Unlicensed spectrum is limited. There are just three channels in the 2.4 GHz, and not really more than in the 5 GHz band because most of the 5 GHz band is occupied by weather radar and you can only use that spectrum if you pay the patent trolls for the coexistence technology specified by law.
When you turn on a WiFi analyzer program and see many WiFi networks using the same spectrum, there is interference. It isn't that it "stops working" but you will get packet loss, reduced data transfer, etc. Every printer that sets up its own AP, every phone that is a hotspot, is interference.
If you want and really use these services that is one thing, but it is insane that people use WiFi to print at a mall store when they could hook up the printer to the register with a 6 foot cable.
The article itself shows a substantial degrade of WiFi performance on the Mac itself because the mac is momentarily disconnecting from the real network to stay synchronized with the lewds network.
The degradation happens only when you explicitly start using a service (such as AirDrop) that uses AWDL. The AWDL interface becomes inactive once there is no more traffic on the interface. In the measurements, we show the performance when both infrastructure and AWDL traffic is present (i.e., the Wi-Fi radio needs to switch channels in between).
In fact one could argue that AWDL actually reduces "interference" because two neighboring devices can communicate directly and do not need to go an additional one-hop detour over an access point.
When you turn on a WiFi analyzer program and see many WiFi networks using the same spectrum, there is interference. It isn't that it "stops working" but you will get packet loss, reduced data transfer, etc. Every printer that sets up its own AP, every phone that is a hotspot, is interference.
If you want and really use these services that is one thing, but it is insane that people use WiFi to print at a mall store when they could hook up the printer to the register with a 6 foot cable.
The article itself shows a substantial degrade of WiFi performance on the Mac itself because the mac is momentarily disconnecting from the real network to stay synchronized with the lewds network.