The wireless advice guide
Buying
When buying a wireless device you will see 802.11 <letter>, you are looking for the latest version which is “ac” (802.11ac).
This provides a number of technologies that give you stronger less interrupted connectivity in the home.
More internal signal radios inside these wireless routers provide a much better ability to handle multiple devices at home (TV, games consoles, mobile phones, tablets, laptops, wireless printing etc.).
More radios and better wireless signalling technology provide greater coverage and an ability to strengthen signals where the router detects an end-point to provide greater signal strength and thus more robust connectivity (you may see this referred to as “beamforming” in the marketing.
In a test of connectivity between two devices compared to being close to each other and then between 2 solid walls, the latest 802.11ac device dropped only 25% of the close proximity signal (241mbps) through the 2 solid walls, when compared to the previous 802.11n technology which dropped 78% of its 181mbps signal under the same circumstances. This test was performed using two exact same routers (make and range, with the only differing characteristic being that one was the older and the other the newer wireless technology).
Don’t worry about the latest router connecting your older devices either, it is fully backwards compatible with all older wireless technologies.
It really is worth investing a little more on your wireless router, especially for those that have a number of devices to connect, as this really can make a difference.
Advice for installation
1) Should be off the floor
2) Ideally on a high shelf or cupboard as radio waves travel optimally downwards and laterally. 3) Away from a neighbours wall, preferably closer to the centre of the house to reduce the
conflict with your neighbours wifi.
4) Away from microwaves, baby monitors, cordless phones.
older
802.11n
latest
802.11ac
Test - No Obstruction 85 241 Mbps Test - 2 x solid walls 18.5 182 Mbps
Homeplug Older homes – thicker walls?
Do you have an older home with thick walls and struggle with wireless connectivity between rooms? In this case you can extend your network by using a home plug system. This distributes your network around the electrical infrastructure in the house and thus allows you to put a wireless point in any room with weak signal (or even tactically in the middle of the house).
They are not intrusive and do not have trailing cables. You have two devices linking the router to the electrical system and another positioned where you need the signal. The wireless access point is self-contained within the plug so no cables or anything to worry about.
These systems will handle very high speeds which would be sufficient to stream HD video also across your local network.
Security
It is important to setup security with your wireless network. This is typically setup as standard on most home routers now and simply requires you to add in a password when you connect for the first time with your computer/tablet etc.
If this is not done, you run the risk of neighbours/guests etc. using your connectivity which could then cause you to experience slow/interrupted connectivity by virtue of someone else taking it up. This is especially prevalent where someone uses the connection using file-sharing applications or indeed has a virus.
Room 1
e.g. hallway
Room 2
e.g. living room/office
Diagnosing:
The below assumes that you have restarted your router and then restarted your computer to ensure that there is nothing going on with current sessions etc.
This also assumes that you have situated the wireless router in a place where it has ventilation and thus has not overheated. If you have problems on warm days, this could be the problem especially if situated in a cupboard.
When considering connectivity, simply checking that you can access the internet may not give you enough information. Whilst browsing the internet outside of your sessions interruption is catered for inherently in the design of the underlying technologies that deliver web pages to your browser. Real time applications such as the desktop environment are far more sensitive to small interruptions and will pause if interrupted. Whilst there are technologies to try to mask this behaviour, you would still feel some impact, whereas if you were then to browse the internet, a brief disconnection may not necessarily be noticed.
Please try to following checks
1) Check the connecting device (laptop/tablet/phone etc.) for signal strength, if this is low then try moving to a location that is closer to the wireless transmitter to see if this fixes it. If this does, then you will need to take measures to extend your wireless network (i.e. either wireless access points to allow greater coverage, or a home plug device as mentioned before, if the problem is not resolved by moving closer continue to step 2 below.
2) If signal strength is strong but you are still having problems with desktop disconnections, the next thing to try is plugging directly into the wireless router with a cable (normally each router is supplied with a single network cable that can be plugged into the laptop/computer directly.
