(at a company I used to work at we once had to abandon a 5GHz product when we discovered that an appreciable numbers of customers would take it home and not be able to make it work reliably - it would have been a support nightmare)
I've hit 'forget' on my home 5Ghz network because it's just unstable upstairs, and my phone isn't smart enough to pick the network with the stronger signal for some reason.
the new townhouses being built near by in MV are exactly this.
Older chicken wire for internal walls (ie pre-drywall) is the problem at 5GHz (and I'm sure to a lesser extent at 2.4GHz)
If someone came at me with a deauth attack I would be incredibly amused and probably make a new friend.
* lrvick knocks on guilty neighbor's door.
* guilty party's non-technical brother answers
Brother: Yeah?
lrvick: Hey, I notice you guys have an antenna on the east side of your roof pointed at my house, is that yours?
Brother: Huh? No, that's my sister's.
lrvick: Is she around? It's messing with my Netflix and I'd like to talk to her about it.
Brother: Oh, um, yeah. hold on...
* Brother leans away from door into house and shouts inside, "Hey sis! Neighbor at the door for you!"
* lrvick waits.
* Guilty sister walks up to door
Sister: Can I help you?
lrvick: Is that your antenna on the east side your roof?
Sister: Yes.
lrvick: So, the past month, someone's been messing with my wifi with deauth attacks.
Sister: *mildly indignant* I'm not doing that.
lrvick: Well, The past week, I spread a bunch of sensors around my property and a couple of the neighbors and logged the 2.4Ghz spectrum for the area. I correlated everything and triangulated the attacks to that antenna of yours, which just so happens to be aimed at my house. Here's the logs and spectrum heat maps if you'd like to see.
* lrvick offers Sister the printouts he brought with him.
* Sister takes, looks them over and starts to get that embarrassed flush in the cheeks and ears characteristic of someone who knows they're busted.
Sister: I mean --
lrvick: I'm actually not even mad. It's kind of illegal, but it's also ballsy and I respect that. But I'm not the kind of person to go snitching to the FCC first thing. You do know if we're competing for spectrum, you can come talk to me, and we can coordinate a plan over a couple beers, right?
* Three months later lrvick and Sister are co-presenting a talk at the local hackerspace on counterattacks to deauth attacks.
WiFi goes two ways - the AP talks to the client, and the client has to talk back. Clients don't have the high transmitting power that an AP has, and actually the AP won't need this high power. After all, if you use a bullhorn to reach your backyard, but the guy over there can't talk back, there is still no communication.
The solution would be to set the AP's to a lower transmitting power, enough to cover the house but not the street.
This is a lot to ask, but.. what are all those things?! (My house has 0..I think)
I think it's safe to assume that 80+ wireless devices puts you in the top few percentiles. So while not unheard of, not "normal" exactly. And even less common in dense apartment environments where having more than 3-4 rooms is unusual.
I've heard of at least a handful of people that have done this and more this year alone.
Cameras in each room? It's a privacy nightmare and I frankly don't trust my equipment, my network, nor myself to set that up safely. Especially if the cameras I own are any indication of how the rest work (hard-wired default passwords, security flaws, upload of FTP credentials to some Chinese business' servers, constant attempts at leaking data through DNS lookups when regular traffic is blocked, etc).
Thermostats and humidity sensors make sense if each room has it's own heaters/air conditioners, though.
Of course, the first thing I would make sure is that they don't connect to the internet or any wireless network. So I can't imagine the ones the GP is talking about being anything other than a privacy nightmare.
By the way, what happened to data over electricity wires? It's the obvious way to set the home automation stuff.
LAN over electricity wires is a proper pain in the ass. It's not like you can plug in a "router" to one outlet and have network in all others. It only goes to the group that particular outlet is in, so unless your wiring is made in a particular way, which existing houses aren't since it's not an established standard.
One would need a large diversity of products to make it work, what puts it out of reach of any small manufacturer. But why the large home automation sellers insist on their "you must add this huge panel, pass all those wires around, and can't retrofit any new device once the layout is settled" technologies is a mystery to me.
A few phones, a computer or two, TV, a few wifi speakers and a miscellaneous light or temperature monitor. It’s not hard to exceed 10.
