“Why hasn’t anyone designed a building like this before?”
“Oh.”
“You know what would be totally sick? What if we made our building’s roof into a matrix of inverted metal parabolas?”
Is this going to be the first building on KilledByGoogle.com?
At launch, Google’s VP of Real Estate & Workplace Services, David Radcliffe, said the site “marks the first time we developed one of our own major campuses, and the process gave us the chance to rethink the very idea of an office.” The result is a wild tent-like structure with a striking roofline made up of swooping square sections.
In other words, they erected themselves a circus tent. Ironic.
I kept reading it as Daniel Radcliffe and I was like why the HECK is he working there?
Hilarious in a way…
Of course Google would have problems with the very foundation of a technology needed for business when choosing to design the building themselves.
Like, they couldn’t consult with a professional.
Seems very… on brand for Google now.
Sometimes it becomes clear a company is trying to do too much when these problems manifest.
I appreciate that the “Gradient Canopy” roof is covered in solar cells and collects rainwater while also letting in natural light, so maybe the problem is they didn’t do enough by not adding in some shielding, too.
That is really really cool
Sounds like bad WiFi design not building design.
I could imagine that those concave metal roof sheets reflect the electromagnetic waves all over the place, causing tons of interference…
Yeah I’m thinking that’s most likely the problem.
Are they not equipped to deal with that? You’d think large metal surfaces are pretty common, so it’d be a bigger issue if so.
Well, straight metal surfaces are a whole different story from concave metal surfaces.
The former causes interference in a line in one specific direction, with roughly the width and height of said metal surface.
Concave metal surfaces on the other hand, can easily blast a whole room, depending on how concave they are.And I’m a bit out of my water here, but I believe, modern WiFi does try to
- direct its EM-waves towards the recipient, rather than send in all directions.
- adjust the strength of its signal, so that it reaches the specific recipient and not that much more beyond that.
- resolve multipath issues, so where a recipient can be reached in two or more ways, e.g. directly and through a reflecting metal surface. It can attempt to do so with 1) and 2).
But yeah, ultimately this can’t be an exact science. Recipients move around. Interferences move around. You still need additional EM-waves to advertise yourself as WiFi to disconnected devices. A reflecting interference may be situated behind a recipient, where you do need to send signals to.
And of course, no one expects
the Spanish InquisitionGoogle’s house of mirrors, where any misdirected EM-wave will interfere with everything else in the room. That just ramps up any imperfections in WiFi by a lot…
Bad building layout could cause multipath issues though.
Shit where I work the cell service is terrible inside the building but the moment you walk outside the building it’s perfect
Our building has a wavy metal roof and wavy metal siding
Edit: Spleling
LoL mroe spleling.
This is what mimo uses to speed things up.
This doesn’t sound like a serious problem for a company like Google. They can afford to solve it by brute force — just put a Wi-Fi hotspot in every single room.
That would be problematic on many levels.
Not really. Radios can be tuned if you’re talking about interference.
why is that?
Which is also what you want really, if you have everything on WiFi. High density setups with really small cells so you can reuse channels. A building with high signal attenuation helps with that.
Having said that I’d never want to work for a company like Google.
PS:
Bad radio propagation means Googlers are making do with Ethernet cables, phone hotspots.
“Making do with Ethernet cables”? For me that’s still the most reliable and secure way of doing networking on computers. You’re at a desk, why not have a cable there. For mobile devices, sure. At my work every docking station has a cabled connection luckily.
I’m not even sure that would be a bad solution for us. Can something like a Raspberry Pi work as a hotspot?
I wonder what exactly it is that’s messing with the signal.
My house was built in 1967. It’s a solid house. The walls are plaster and they have chicken wire in them. WiFi is a nightmare. I ended up running a few hard lines and using a mesh system.
Any computer with a network port and a wifi adapter can be turned into a wifi access point.
But there are cheaper and better alternatives than a raspberry pi
But if they spend millions on WiFi hotspots then how they can pay the dividends to the shareholders? If you listen to them the company is barely profitable and more cuts are needed
I would think the metal parts of roof might be reflecting signals all around the building, which would cause interference between devices. (there is a limited number of WiFi channels), it might work better with a plastic roof, or one with RF absorbers.
Multiple paths to the same device is one of the ways MIMO allows for faster WiFi. If the WiFi setup has been tweaked for the environment, this doesn’t need to be a problem.
Google suggesting using phones as hotspots makes the interference suggestion more unlikely, I think. I suspect they just haven’t done a good job at setting up their access points, which can be a challenge for large buildings (but shouldn’t be a problem for a company like Google with their own in-house WiFi engineers).
Then again, this being Google, the team that designed the WiFi setup was probably shut down a month after they finished installing hardware and before they could make the software usable.
Also, hundreds of mobile hotspots will impact the performance of all nearby wireless networks.
I wonder if Google actually has WiFi engineers. It’s not something you need to set up everyday. Still they have the money to hire a company that specialises in WiFi.
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Reuters reports that Google’s first self-designed office building has “been plagued for months by inoperable or, at best, spotty Wi-Fi, according to six people familiar with the matter.”
At launch, Google’s VP of Real Estate & Workplace Services, David Radcliffe, said the site “marks the first time we developed one of our own major campuses, and the process gave us the chance to rethink the very idea of an office.”
The roof is covered in solar cells and collects rainwater while also letting in natural light, and Google calls it the “Gradient Canopy.”
All those peaks and parabolic ceiling sections apparently aren’t great for Wi-Fi propagation, with the Reuters report saying that the roof “swallows broadband like the Bermuda Triangle.”
Googlers assigned to the building are making do with Ethernet cables, using phones as hotspots, or working outside, where the Wi-Fi is stronger.
A Google spokesperson told Reuters the company has already made several improvements and hopes to have a fix in the coming weeks.
Saved 45% of original text.
Why the hell is a professional tech business not relying almost-exclusively in ethernet, anyway?
Because if you walk to a meeting room with your laptop, you don’t want to plug it in every time.
Also phones and tablets are a thing.
Because if you walk to a meeting room with your laptop, you don’t want to plug it in every time.
All this tells me is that ancient Chinese evil spirits were made of wifi.
Why didn’t they send an email to their facilities? How are we supposed to care?