If this resolves the problem the issue is most likely to do with a wireless driver on your computer or a firmware update may be required on the wireless router. It’s worth exploring the driver for your computer first (typically these can be obtained through windows update, or from the manufacturer (of the laptop/wireless network card) website. If you need help with this, please see your IT team for assistance.
3) If you are still having problems even when plugging into the network, assuming that you are able to connect successfully on a different network (maybe a work), then the problem is likely to be from your router out to the internet.
First things to check – You should have an internet light on your router. This is typically depicted in different ways, it could be a light that is labelled either;
- Internet - Broadband
- - A light in the shape of a smiley face with Sky routers
This light should typically be constantly lit. If when you experience the problem this light starts to steadily flash and then stay lit at which point your connection comes back, then your router is losing connectivity from the broadband network.
Initial things to check here are that you have a digital filter installed, if you have, try replacing it, these do occasionally fail and are inexpensive to replace.
4) Call ISP – this is a last resort – they will ask you to reboot your broadband router as the first thing to try (this is standard across all providers – this fixes a high percentage of issues from their perspective so they will always ask you to go through this first (along with rebooting your computer).
Advanced investigation
1) When you have finished point 2 above, for advanced investigation it is possible to start a more advanced set of tests, for this, you will need to open three command prompt windows (achieved by clicking start -> run on windows xp, or by just clicking the windows key and typing in “command” and press enter.
a. The first will be to ping the local gateway on the network – To find this
- Start -> Search – and enter “command”
- From here type in ipconfig and locate the line starting Default Gateway
Now type ping –t <numbers after default gateway>. E.g.
ping –t 192.168.1.1 b. The second is to ping an
independent IP address which in this case is a google server;
Open a command prompt as above and type in
Ping –t 8.8.8.8
c. The third command prompt is one to ping e-know.net servers.
i. Open a command prompt as above and type in;
ii. Ping –t 77.93.136.23
For reference a ping is a simple command used to simply test for a response. By issuing a ping, you can tell whether a remote network device is responding and also how quickly it is responding. By using “-t” in the command you are instructing the ping command to continue pinging until
interrupted. If you can get all 3 pings running at once on a laptop, you can then quickly tell what is happening.
The response times shown in the last page, show a healthy response time for the paths – you may experience an initial erroneous response time (as you will see in b) but this should quickly settle within the first 1 or 2 pings.
Ping a (the local gateway)
Acceptable time values for a) should be fairly close to 1ms. If plugged in by a cable, then 1ms should be expected. If timings are high here, this means that your device is having problems communicating with the equipment in the home that is plugged into the phone line to provide your internet
connectivity. If you are wireless and you have a strong signal, this may indicate either a driver issue or hardware fault. Assuming drivers are up to date and your router has been firmware updated, this could be a problem with the wireless element of your router. Try plugging in to see if this cures the issue.
Ping b (independent network point over the internet)
If timings are good for “a” but poor for both “b” and “c” (bad timings for b and c would be from 60ms and upwards, the image below demonstrates this.
In the most extreme cases, you may experience it as per below;
If the restart does not fix it, or fixes it temporarily but it then kicks in again after a few minutes, this would imply some form of network saturation (too much information being either received or pushed out of your local network).
If this is the case check all devices for file sharing applications/large updates. If there is only the one device connected, this could imply some large transfer happening on the device in question. Issues could be;
1) A particularly large update is being downloaded for your computer to install – (e.g. windows updates, itunes updates, etc.)
2) A file sharing application is running which is either downloading or sharing a file to the internet.
3) A File replication/backup software is running and synchronising – Skydrive for example, if you have a large file to replicate it is not able to throttle its traffic and will consume whatever it can.
4) A virus on your computer is either, downloading files, or attempting to make connections with other locations on the internet for malicious intent.
5) If you do not have security enabled on your wireless network and you live near to a
road/neighbouring houses/businesses, another possibility here is that someone else is using your internet connection.
Checking whether your wireless network is secure.
To check whether you have security enabled, within windows 8 at the bottom right hand side of the screen on your start or task bar as it is referred, if you click on the wireless icon as highlighted below in yellow;
If the network that you are connected to is displayed with a small shield next to it (as per the image below), you are connecting to an unsecured network.
