A thorough WLAN check can increase the speed and reliability of your own wireless network. We introduce the necessary tools for this.
For a WLAN to be used efficiently, it must be installed correctly and maintained reliably. Here are the five most popular and helpful tools to help you make the most of your wireless network . Among other things, these programs measure the quality of the radio signal and give you an overview of the signal strength at various locations in your home or office.
Inssider – Finding the right WLAN channel
The number of wireless frequencies that can be used for a WLAN is limited. As a rule, your router does not have its own radio channel, but instead has to share the existing channels with your neighbors. If too many routers use the same channel at the same time, it will have a negative impact on wireless LAN speed and, in the worst case scenario, cause the network to break down . Therefore, it makes sense to check with a tool on which channels the routers in your environment spark, and to choose as free a channel as possible for your WLAN. Here is the tool Inssider a big help. Note: If you want to use the program in its latest version, which is no longer available as freeware, you must purchase them.
After starting, Inssider presents a list of all the wireless networks that are in your immediate area. Even networks with weak reception can be found here, which are hidden in the Windows WLAN display. Here you can see the names of the individual networks in the column “SSID” and under “Channel” the respective channel over which the network is transmitting. In addition, there is the column “RSSI”, which provides information about the signal strength of a WLAN. The weaker this signal, on your Wi-Fi. However, the values are given with negative signs. Very handy is the integrated graph. This shows the signal strength in the course. When assessing the networks and channels, they are therefore not dependent on a snapshot, but can assess its long-term effect. The diagram uses the colors green for strong, yellow for medium and red for weak.
The “2.4 GHz Channels” tab gives you an overview of all available channels. In addition, each of the individual channels is assigned the corresponding radio strength in a diagram. It should be noted that there is a WLAN signal on the networks effect on the adjacent radio channels. For this reason, Inssider displays the entire channel bandwidth of a network . To find the channel that best suits you, look at the high and medium channels (20-80 dBm) and choose the one with the fewest Wi-Fi networks. Some routers also support 5 GHz channels. In this case, you will find a corresponding tab in the tool on which the respective networks are displayed.
Thus, you can see where the signal is particularly strong or weak, and if necessary take action in case of too weak a signal. This procedure is possible on the one hand with a notebook, but there are also tools that allow a signal measurement and thus an optimization of the WLAN via smartphone.