Having said that, if I had the money, I'd totally automate everything in my house as well. It's just too much fun not to.
Some of IoT device you list I’d actively avoid, but thinks like robot vacuums is really useful.
a) Fire detectors. 13 units including the central. (Basically one in every room where something may conceivably catch fire.)
b) Leakage sensors in any room with faucets or washers in it - 7 units.
c) Kitchen appliances - 5 (Cook top, two ovens, fridge, freezer)
d) HVAC - 7 units (Central ventilation. Heat pump. A handful of electrical panel heaters.)
It quickly adds up - at least if you live in the boonies where land is effectively free.
Interestingly, at one of the largest Danish chains, it's listed under "American fridges", most of those DO have wifi. If you just pick: "Fridges", then none of them have wifi.
That aside, I fail to see any reason why any user would want their cook top to be accessible via an app.
On the contrary, if the cook top is switched on, I very much prefer to be in the immediate vicinity.
They have backup batteries and form their own mesh network which works independently of the main WiFi.
If the central unit disappears, the detectors still all go off if one is triggered. (Central unit offers app interface and optional 4G fallback network connection.)
I.. ahh, don't think so.
I graduated from Software Engineering in 2003, and recently worked for Canada's biggest Telco for 4 years. I didn't even know half of the IoT's on your list even existed !
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Sengled-Multicolor-2000-6500K-Equival...
There is a wireless LAN in my space, all devices that need connectivity should just use that LAN.
More hubs are more headaches. You need to not lose their power adapters when moving, you need to find a place to put them that is within range of all your devices (may not be as easy as Wi-Fi since they may be using other bands that don't transmit as well or have FCC restrictions, and I already have Wi-Fi mesh network everywhere, you can't easily mesh arbitrary protocols on arbitrary frequencies), you need to set them up using typically a shitty spyware phone app, you need to keep their firmware updated in addition to device firmware. And you also need a hub for every brand of appliance you buy. A Philips Hue hub will not work with some other brand of lights. Whereas you can mix and match hub-less lights and you don't need to have a pile of hubs on a shelf somewhere.
But knowing the state of IoT they'd probably take 3-5 seconds after turning on to negotiate connection since the power had been cut, and they'll default to blinding white at full brightness during that time.
I'd much rather have IoT light switches.
It's definitely not normal.
I don't feel the need to have a single "smart" light bulb or outlet. If I'm turning a light on or off, it's because I'm leaving or entering the room, in which case I'm walking by the light switch anyways.
I agree with your sentiment. It requires communication. De-authing is not going to solve the problem just make enemies if they work out what the OP is doing.
It does seem like getting some 5GHz hardware would be a relatively straightforward solution but the poster is unwilling to do that. My take is if you want good quality home networking then you need to be willing to pay the price to get that within the constraints of where you live: sometimes that means spending more money than you might like. Such is life.
I'd like to know what 120-ish devices they're running. That's a lot of devices.
To me, the problems seem to be those devices use too many channels, continously?
I recently tried checking some TPMS sensors that I bought with rtl_433 and was amazed by how many sensors can get along just fine in my 10 story appartment buiding, but those messages are really short and only transmitted once every couple of minutes.
What does that gain exactly? The 5ghz band is so crowded around my apartment that most devices can't connect at all. Is there some fundamental reason it should work better?
I used to fantasize as a kid about doing this to a satellite. Phased array of cheap magnetrons and all that. I doubt that would work though.
Also circa 1kW not a safe thing to be spraying around, I think fleshy things might well be damaged.
You mean... basically everyone?
I have to admit I am biased by doing some microwave band rf engineering stuff professionally, so my perspective on it is perhaps a bit more critical than others. You could say I've seen how the sausage is made...
I've heard crazy stories about home installers and contractors that didn't really know what they were doing. Everyone starts somewhere, and it's not always with our own home nor with a mentor that actually knows what they are doing.
Or, it's just some person that did it for their own home but went way too far and when they finally got it working (sort of) decided they really didn't want to touch it again for a while, because it was a pain.
Truthfully, either of those sound kinda likely to me.
The number of clients should not be an issue, the half-duplex shouldn't be as well...