WiFi is so simple. Right? You simply plug your router in and hey presto, WiFi all around your home. Well if you live in a studio flat or a small house that may well be the case. However with larger homes with brick walls and sometimes steal reinforcement, things can get tricky.
So if I cant get WiFi at one part of my house, how do I resolve it? The best option is always to run cables, assuming this is practical. You would get an ethernet cable run from your router to a wireless access point and another part of your home. With one0-2 WAPs per floor you can generally cover most homes.
What if wiring is not practical? You my well have a fully finished house which is all decorated and the idea of drilling holes and lifting carpets really is not a good one. There are other solutions.
Range extenders - These receive WiFi from your router and rebroadcast it on. However there is a limitation in that they cannot send and receive at the same time, so things may slow down. Also latency will increase. This is the time it taked to send a request for information and to get a response. Ofyen this is not a problem but if you are doing voice or video calls or online gaming, having a small lag can be a problem.
Powerline - This is where you plug one half of a powerline paid into a wall socket next to your router. You then plug a second one elsewhere in your home and connect an ethernet cable to it. The data signal goes from one of these devices to the other over the mains wiring of your home, removing the need to run cables. Great in theory but if you have noisy power or you wih to run more than one, things can get unreliable. Powerline is a Get Out Of Jail solution for many situations but is not as good as a cable.
Mesh WiFi - This is a step up from a simple range extender. The first device, which is normlly wired to your router, is known as the Mesh Controller. This watches the network and manages all the traffic. You would typically set up a mesh system with multiple access points. These will find the best way to communicate and even tune themselves so they only transmit the power level required (too much WiFi is a bad thing and will cancel itself out). However, Mesh WiFi is not perfect. Each hop (i.e going from one access point to the next) halves the available bandwidth. This may not be a problem. If you have a 1200Mbps mesh network, then the first hop will drop down to 600Mbps. The second will be 300Mbps. The third will be 150Mbps. Consifdering most home WiFi is around 60Mbps, you can have a huge network and still not experience any problems.
So we now have good network set up and wifi is being distributed evenly around your home. The next thing to ensure is that you are using the right channel. WiFi using 13 channels but of these, only 3 are unique. For that reason we only ever should use 1, 6 or 11:
As you can see, all the others are a cross over of these channels. We can do a WiFi scan and find the best channels for you to be using in your home.
Where you site your WiFi access points is also important. Many things will interfer with the signal. cordless phones, baby monitors, microwave ovens and many other house hold appliances use the 2.4Ghz spectrum. Siting your router away from these is important. Also, if you can, have your router mounted somewhere high up and not down on the floor.
Thesde are only a few of the considerations when settring up a WiFi network. We can help you optimise your set up.