alt Hacker NewsAn impressive attempt to summarise Wi-Fi which is a very deep topic. However I think the executive summary already missed the most critical thing about Wi-Fi:
only 1 transmitter at a time per channel - across all WLANs, yours and your neighbours, with no deterministic way to avoid collisions.
It's a shared medium and it's not even half duplex, unlike the dedicated full duplex you would typically get with an ethernet cable to a switch port.
The fact that Wi-Fi achieves what it does with this limitation, and how it co-ordinates the dance of multiple unknown clients using the same medium - and in the presence of other RF technologies to boot - is indeed an incredible technology story, but this achilles heel is the single most defining thing about Wi-Fi performance.
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The multi access story is improving, though.
OFDMA on wifi7/802.11be: https://blogs.cisco.com/networking/wi-fi-7-mru-ofdma-turning...
Well the newer WiFi standards on 6Ghz support a lot more channels. Not a perfect work around by any means but it does significantly reduce congestion.
> only 1 transmitter at a time per channel - across all WLANs, yours and your neighbours, with no deterministic way to avoid collisions.
That’s not correct. You and your neighbor can use the same channel at the same time. On your network, the transmissions of the other network appear will appear as noise. As long as the other devices are far enough away, however, your devices will still be able to make out their own signal.