WiFi Questions from a dummy

[BoulderPlayz]

Hello Internet!

 

I'm just a learning teen and live in a place with... let's say not the greatest of WiFi Speeds

 

And I've always thought... "What's stopping ISP's from simply Making their WiFi better?" 

"Why can't they make Gigabit speeds... everywhere?"

 

Is it expensive? 

Too Labour intensive?

I just wanna know!

[TwilightRavens]

9 minutes ago, BoulderPlayz said:

Hello Internet!

 

I'm just a learning teen and live in a place with... let's say not the greatest of WiFi Speeds

 

And I've always thought... "What's stopping ISP's from simply Making their WiFi better?" 

"Why can't they make Gigabit speeds... everywhere?"

 

Is it expensive? 

Too Labour intensive?

I just wanna know!

Because its all about profit, they won’t provide faster if there’s no competition.

 

Gigabit requires fibre optic cables, fibre optic cables are really expense, most companies don’t wanna pay for it if what they have works. Not only the cost of the cable but the people they have to employ to lay it. Also if no one complains to them, or a very small user base do, then they won’t really care as they can milk the “cash cow” as they see fit.

[Drama Lama]

7 minutes ago, BoulderPlayz said:

Hello Internet!

 

I'm just a learning teen and live in a place with... let's say not the greatest of WiFi Speeds

 

And I've always thought... "What's stopping ISP's from simply Making their WiFi better?" 

"Why can't they make Gigabit speeds... everywhere?"

 

Is it expensive? 

Too Labour intensive?

I just wanna know!

It’s often not the WiFi but the internet cables often your internet runs via old telephone cables that were originally not designed for internet if you wanted gigabit internet you’d have to run new fiberoptic cable and that cost( you now hiring people who run install an bury the cables ) but that is only one aspect another is simply profit. Why run new expensive cables if people can use old copper cables 

[akio123008]

6 minutes ago, BoulderPlayz said:

"What's stopping ISP's from simply Making their WiFi better?"

The first useful thing to know is, ISPs aren't responsible for your wifi. An ISP delivers the internet to your house, from that point it's up to you. Sure ISPs may provide some crappy wifi access point with their service, but they technically don't have to.

[Lurick]

12 minutes ago, TwilightRavens said:

Because its all about profit, they won’t provide faster if there’s no competition.

 

Gigabit requires fibre optic cables, fibre optic cables are really expense, most companies don’t wanna pay for it if what they have works. Not only the cost of the cable but the people they have to employ to lay it. Also if no one complains to them, or a very small user base do, then they won’t really care as they can milk the “cash cow” as they see fit.

Gigabit doesn't require fiber to the premise. Sure it might be the best way but you can do gigabit or above with coax HOWEVER that also requires a lot of infrastructure replacements and when ISPs lack competition to drive those upgrades they just don't care. Coax with DOCSIS 3.1 or the new DOCSIS 4.0 do 10Gbit and with 4.0 they bring in bidirectional speed support so you'd be able to do 1000/1000 as opposed to 1000/40 like most ISPs offer now over coax.

[akio123008]

In case your interested in why ISPs aren't easily capable of delivering gigabit to your front door, it has to do with the properties of copper wire:

 

Connection throughput depends on bandwidth, that is the size of the range of frequencies used, (so the maximum frequency minus the minimum frequency) The minimum frequency a copper cable carries is 0Hz (DC power). That means the bandwitdh is equal to the maximum frequency¹ (because fmax - 0 = fmax)

 

Now it turns out that a copper cable acts like a low-pass filter, meaning high frequency signals attenuate more, giving you a certain limit to how high you can make the frequency of the signal. At some point the attenuation is too significant and your receiver won't be able to decode it anymore.

 

Now here's the important thing; that upper frequency limit (although it's not really a hard limit) depends very much on the length of the cable. For a very short run the upper limit may be quite high, which is why you can do gigabit or even 10 gigabit over copper cable LAN just fine. However, for a long cable (say more than 500m) the upper limit decreases to the point where your bandwidth will no longer allow for those kinds of speeds.

 

The longer the cable run, the lower the upper limit frequency, therefore the smaller the bandwidth and the lower the speed.

 

FIbre optic cables don't have this low-pass filter effect as they work differently (they're actually a wave guide) In a cable like this you can achieve larger bandwitdths over longer distances, making it possible to get gigabit over many kilometers of distance.

 

4 minutes ago, Lurick said:

you can do gigabit or above with coax 

Same here; while true, it depends on how long the run of coax is. It's better than DSL for sure, but it won't do gigabit over the distances that fibre will do.

 

¹ I know that the lower limit is not 0Hz but it simplifies things a lot.

[Donut417]

3 hours ago, BoulderPlayz said:

And I've always thought... "What's stopping ISP's from simply Making their WiFi better?" 

 

ISP's don't come up with the standards of WiFi. The WiFi alliance and the IEEE are the ones who nail down the standards. Also, governments are involved in the aspect of setting aside spectrum that can be used. For example 2.4 and 5 Ghz do not require a license from the government to use it, as long as you're using it within the letter of the law. Thats why many wireless devices use 2.4 and 5 Ghz. Another thing the government sets is the max power levels for transmitting. As a result you are pretty much limited by those transmission regulations. To be clear most ISP's use internet gateways which are Routers and modems in one box. These devices have issues with overheating or the hardware is not strong enough to handle the level of usage. They use gateways because they need to have standard hardware that their barely trained over the phone techs can help people with fixing any issues that crop up.  Keep in mind WiFi and Internet are two separate things. To many people can't seem to separate them out. You can use Wifi without having internet service, you would just use it for local transfers on your network. 

 

As far as Internet concerned ISP's can make the service better but won't. Why? Because over subscribing the network is how they make boat loads of cash. 

 

3 hours ago, BoulderPlayz said:

hy can't they make Gigabit speeds... everywhere?"

Fiber Optics are expensive to run in rural areas, because you need a certain population density to make it profitable. Even cable internet(coax) uses Fiber to the node, and with Docsis 3.1 more Fiber is needed, as the Fiber gets closer and closer to the home. While coax is cheaper to run it also has some limitations. Unlike xDSL service Coax signals can be amplified, which is generally how most cable cos will do it. BUT companies like Comcast are doing the Node +0 approach. Meaning they are running more Fiber and more nodes and eliminating amps on their network. This means the signal doesn't go as far, but as a result we get a less congested network hopefully and faster speeds. 

 

If your stuck with aDSL well that's not even considered high speed internet under the current FCC definition. While vDSL is better its still maxes out at like 100 Mbps in most cases. We are at the end of what phone lines can offer. But it won't stop the phone company from trying to push more and more life out of them.