Did you know USB 3.0+ connections and devices can interfere with nearby 2.4 GHz wireless signals? So if you, for example, dared to use a second USB port on your gaming PC while also using a wireless gaming headset with a dongle, the other device could cause your gaming headset to intermittently lose connection for a few seconds in a way that is confusing and aggravating? Did you know an external hard drive connected via USB 3.0+ can cause your wifi performance to degrade? Did you know that using your USB ports as intended can cause everything to go fucking haywire and that searching for the root cause will send you down a million unrelated rabbit holes as you gradually lose your sanity
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in reply to @amydentata's post:
i didn't know any of this and now i am screaming because i am pretty sure this is the answer to some Weird Shit that has happened to me and i-- AAAAAUuauauugghh
time is a flat circle. the drawer of shitty ferrite chokes is useful again
Well now I feel vindicated.
I had to upgrade the storage on my NAS because no matter what I did, the model of computer I was using for homelab stuff absolutely could not reliably use HDDs in USB 3.0 enclosures, data would be corrupted and I was getting very lucky with the fancy filesystem fixing problems. Changing the cable didn't work, spreading the drives over multiple adapters didn't work, adding a USB 3.0 card and plugging in via that card didn't work (which was the spooky part that had me like what the fuck), throttling or nerfing the drive performance, NOTHING... And the enclosure worked fine in another computer!
The only solution was to Use Something Else, so I ended up getting SSDs that fit inside the computer and plug straight into SATA ports and I never had another problem again. It's also dramatically faster so like this problem did me a favor but why the hell did it happen at all.
Yeah this is basically my situation. I'm gonna have to internally install the SSDs so I can use my headset reliably again
So I have an idea about why this might happen.
IIRC 5Gbit USB 3 is actually 2.5Gb up + 2.5Gb down.
The 2.4GHz band goes from 2.4 to 2.5GHz. Notice the overlap?
I think it's leaking noise from the USB signaling overpowering the wifi, but I could be wrong.
If that's correct then I'm curious why only some machines are affected and there isn't any obvious reason why one works and another doesn't...
It depends on if the chassis/motherboard manufacturer bothered to include an microwave-blocking filter or not. Most digital electronics use decoupling capacitors to suppress high-frequency noise on their power lines, but that's mostly aimed at stuff in the 1-100MHz range, and so might let a substantial part of the 2.4GHz band leak through. Of course, some cheap devices might just be laid out in such a way that they accidentally block the noise anyhow, so there's not a strong correlation between fancyness and USB link integrity
Also probably highly dependent on the location of the USB ports vs antenna in/attached to your computer. Plug a dongle for a wireless headset in right next to an in-use USB 3.0 port and it will have a much worse time than if it is at the furthest possible port, since we are operating in the near field for 2.4 GHz radio here.
Slight correction: USB 3.0 is 5Gbit/s up + 5Gbit/s down. But, the 5Gbit/s digital waveform has a 2.5GHz fundamental frequency.
Holy fucking shit I have been having this happen to me with my workbench PC for YEARS now and I always just thought it was the USB bus being saturated on my shitty little NUC style computer!!! What the fuck!!!
Either way, thanks for finally solving this mystery for me. Gobsmacked that this is even possible.
YES because god I had this exact fucking problem starting with a weird wireless headset long ago, and once even, a fucking garbage laptop that had the wifi antenna crammed next to all the interface busses and plugging anything into USB made the wifi get sad AAAAA
in reply to @amydentata's post:
wait could this be the reason my Xbox wireless dongle thing never works for more than 5 seconds? and I had to run a series of hidden usb extensions from my computer to my sofa?
I have like 10 USB 3.0 devices plugged at all times...
I was reminded about this just yesterday when my Logitech wireless trackball started lagging and dropping out while I was doing a big file copy
my computer will refuse to open certain programs or go to sleep with certain usb devices connected
LMAO this happened to someone I know, they thought sleep was just broken on their computer but they had never once used it without an old USB DAC connected to it, it was plugged in at all times and breaking sleep
Wait! I actually had this issue with my wireless mouse a long time ago, and i just thought it was getting old.
For better or worse, i broke the 3.0 port on my motherboard a while ago. So yay for me
This is actually why several dongles advise not to be plugged directly into the ports on the machine. Steam even shipped the dongles for steam controllers with a usb extension cord and hub for it to move it away from the other ports. I had SOOO many problems with this back in the day, but now I have all my dongles on extentions.
did you know that in windows 10, editing the track information on an mp3 has a chance to completely obliterate the file? and that it can also affect multiple files at once if you're, for example, trying to add an artist name to an album? and that you CANNOT undo the destruction via undo? because i sure learned that recently
back up your files! you're one glitch away from losing them
I have a MacBook I use to sync iPods and the old version of iTunes on it has a similar bug. I have to check repeatedly that the album art did not get corrupted while tagging files because if one of the files has a corrupted album art then the iPods will invariably pick the one corrupted file to be the art for the whole album
Yeeeaaaaaaaaaah. https://www.mp3tag.de/en/ is the only way to tag (outside of file generation).
I will note, sometimes it can even unfuck files that have had tag related corruption.
Hells yeah, glad to have one I can recommend to folks on Linux!
It also works on Windows, though i haven't tried it there. I only used it on Linux and Android. The home page a link to Windows binaries!
I remember whitequark tweeting through thunderbolt and wifi troubles years and years ago. I always wondered how common problems like this were, and if people just blamed them on sunspots or whatever.
Absolutely not surprised, if you are pushing multiple GBit, you are going to make some noise in the 2.4 GHz band
[edited] i THINK this is a side-effect of how cohost processes images after they've been uploaded, which shows up with very highly compressed jpgs
This nonsense is exactly why I prefer wires for everything if I can help it
If it's plugged in, it's guaranteed to work no matter what, and I don't have to worry about it suddenly losing connection because oops tech makers are bloody idiots
