6/25/2023 0 Comments Wifi signal analyzerIt’s worth noting that no enterprise Wi-Fi network administrator would use 80 MHz bandwidth 5 GHz channels. Similarly, using any of the four 5 GHz low band channels (36-48) would also show an 80 MHz wide chunk o’ spectrum taken up. If I had used channel 149, 153 or 157, the plot would look the same but the numbers in the legend would change. But since it’s a typical consumer router, it defaults to using 80 MHz of bandwidth. My router is actually set to Channel 161, which is the "primary" channel. But it also properly shows the 80 MHz bandwidth (four channels) that my 802.11ac 5 GHz network eats up. This combination picks up my neighbor’s 2.4 GHz network parked on Channel 3. Here’s another view of my neighborhood using a Galaxy Tab A and VREM Software Development’s WiFiAnalyzer (open-source). The 5 GHz plot is actually misleading as we’ll see in a sec. My Wi-Fi environment, with the app running on a Moto X Gen 2 smartphone, is much cleaner because I’m in a neighborhood with lots of trees and large lots. But at least they are all using 20 MHz bandwidth and are on non-overlapping channels 1, 6 and 11. The sample screenshot taken from WiFi Analyzer’s gallery shows quite a few 2.4 GHz networks to deal with. The good news about these apps is they quickly show you what you’re up against in choosing "best" channels for your router. My current favorite is Zoltán Pallagi’s WiFi Analyzer, but I’m sure you have yours. Most of us have used one of the many apps that show you the signal strength, channel and SSID of neighboring Wi-Fi networks. This time, I’ll show you how to use the WLAN Pi to choose Wi-Fi channels where you’ll have the best chance of getting your share of bandwidth. In Part 1, we got acquainted with the small, but mighty NanoPi NEO2 that is the heart of our Wi-Fi Analyzer and showed how to use its built in HTML 5 speed test.
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