Most of the devices that we connect to our router are done wirelessly, especially if we have a large number of home automation devices, as they all connect wirelessly, allowing us to place them in any corner of our home. It becomes easy to keep. For this reason, it is essential to have a good wireless network and to do certain configurations in order to avoid any problems.
5 recommendations to make your WiFi fly
All the tips and tricks we are going to give you below are completely free, that means you don’t have to buy any WiFi repeater, PLC or WiFi mesh system to improve wireless network. If you still have trouble with these recommendations, you should consider purchasing equipment that will help you improve your network.
Separate WiFi Bands into Different Network Names
New Router Functionality «smartconnect, This feature allows you to have the same WiFi network name (SSID) for both the 2.4GHz band and the 5GHz band. In this way, the router will be in charge of keeping some WiFi clients in the 2.4GHz band and others in the 5GHz band. The firmware incorporates different types of policies to make this work, for example, if we have a wireless client connected to 5GHz but it has poor coverage, it will switch it to the 2.4GHz band to get better coverage. Will force you to connect, even if it means little. actual speed. There are routers that will dynamically put us in one band or the other, depending on the speed of the clients, the saturation of the different bands, the number of wireless clients, and other values.
The best thing to do for WiFi to work correctly is to disable Smart Connect, configure a WiFi network name on each band, and connect the device itself, always preferring the 5GHz band. That way, you won’t encounter the typical band-steering problems:
- it doesn’t put us in the right frequency bandIf we are very close it is possible that it will give us more speed in 2.4GHz instead of 5GHz.
- we can notice a wifi connection cut Moving from one band to another.
- If we have a device that only supports 2.4GHz such as home automation, but we try to configure it with our smartphone that supports 5GHz, we will not be able to connect to it, leaving us in the 5GHz band has to be closed.
In short, this functionality is more of a headache than a solution for a reliable and fast wireless network. We recommend that you always deactivate this functionality in order to choose which frequency band to connect to at any given time.
Connect everything you can directly to 5GHz
5GHz band has less wireless range as compared to 2.4GHz bandBut it will give us higher bandwidth and much less hassle when connecting dozens of wireless clients at once. whenever possible because your device supports itThe best thing you can do is force it to connect to the 5GHz band, leave the 2.4GHz band a little more “free”, and connect to the latter from all devices that aren’t compatible.
With the popularity of home automation today, we have dozens of wireless clients connected to the 2.4GHz band, for this reason, if your smart TV, smartphone, tablet or TV box supports the 5GHz band, you’d better switch to the 2.4GHz band. Leave these. frequency bands, so that your home automation devices do not face any problems on a day-to-day basis, such as signal drops, high latency, and even connection drops.
turn off devices you don’t use
Any The device is on and connected to a wireless network that slows down other devices, even if it is transferring almost no traffic, it should at least be broadcasting WiFi signaling frames indicating that it is still online. If we have a device connected to WiFi that we are not using at a given time, such as a tablet, then the best thing we can do is to disconnect the WiFi connection. In this way, we will “leave” a large bandwidth for the rest of the connected devices.
It’s not so important in the 5GHz band, because we don’t have as much interference and because we have higher bandwidth. However, with a frequency band as saturated as 2.4GHz, it becomes almost essential for the rest of the device to function properly.
monitor connected clients
Most wifi routers allow us to Check which clients and how many wireless clients are connected to a WiFi network, either in the 2.4GHz or 5GHz bands. This way, we can have tight control over which devices are connected at any given time. This is useful not only for network security, to check if we have intruders because someone is able to hack our WiFi connection, but also for the stability and optimization of the wireless network.
Manufacturers like ASUS allow us to see in real time all WiFi clients, in addition, we have the possibility to see advanced aspects such as the RSSI signal received from the router and also the SNR among other values. We’ll also be able to get a global view of the bandwidth being used through a WiFi network, breaking down frequency bands to see them individually.
Choose the right channel, channel width and activate DFS
Since the launch of Wi-Fi 4 we have the possibility to choose the wireless channel in “automatic”. This functionality allows us to choose which WiFi channel to use at any given time, as it takes care of scanning the different channels of our neighbors after a certain amount of time and choosing the best possible channel based on various variables. Is. Our recommendation is to conduct a detailed study of the various wireless channels around you, for this you can use the Acrylic WiFi program from Windows. Once you see which channels are the busiest and which are free, set that channel on your router to minimize interference with other neighboring networks.
Another very important aspect to take into account is the channel width, in the 2.4GHz band we have the possibility to use a 20MHz channel width and a 40MHz channel width. In an environment highly saturated by other WiFi networks, it is best to use a 20MHz channel width to cause as little interference as possible, Connected WiFi clients will do a better job for you. If you don’t have many WiFi networks in this band, choose 40 MHz to get higher speeds for compatible clients.
Finally, in the 5GHz band we have a series of channels that we can use indoors without restriction, but we also have other channels called DFS that we can use to avoid interference with other neighboring networks. Can If your router has the possibility to use DFS channels, then enable this option and select one of these channels if the general is too congested. In this case, the channel width will be 80 MHz, you can leave it as it is because 5GHz signal decays faster than 2.4GHz signal.
