Known Performance Issues Are Prevalent in Consumer WiFi Routers

WiFi is a crucial part of internet infrastructure. Performance issues are common in WiFi networks, but well-tested solutions exist for some known problems. In this work, we look for evidence of known WiFi issues in chipsets commonly found in consumer WiFi routers. We document serious performance problems in most of the tested WiFi chipsets and point to existing solutions for the detected problems. The prevalence of these problems has implications for network management, network research, and for users and creators of performance-sensitive network applications running over WiFi. To our knowledge, this is the most comprehensive documentation of these issues to date.