The 802.11 wireless standards were primarily designed as an adaptation and an extension of the existing Ethernet (802.3) standard. Hence, while Ethernet is commonly referred to as the LAN standard, the 802.11 family (Figure 6-1) is correspondingly commonly known as the wireless LAN (WLAN). However, for the history geeks, technically much of the Ethernet protocol was inspired by the ALOHAnet protocol, which was the first public demonstration of a wireless network developed in 1971 at the University of Hawaii. In other words, we have come full circle.

Figure 6-1. 802.3 (Ethernet) and 802.11 (WiFi) data and physical layers

The reason why this distinction is important is due to the mechanics of how the ALOHAnet, and consequently Ethernet and WiFi protocols, schedule all communication. Namely, they all treat the shared medium, regardless of whether it is a wire or the radio waves, as a "random access channel," which means that there is no central process, or scheduler, that controls who or which device is allowed to transmit data at any point in time. Instead, each device decides on its own, and all devices must work together to guarantee good shared channel performance.

The Ethernet standard has historically relied on a probabilistic carrier sense multiple access (CSMA) protocol, which is a complicated name for a simple "listen before you speak" algorithm. In brief, if you have data to send:

Of course, it takes time to propagate any signal; hence collisions can still occur. For this reason, the Ethernet standard also added collision detection (CSMA/CD): if a collision is detected, then both parties stop transmitting immediately and sleep for a random interval (with exponential backoff). This way, multiple competing senders won’t synchronize and restart their transmissions simultaneously.

WiFi follows a very similar but slightly different model: due to hardware limitations of the radio, it cannot detect collisions while sending data. Hence, WiFi relies on collision avoidance (CSMA/CA), where each sender attempts to avoid collisions by transmitting only when the channel is sensed to be idle, and then sends its full message frame in its entirety. Once the WiFi frame is sent, the sender waits for an explicit acknowledgment from the receiver before proceeding with the next transmission.

There are a few more details, but in a nutshell that’s all there is to it: the combination of these techniques is how both Ethernet and WiFi regulate access to the shared medium. In the case of Ethernet, the medium is a physical wire, and in the case of WiFi, it is the shared radio channel.

In practice, the probabilistic access model works very well for lightly loaded networks. In fact, we won’t show the math here, but we can prove that to get good channel utilization (minimize number of collisions), the channel load must be kept below 10%. If the load is kept low, we can get good throughput without any explicit coordination or scheduling. However, if the load increases, then the number of collisions will quickly rise, leading to unstable performance of the entire network.

The 802.11b standard launched WiFi into everyday use, but as with any popular technology, the IEEE 802 Standards Committee has not been idle and has actively continued to release new protocols (Table 6-1) with higher throughput, better modulation techniques, multistreaming, and many other new features.

Today, the "b" and "g" standards are the most widely deployed and supported. Both utilize the unlicensed 2.4 GHz ISM band, use 20 MHz of bandwidth, and support at most one radio data stream. Depending on your local regulations, the transmit power is also likely fixed at a maximum of 200 mW. Some routers will allow you to adjust this value but will likely override it with a regional maximum.

So how do we increase performance of our future WiFi networks? The "n" and upcoming "ac" standards are doubling the bandwidth from 20 to 40 MHz per channel, using higher-order modulation, and adding multiple radios to transmit multiple streams in parallel—multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO). All combined, and in ideal conditions, this should enable gigabit-plus throughput with the upcoming "ac" wireless standard.

By this point you should be skeptical of the notion of "ideal conditions," and for good reason. The wide adoption and popularity of WiFi networks also created one of its biggest performance challenges: inter- and intra-cell interference. The WiFi standard does not have any central scheduler, which also means that there are no guarantees on throughput or latency for any client.

The new WiFi Multimedia (WMM) extension enables basic Quality of Service (QoS) within the radio interface for latency-sensitive applications (e.g., voice, video, best effort), but few routers, and even fewer deployed clients, are aware of it. In the meantime, all traffic both within your own network, and in nearby WiFi networks must compete for access for the same shared radio resource.

Your router may allow you to set some Quality of Service (QoS) policy for clients within your own network (e.g., maximum total data rate per client, or by type of traffic), but you nonetheless have no control over traffic generated by other, nearby WiFi networks. The fact that WiFi networks are so easy to deploy is what made them ubiquitous, but the widespread adoption has also created a lot of performance problems: in practice it is now not unusual to find several dozen different and overlapping WiFi networks (Figure 6-2) in any high-density urban or office environment.

Figure 6-2. inSSIDer visualization of overlapping WiFi networks (2.4 and 5 GHz bands)

The most widely used 2.4 GHz band provides three non-overlapping 20 MHz radio channels: 1, 6, and 11 (Figure 6-3). Although even this assignment is not consistent among all countries. In some, you may be allowed to use higher channels (13, 14), and in others you may be effectively limited to an even smaller subset. However, regardless of local regulations, what this effectively means is that the moment you have more than two or three nearby WiFi networks, some must overlap and hence compete for the same shared bandwidth in the same frequency ranges.

Figure 6-3. Wikipedia illustration of WiFi channels in the 2.4 GHz band

Your 802.11g client and router may be capable of reaching 54 Mbps, but the moment your neighbor, who is occupying the same WiFi channel, starts streaming an HD video over WiFi, your bandwidth is cut in half, or worse. Your access point has no say in this arrangement, and that is a feature, not a bug!

Unfortunately, latency performance fares no better. There are no guarantees for the latency of the first hop between your client and the WiFi access point. In environments with many overlapping networks, you should not be surprised to see high variability, measured in tens and even hundreds of milliseconds for the first wireless hop. You are competing for access to a shared channel with every other wireless peer.

The good news is, if you are an early adopter, then there is a good chance that you can significantly improve performance of your own WiFi network. The 5 GHz band, used by the new 802.11n and 802.11ac standards, offers both a much wider frequency range and is still largely interference free in most environments. That is, at least for the moment, and assuming you don’t have too many tech-savvy friends nearby, like yourself! A dual-band router, which is capable of transmitting both on the 2.4 GHz and the 5 GHz bands will likely offer the best of both worlds: compatibility with old clients limited to 2.4 GHz, and much better performance for any client on the 5 GHz band.

Putting it all together, what does this tell us about the performance of WiFi?

There is no such thing as "typical" WiFi performance. The operating range will vary based on the standard, location of the user, used devices, and the local radio environment. If you are lucky, and you are the only WiFi user, then you can expect high throughput, low latency, and low variability in both. But once you are competing for access with other peers, or nearby WiFi networks, then all bets are off—expect high variability for latency and bandwidth.

The preceding performance characteristics of WiFi may paint an overly stark picture against it. In practice, it seems to work "well enough" in most cases, and the simple convenience that WiFi enables is hard to beat. In fact, you are now more likely to have a device that requires an extra peripheral to get an Ethernet jack for a wired connection than to find a computer, smartphone, or tablet that is not WiFi enabled.

With that in mind, it is worth considering whether your application can benefit from knowing about and optimizing for WiFi networks.