Wifi Troubleshooting

[Snowreap]

There are two things I do to improve wireless performance:

1. Location: I use a dedicated wireless access point (WAP) rather than a router. In practice this means I buy a wireless router and simply leave the WAN port disconnected. I place the WAP somewhere centrally located so that I'll have reasonably good reception everywhere. The WAP is connected to my actual router using a wired connection.

2. Signal Strength: There are 2 options here. First, the stubby antennas the WAP comes with can often be replaced with longer higher-gain antennas. Second, you can get a WAP with more antennas so that you can avoid blind spots (a typical WiFi antenna has a doughnut-shaped radiation pattern, so if the antenna is pointed vertically you'll have a dead zone directly above and below. When I was using a WRT54GL as a WAP it had 2 antennas which I replaced with longer high-gain antennas. I'm currently using a WRT1900ACS as a WAP; it has 4 antennas so I am able to get good coverage just reorienting them, so I don't have to upgrade them.

If it's not possible/practical to have a single centrally located WAP there's a solution in that case too. I haven't tried these myself yet, but I hear very good things about Ubiquiti WAPs. With these you can set them up in multiple locations and they will seamlessly hand off and/or forward traffic between them as you roam around the house. If they are all wired it's simply a hand-off, but if any of them are not wired they will forward traffic wirelessly from one access point to the next (like a repeater network).