[G4] Airport interference

[Perry The Cynic]

--On Friday, April 25, 2003 1:16 AM -0400 Todd Flashner 
<tflash at earthlink.net> wrote:

> Wondering how the airport (and/or 3rd party wireless products) stand up to
> interference from microwave ovens and 2.4GHz phones.

For gradual interference, Airport does fairly well; it slows down (via 
resends) but doesn't usually break down. Actually, some sources (e.g. badly 
shielded electric power motors) can blanket the spectrum enough to make 
Airport unusable, but that's definitely unusual (and bound to mess up other 
things in your home too).

Do remember that interference goes both ways, though. Airport is resilient, 
but consumer devices are often not. 2.4GHz phones may well lose channel 
lock and fail even while Airport slows down and survives. Cheap 2.4GHz 
wireless video links can "snow out" when airport streams data.

> When interference is present does it merely slow the transfer rate down or
> will it corrupt data? IOW, if I'm trsfering a large file, like and
> application, or video clip, across the network while another 2.4GHz gadget
> is in use what is the likely outcome upon my transfer?

It depends on what protocol is used underneath. Anything based on TCP will 
be resilient and continue working (albeit slowly). It would take more than 
a minute of complete interference to break a TCP connection. This takes 
care of HTTP (web), FTP, etc. UDP based protocols are iffier; unfortunately 
that includes DNS (name resolution). Video streaming is latency sensitive; 
if you lose lots of packets, you may experience jerks or audio drops. But 
remember that if you stream off the internet, airport is some 5x faster 
than your internet connection, so you have plenty of bandwidth to spare.

Cheers
  -- perry
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Perry The Cynic                                             perry at cynic.org
To a blind optimist, an optimistic realist must seem like an Accursed Cynic.
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