Wifi Consultants?
April 3, 2015 10:02 AM Subscribe
Are there any wifi consultants in Austin, TX that could help diagnose why a high speed connection drops throughout a house? Alternatively, are there any good guides to do a self-diagnosis?
If you have a Mac install "WiFi Explorer" scan the wifi signal near the location of the Wireless router and where you experience the drop in signal.
Go into your wireless router and set the channel on manual and pick the most clear channel for both locations. In the 2.4 ghz band there are only 3 channels available 1 - 6 - 11.
If you have bandwith (speed) setting available on the router, choose the narrower band (20mhz) or the slowest speed.
Remember that the WiFi is a 2 way communication. Your smartphone might hear the WiFi router with a strong signal but its weak transmitter can't heat the weak portable device...!
The 5Ghz band allows more space but doesn't penetrate walls or other objects well (hardly).
Compare your wireless router to a lighthouse. It needs to be high up and have a clear view to be seen. Place it at high and clear as possible.
Hope this helps,
Rogier
posted by Mac-Expert at 10:27 AM on April 3, 2015
Go into your wireless router and set the channel on manual and pick the most clear channel for both locations. In the 2.4 ghz band there are only 3 channels available 1 - 6 - 11.
If you have bandwith (speed) setting available on the router, choose the narrower band (20mhz) or the slowest speed.
Remember that the WiFi is a 2 way communication. Your smartphone might hear the WiFi router with a strong signal but its weak transmitter can't heat the weak portable device...!
The 5Ghz band allows more space but doesn't penetrate walls or other objects well (hardly).
Compare your wireless router to a lighthouse. It needs to be high up and have a clear view to be seen. Place it at high and clear as possible.
Hope this helps,
Rogier
posted by Mac-Expert at 10:27 AM on April 3, 2015
There are three main causes of wi-fi issues:
1) The signal being blocked by physical objects
2) Interference from neighboring wi-fi hotspots or other radio devices
3) Configuration or engineering issues with the wi-fi access point
Any consultant will do a few things:
1) Scan for neighboring wi-fi hotspots to see if they are in the same frequency range yours is in different areas of the house, and set your router or access point to use the least crowded channel.
You can do this using a laptop and Netstumbler for Windows or iStumbler for Mac OS or Wifi Analyzer for Android. (Apple doesn't allow apps for iDevices to do this. Because they're jerks. Seriously. What the hell, Apple.)
Your results could be immediately obvious, or they could be nuanced or confusing. You can post the results here or somewhere like the SmallNetBuilder forums if you need further guidance.
2) Scan through different areas of the house to see where the signal loss is, and then map the strength of signal. You can do this with the tools above. They may have a different recommendation for placing the router, but this may be difficult due to power and networking considerations in your house.
Many people simply increase signal strength to locations that seem weak in the house by using a Powerline networking Wireless Access Point - one that uses the electrical wiring in the house to pass the network to a second wireless access point - in the middle of the area that's weak.
3) If there is still contention, they will scan your home with a device that receives and plots all radio signals in the wi-fi ranges to determine if there is external, non wi-fi interference. You can also purchase the device and do this yourself.
Finally, if there seems to be abnormally poor signal, it may be a problem with your wireless router, and they may recommend a new one or, if you don't already have one, a dual-band one.
I recommend that you spend a little bit of time playing with one of the network analysis tools in question one, setting an optimal wireless channel, moving your access point to a central location or extending it using an inexpensive range extender like the one I linked to before hiring a consultant.
Edit, in response to pyro979's question: ISPs distribute lots and lots of different wireless routers. Some are fine, some are awful. For pyro979 to help, or for me to help more, you should check on and tell us specifically what the make and model of the router is.
posted by eschatfische at 10:27 AM on April 3, 2015 [2 favorites]
1) The signal being blocked by physical objects
2) Interference from neighboring wi-fi hotspots or other radio devices
3) Configuration or engineering issues with the wi-fi access point
Any consultant will do a few things:
1) Scan for neighboring wi-fi hotspots to see if they are in the same frequency range yours is in different areas of the house, and set your router or access point to use the least crowded channel.
You can do this using a laptop and Netstumbler for Windows or iStumbler for Mac OS or Wifi Analyzer for Android. (Apple doesn't allow apps for iDevices to do this. Because they're jerks. Seriously. What the hell, Apple.)
Your results could be immediately obvious, or they could be nuanced or confusing. You can post the results here or somewhere like the SmallNetBuilder forums if you need further guidance.
2) Scan through different areas of the house to see where the signal loss is, and then map the strength of signal. You can do this with the tools above. They may have a different recommendation for placing the router, but this may be difficult due to power and networking considerations in your house.
Many people simply increase signal strength to locations that seem weak in the house by using a Powerline networking Wireless Access Point - one that uses the electrical wiring in the house to pass the network to a second wireless access point - in the middle of the area that's weak.
