Applies to: Anyone with dodgy WiFi
You will need: An Android smartphone or tablet, know where your WiFi router is and about 30 minutes
How-To Level: Medium/Advanced (I have tagged each step below as either medium or advanced)
I have just installed a new WiFi box in my house (while in my PJs), we were having problems with the WiFi dropping out quite often, so we bought a new WiFi router and we hope this fixes it…
I haven’t gone as extreme as this guy, I don’t know how my landlady would feel about me re-wiring the house just to get amazing WiFi everywhere… So we bought a new router and some exciting CAT6 cable to connect it to the existing network…
It looks like this (but less neat after I installed it), click the images to see the Amazon description. More modern versions of the router are available and I would probably suggest those rather than this model.

But you can follow these instructions without spending any money on new things and hopefully improve your WiFi connection…

Analyse your current network (Android users only)  [Level: Medium]

  1.  Install this app on your phone/tablet: WiFi Analyzer –  It shows you other WiFi networks in the area and any which are on the same channel as yours.
  2. Install this app on your phone/tablet NETGEAR WiFi Analytics – This allows you to walk around the house and tag each room to check the signal strength. (It doesn’t matter if you don’t have any NETGEAR stuff in your house this app works anyway)
  3. Open up the WiFi Analyzer app, scroll through the screens (or use the eye logo on the top right) to select the screen which looks like this
  4. This shows you all the networks in your area. Hopefully, it looks like my new network which is the red one here. You want as little overlap with other colours as possible. If there are loads of networks overlapping yours then see a later step “Changing your WiFi Network channel”.
  5. Open up the NETGEAR app, tap on the symbol along the bottom row which looks like a house, and you should see something which looks like this…
  6. Walk around your house and in each room tap the “Test” button (in purple) next to the room you are in (Don’t forget the guest bedroom/outside)
  7. Use the “Add” button to add extra rooms/garden
  8. This gives you a baseline of signal strength, we will come back to these readings later…

Apple Users: Sadly these apps (or anything like them) won’t work on Apple because ‘reasons’. I can’t find anything similar, but if you drop me a message below giving me details of devices and computers or laptops you have then I am sure we can figure something out.

Check the location of your WiFi box [Level: Medium]

Locate your WiFi box, this is probably your router which also connects to the phone line and gives you internet.

Top Tips if you can move your WiFi box:

  1. Don’t stretch the cables coming out of the box or create any trip hazards
  2. Find a central location in the middle of your house
  3. Make sure it is up off the floor
  4. Don’t hide it behind anything! It know it looks ugly (Google makes a really nice looking one), but for max WiFi signal, it’s best if it is in an open area.

Once you have moved your WiFi box, redo the steps using the NETGEAR app (above) to make sure signal strength hasn’t gone down anywhere you use WiFi.

For more tips and a picture of a house, check out this BT article here.

Side note: I once went to a house where they were having WiFi problems, I tracked down the WiFi box in a cupboard under the stairs with loads of other stuff piled up on to of it. They didn’t like the look of the box in their very tidy house. I moved the box to a shelf on a bookcase (still not ideal) and it fixed all their network connection problems… They could have got much better signal strength if the box was on top of the bookcase, but it worked for them.

Changing your WiFi Network channel [Level: Advanced]

Looking again at the WiFi Analyzer app work out which WiFi channel has the least networks on it, in the case below (my WiFi) the obvious choice was channel 11. There were no other networks on it. The next best would have been channel 1 then channel 6.

You should only pick between channels 1, 6 or 11. Never any of the others. I won’t go into why, but you can read more here if you want.

To change your WiFi channel you will need: 

  1. The IP address of your router (usually 192.168.1.1 or 192.168.1.254 ) type this into your web browser address bar (sometimes written on your router).
  2. The admin password of your router (often written on the router or is admin) – if it’s admin you might want to change this!
  3. Locate the bit in the WiFi box admin setting called WiFi settings or WiFi setup or similar. (if you let me know the make and model of your WiFi box I should be able to help further if you have questions)
  4. Look for a drop down of WiFi channels, it might say “Auto”.
    Ours at work looks like this, but it might be different for you…
  5. Change it to your desired WiFi channel (1, 6 or 11).
  6. Tell everyone else in the house that the WiFi will go off for a few minutes.
  7. Press save.
  8. Wait for the WiFi to come back on.
  9. Repeat the steps with the NETGEAR app to make sure signal strength hasn’t dropped.
  10. This is not about improving signal strength, this is about reducing congestion on the radio waves.

5GHz WiFi: If you have 5GHz WiFi enabled then you can probably just leave the channel at the default, but the WiFi Analyzer app allows you to see other 5GHz WiFi, just tap the 5GHz button in the top left of the screen (if it’s not there then you don’t have 5GHz so don’t worry about it).

Again you want to select a channel which is least used. You can use a Channel Width of 40MHz if your router gives you this option. Don’t use this option for ‘normal’ 2.4GHz WiFi. I won’t go into why but don’t.

Bonus step: If you spot a WiFi network, not on channel 1, 6 or 11 and you know the person it belongs to you could politely ask them to change it to 1, 6 or 11. If they ask why there is an explanation here.

Help a friend

Now you have this knowledge and apps installed you can help a friend. I was at a friends house the other week who were having very slow WiFi problems… I grabbed my phone and loaded up the WiFi Analyzer app, and found that all their neighbours had overlapping channels (not the same channel, but a nearby channel, they were on channel 1 and a neighbour was on 3 which is very bad). We swapped the WiFi to another channel and helped them get better WiFi (and their neighbours will have improved too, although they would be better on channel 1 or 6)

Odd things explained [Level: Advanced]

WiFi Analyzer screen shot

In the screen shot of WiFi Analyzer below, you will see TP-Link_4690 which is taking up a large space. This is because it has a channel width of 40MHz and is actually using channels 1 and 3.

A Channel Width of 40MHz on 2.4GHz ‘normal’ WiFi is bad. I won’t go into why, but it is! I am trying to track down where this is coming from in our house and will try and fix it at some point…
[update: TP-Link_4690 is now only on channel 1 which improves WiFi for all those networks in the middle (a few) on Channel 6! Good stuff 🙂 ]

CAT6 cables

Those who follow my random Journal Posts closely will know how much I love a good cable. Because we have a separate WiFi box to our actual internet connection box (modem) we have a cable connecting them together.

The cable I took out didn’t have any CAT rating at all and felt like it was made out of rubbish string. CAT6 network cables are much better at reducing noise from other electrical appliances. It normally says on the cable what CAT it is. CAT5e is good, CAT6 is better and anything less than this is poor and should be replaced. If there is nothing written on the network cable then chances are it is not CAT5e and you should think about replacing it.

[Updated] What Apple suggest you do to setup your WiFi network [Advanced]

https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT202068

Gosh, well that was more than I thought I would write. Sorry, everyone.
Hopefully, your WiFi is now running at max strength everywhere!
Mike
[This post was written on a laptop connected via a CAT5e network cable]