April 25, 2023
When we use wireless network at home to surf Internet, we may experience a bad signal problem. Sometimes network speed is basically same as when there is no network, and we feel like getting angry every minute. At this time, we need to calm down and find out reasons for the poor wireless network signal. Below we summarize four problems. Everyone should take their places. Do not encounter wireless network problems and just go crazy.
Wireless hotspot failure
Sometimes root cause of poor network performance can be a failed access point. You can check access point to make sure antenna is not broken, status lights indicate if something is wrong, if there is enough power, etc. You can try restarting access point, this method usually solves firmware deadlock problem. Keeping firmware up to date will reduce chance of deadlocks in future.
Scope not fully covered
The wireless network signal will have some variation due to different site conditions. For example, wireless networks need to pass through walls, which can significantly attenuate signal, resulting in limited or no RF signal in certain areas of facility, which can significantly degrade performance and disrupt wireless applications.
In order to cope with incomplete coverage, users need to increase signal strength in affected area. You can increase transmission power, replace old antennas with new, more powerful ones, or place access points to better cover entire area.
Wireless usage too high
If there is only one wireless access point, but there are too many users or users are downloading very large files, you need to reach maximum wireless throughput of access point. Under such conditions, transmission time of a data frame will increase significantly. We can solve this problem by placing access points closer together with less power consumption, this method can reduce number of users in each access point so that each user can get more bandwidth.
RF interference
For wireless networks, interference sources include: microwave ovens, mobile phones, Bluetooth-enabled devices, frequency hopping spread spectrum wireless networks, and nearby wireless networks. Among them, most destructive are 24 GHz mobile phones and cordless phones, which are widely used at home and at work.
RF interference occupies wireless transmission medium over air, delays time it takes for users to send and receive data, and causes collisions, which in turn cause data to be retransmitted. If noise intensity in network bandwidth exceeds -85 dBm, then RF interference can degrade network performance. In this case, user's retry rate will exceed 10%, and user will feel that this has affected network speed.
If during test it is found that wireless signal is unstable, mainly due to radio frequency interference, we need to get rid of this interference. If there is interference that only occurs when a home microwave and cordless phone is running, solution is to put wireless access point on a different channel to avoid this interference.
In addition to above, check if there are other wireless networks near wireless signal. When it is found that network channel used by others is same as ours, at that time channel must be changed, and original channel should be changed to a non-conflicting channel.