3) If there is still contention, they will scan your home with a device that receives and plots all radio signals in the wi-fi ranges to determine if there is external, non wi-fi interference. You can also purchase the device and do this yourself.
Finally, if there seems to be abnormally poor signal, it may be a problem with your wireless router, and they may recommend a new one or, if you don't already have one, a dual-band one.
I recommend that you spend a little bit of time playing with one of the network analysis tools in question one, setting an optimal wireless channel, moving your access point to a central location or extending it using an inexpensive range extender like the one I linked to before hiring a consultant.
Edit, in response to pyro979's question: ISPs distribute lots and lots of different wireless routers. Some are fine, some are awful. For pyro979 to help, or for me to help more, you should check on and tell us specifically what the make and model of the router is.
posted by eschatfische at 10:27 AM on April 3, 2015 [2 favorites]
Some bright minded cable guy's install the modem/router inside a metal wall pannel... :-/
posted by Mac-Expert at 10:31 AM on April 3, 2015
posted by Mac-Expert at 10:31 AM on April 3, 2015
Just wanted to point out that everyone's running with an initial assumption (that it's the wireless connection dropping) which might be incorrect. I've been battling connection dropouts for months- two new routers, three new modems. Eventually I found out it was a bad wire at the tap outside the house that was causing t3 & t4 timeouts in the modem, which caused it to reboot. If you continue down the path of self-diagnosis, you might want to log into the modem / modem+router and check the history logs to see if there any clues.
posted by bluecore at 10:36 AM on April 3, 2015 [1 favorite]
posted by bluecore at 10:36 AM on April 3, 2015 [1 favorite]
First thing, you might want to do is to call the ISP. They will walk you through some basic trouble shooting.
If you want to do some testing yourself and have an android phone, Wi-Fi Analyzer is a great tool. If you see a lot of other routers on the same channel as you, switch channels (check your manual on how to do this.) Also consider line of sight issues. If the signal has to go through 3-4 walls, it will degrade significantly (consider this article).
That being said, most ISP routers are not great. For less money then a "consultant" I'd get one of these beasts. There are other less expensive models as well.
posted by pyro979 at 12:45 PM on April 3, 2015
If you want to do some testing yourself and have an android phone, Wi-Fi Analyzer is a great tool. If you see a lot of other routers on the same channel as you, switch channels (check your manual on how to do this.) Also consider line of sight issues. If the signal has to go through 3-4 walls, it will degrade significantly (consider this article).
That being said, most ISP routers are not great. For less money then a "consultant" I'd get one of these beasts. There are other less expensive models as well.
posted by pyro979 at 12:45 PM on April 3, 2015
I've dealt with this problem more than a few times and my recommendation is that your first step is to buy a good router (like the Asus RT-AC66U). You might be able to improve things by making other changes, but often the routers provided by ISPs are kind of cruddy. If you spend $150 on a reasonable router first, you have a much better chance of success and are less likely to waste time chasing weird intermittent problems that cruddy routers may have. I have found the difference in stability to be very significant with a higher quality router versus cheap routers and would definitely not bother wasting any time trying to fix a setup with a cheap router again, considering the value of time versus the cost of a reasonable router.
posted by ssg at 3:43 PM on April 3, 2015
posted by ssg at 3:43 PM on April 3, 2015
I see you've got several Mac tags on your profile, so I'll chime in with a diagnostic tool that I didn't know about that's built in to OS X. If you hold the option key down while clicking on the Wi-Fi selector in the menu bar, there's a new item named "Wireless Diagnostics". You can also launch it from a spotlight search, but I'm used to option-clicking the Wi-Fi fan.
Once it launches, the main screen wants to run Wi-Fi diagnostics, which captures a bunch of logs and data about your current setup. There's also a scanner, a performance graph, and a packet capture utility (that you can then import into WireShark, if you're so inclined). It's pretty useful, even if you just use it to find out what channel you should be using.
Just holding down option on the Wi-Fi symbol gives you some diagnostics: including PHY mode, Tx rate, channel, SSID, Noise, Signal, Security type, etc. It's a useful tool.
posted by Mad_Carew at 4:13 PM on April 3, 2015
Once it launches, the main screen wants to run Wi-Fi diagnostics, which captures a bunch of logs and data about your current setup. There's also a scanner, a performance graph, and a packet capture utility (that you can then import into WireShark, if you're so inclined). It's pretty useful, even if you just use it to find out what channel you should be using.
Just holding down option on the Wi-Fi symbol gives you some diagnostics: including PHY mode, Tx rate, channel, SSID, Noise, Signal, Security type, etc. It's a useful tool.
posted by Mad_Carew at 4:13 PM on April 3, 2015
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posted by pyro979 at 10:20 AM on April 3, 2015