal drops to 1 WiFi bar for way too much time and tries to remain on the network even though it no longer serves. Forces me to toggle WiFi off so my phone switches to celular data - It connects to a public WiFi I’ve used before, has full WiFi signal strength, but in reality there’s no service because to actually use the network I have to login, accept terms, or something along those lines. And if I don’t do that I’m unknowingly without service because my phone can’t tell this network isn’t actually working - Similar to point 1, my phone will pick up a WiFi network that’s far away (eg my home network while I’m at my neighbor’s house) and grasp to that weak unusable 1 bar of WiFi signal forcing me to toggle WiFi off (or just forget the network if it’s one I don’t commonly use) So, I’m wondering if there are any networking folks out there who can explain why this is a hard problem to solve. Ideally there’d be a piece of software that can determine “should I use this WiFi network or cellular data?”. Pinging a health check or something similar perhaps?
11 by jc_811 | 4 comments on Hacker News.
I routinely run into the below scenarios: - As I’m leaving a zone with WiFi, the signal drops to 1 WiFi bar for way too much time and tries to remain on the network even though it no longer serves. Forces me to toggle WiFi off so my phone switches to celular data - It connects to a public WiFi I’ve used before, has full WiFi signal strength, but in reality there’s no service because to actually use the network I have to login, accept terms, or something along those lines. And if I don’t do that I’m unknowingly without service because my phone can’t tell this network isn’t actually working - Similar to point 1, my phone will pick up a WiFi network that’s far away (eg my home network while I’m at my neighbor’s house) and grasp to that weak unusable 1 bar of WiFi signal forcing me to toggle WiFi off (or just forget the network if it’s one I don’t commonly use) So, I’m wondering if there are any networking folks out there who can explain why this is a hard problem to solve. Ideally there’d be a piece of software that can determine “should I use this WiFi network or cellular data?”. Pinging a health check or something similar perhaps?
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