News Single slow user can throttle wi-fi network

From New Scientist:

A single user with a slow connection to a wireless network can significantly degrade the overall service to everyone using that wi-fi access station, new research shows.

Researchers from the Institut d'Informatique et Mathématiques Appliquées de Grenoble, part of France's CNRS, studied the performance of networks using the popular wi-fi standard 802.11b.

They found that if a single user's connection is slowed, perhaps because they are far from the access station, every user can suffer reduced data transfer speeds. "That computer may degrade the nominal bit rate," Duda told New Scientist.

This is because of the way bandwidth is allocated to each user by the wi-fi standard's access protocol, called Carrier Sense Multiple Access/Collision Avoidance (CSMA/CA).

If just one person is unable to connect at the optimal speed, the CSMA/CA protocol throttles back the maximum connection speed for all. This guarantees that any user, no matter what their access speed, can get stable access to the network.

Full story here

 

no systems perfect