A deep dive into why Wi-Fi kind of sucks
I build public Wi-Fi networks, you've probably used one of them. AMA if you have Wi-Fi questions.To say it "sucks" is a bit harsh. It's delivering multiple hundreds of Mbps to you via an unlicensed contention-based medium.  The air interface is like sending packets over a noisy Ethernet hub; it's impressive it works as well as it does.  That said, this article's a good primer on some of the protocol's fundamental challenges.In the coming years we'll hear more about 802.11ax, which is thankfully focused on efficiency vs. raw numbers, but likely won't be ratified until 2019/2020.