Anybody who has tried to deploy a wireless router has run into the issue of wondering if the network beyond doubt will work anywhere it is intended. Wireless networks are significantly more complicated to set up than a wired Ethernet network for the following four reasons:
- Wireless network obviously have no wires development it difficult to decree where devices, such as laptops, are connected
- Neighboring networks do not stop at the wall boundary in the middle of your properties
- There are a plethora of configuration options for WiFi that most population don't understand
- The WiFi institute of the end devices (laptops, iPhones, etc.) have a huge impact on the broad performance
Setting up a wireless network has basically been a trial and error affair. You set up the network, walk around with your laptop, look at the estimate of bars in the display, and try to download a few web pages to see if the network works. The qoute with this approach is that you never beyond doubt know if you just got your network going "good enough" or if you beyond doubt achieved the best doing and robustness possible.
Recently, a new, totally free goods named WaveDeploy has come to be ready that will allow you to know that you are getting the most out of your network. WaveDeploy allows you to beyond doubt see your network's doing on a map of your house. It also helps you see where your neighbors' networks are leaking into your house so you can plan accordingly. So, how does one use WaveDeploy to outline out how to configure the network? A simple, but sufficient 5 step plan is to do the following:
- Even before turning on your wireless router, conduct a "passive" estimate to decree which other networks are graphic in your house and what channels they are using.
- Configure your wireless router to use the best channel based on the data measured above
- Run an "active" estimate using your laptop to see how well the network is delivering data to each location in your home
- Experiment with the wireless router settings and retest to enhance performance
- Experiment and retest with client settings and retest to maximize performance
Start by downloading and installing WaveDeploy Basic on your wireless laptop. You will need to register to use the application the first time you run it, but it is beyond doubt free and VeriWave, the business that develops WaveDeploy, does not share your information with any surface parties.
The next step is to draw a map of your house's floor plan (or download and image from Google maps if you are lucky enough to have a large enough house!) using a tool such as Microsoft Paint. Do your best to draw the map as much to scale as possible, but perceive that it does not need to be 100% accurate. Spend 15 minutes development the best drawing you can and save it to an image file (bmp, png, or jpeg formats are all fine).
Follow the directions in the help file for running a passive estimate using WaveDeploy Basic. In short, you will start the application, load the floor plan image of your home, and then conduct a estimate of measurements in separate locations in your home. To make a measurement, click on the location corresponding to where you are standing and WaveDeploy will scan the air and part which networks are visible, the channel that they are on, and part the signal compel of each network. It takes about seven seconds to make a measurement. Then walk to the next location and repeat. In about 10 minutes, you will have measurements for your entire home.
Stop the estimate and view the results. You will see a list of all networks that your laptop detected in your home drawn on your map. Green means that the network was received strongly; red means that it was detected weakly. Pay singular concentration to note which channels were used for signals that were received strongly in the majority of your house. You will want to avoid using these channels for your wireless network.
Now set the channel for your wireless router. Start by checking the manufacturer's information for the router or the configuration of the router to decree either you are using the 2.4 Ghz or the 5 Ghz band. More than likely you are in the 2.4 Ghz band where you should beyond doubt only use channels 1, 6, and 11. Yes, there are other channels in this band, but don't use them as tempting as it may be. It turns out that these other channels overlap so that channel 2 will also interfere with channel 1 and channel 6 resulting in poorer performance. In the 2.4 Ghz band, you are great off sticking to channel s 1, 6, and 11 and configuring your wireless router to forward on the channel with the least estimate of competition.
While we're at it, we would be remiss if we didn't mention the subject of security. Expert grade protection has been ready for wireless networks and devices for a concentrate of years now. If supported by all of your devices, your best bet is to use Wpa2, also known as Aes encryption, with Psk or password authentication. The terms are complicated, but it is easy enough to just choose Wpa2 and enter a password. Then configure the client devices to way the network using the same protection setting and password. If Wpa2 is not available, then use Wpa or Tkip with Psk. This protection setting is still very good, but not quite as strong as Wpa2. If that doesn't work, you can use no authentication, also known as "open". You may see Wep available, but its use is not recommended. Wep was once opinion to be secure, but it was cracked years ago and a estimate of tools exist that will now automatically decrypt these messages. Wep is dangerous in that it gives users a very false sense of security. They will think that they are protected when the reality is that a basic hacker could beyond doubt way their data. Note that you must choose a protection mechanism that is supported by your laptops and smart phones as well as the wireless router.
You can run someone else passive estimate at this point, and it will show you the areas where your wireless router's signal can be seen clearly. However, if a second computer is available, it is much great to use it with WaveDeploy to conduct an active assessment. In an active assessment, data is transferred in the middle of the two computers to part the maximum download speed that your network supports at each location in increasing to the signal coverage and interference. Once again, refer to the help files in the application for instructions to configure an active assessment.
It takes a petite longer to conduct an active assessment, but when you are done your efforts will be rewarded with a map called a "HeatWave" of how swiftly your wireless network could deliver traffic to your laptop at each location in your home. You may be surprised to learn that the fancy 802.11n router that you just purchased can only deliver a fraction of the promised 300 Mbps performance! Part of this is due to marketing specsmanship; WaveDeploy Basic measures the estimate application traffic, such as web pages, that a network can transfer. Marketing numbers for networking devices refer to the raw corporeal speed of the network technology without taking into account all of the overhead of the wireless protocols or normal network overhead. In practice, one can commonly only perform about half of the advertised doing as a best case once this overhead is taken into account. In a poorly designed or poorly located wireless router the doing can be much worse.
To that end, begin changing the configurations in the router to see which settings produce a colossal revising in performance. For example, one of the biggest gains is often the corollary of disabling keep for 802.11b. If all of your laptops are a, g, or n then disable 802.11b keep and retest. Work your way straight through each of the options and retake the data to decree which ones help your doing and which ones do not. Once you are perfect with tuning your network, repeat the rehearsal by changing the settings on your laptop driver or smart phone and retesting.
The entire process may take a concentrate of hours, but the endeavor is well worth your time. Using the above techniques provides you a means to see where your network reaches, decree how you fast your network performs by location, view interference from neighboring networks, and optimize your laptops and smart phones for the best potential performance. Applied properly, these five simple steps will make your wireless network fly!
WiFi - Optimize Your Wireless Network in Five easy Steps