The main way of connecting to the Internet in our homes is through the WiFi or wireless connection of the router. Thanks to WiFi connectivity, we can connect from anywhere in the house without the need for cables. Depending on the equipment you have, you can have greater or lesser coverage and speed, many factors depend on this, such as the range of equipment and also the client devices that you are going to connect. If you want to set up a Wi-Fi network at home from scratch, pay attention to these 5 fundamental recommendations so that the user experience is perfect.
Tips for setting up the WiFi network at home
To correctly configure a new WiFi network at home, we must take into account certain aspects such as the router to use, its location, and also the configuration. Next, we are going to give you the keys to configure a new WiFi network at home correctly.
Choosing the necessary WiFi router and extenders
The first thing we must consider is correctly choosing the best WiFi router in Pakistan to provide us with coverage in our house. Generally, operators offer us a router for free, but this device normally provides very little wireless speed and we often find ourselves with problems with WiFi cuts. This is a very important aspect that we must take into account, for this reason, we recommend that you buy your WiFi router or WiFi mesh system to have several nodes distributed throughout the house.
If you have a relatively small house, with a single router you will be able to provide wireless coverage everywhere, however, if you have a large house or have two floors, you will surely need a WiFi extender or repeater. It is essential that, if you buy a router plus a repeater online from Hafeez Center Online Store, you go directly to models that support Wi-Fi Mesh technology to enjoy WiFi roaming between nodes. For example, all ASUS routers support AiMesh, D-Link EAGLE PRO AI equipment also supports Mesh technology by mixing routers, WiFi Mesh systems, and wall repeaters, and finally, the manufacturer AVM FRITZ! It is also one of the most recommended in this aspect.
Device location
Once we have decided if we need a single router, a total of 2 nodes (router and extender), and even a total of 3 nodes (router and 2 extenders), then we need to think about where to place them. Below, you can see the most important recommendations:
- We must place the router in a central place, if you have 2 nodes (router and extender), this is not so important, since we will have a second node that will extend the wireless coverage where the router does not reach.
- It is advisable to place the devices (router and extender) with direct vision without obstacles, or at least the minimum possible so that the signal does not fade quickly.
- If we have two floors, place each node on a floor, and not one below the other, but rather there is a certain angle so that the coverage reaches better between them.
- If we have external antennas in the devices, do not place all of them vertically, put some vertically and others at a certain angle to improve 360º coverage.
Setting the network name and security
In Wi-Fi networks, we must configure both a WiFi network name (SSID) as well as security. In the case of the SSID, it is highly recommended that it be the same SSID for all nodes, in a Mesh network this is mandatory, but if you use a universal WiFi repeater with the operator’s router, it will surely provide you with the option of « change the SSID» repeated. Changing the WiFi network name is an error, in all the nodes it must be the same to have a kind of “roaming”, since the client itself will connect to the closest node to its position (the one that provides the best RSSI).
Regarding security, today we have three possible configurations:
WPA2-Personal: it is the one supported by all wireless devices, it guarantees good security and maximum compatibility.
WPA2/WPA3-Personal: If a device does not support WPA3, it will connect in WPA2 mode. It is a transition method to check which devices support this new security. It does not provide additional security compared to WPA2 because an attacker could downgrade the security.
WPA3-Personal: It is the latest security standard, all relatively new WiFi clients support it, however, hundreds of Smart Home devices do not support it, so we must take it into account.
Check available WiFi channels
Another very important aspect that you must take into account is the WiFi channels. Although by default the routers and WiFi Mesh choose the channel automatically based on an internal algorithm, it is highly recommended to check that the channel automatically chosen by our router is the optimal one. To check it, you need to scan the WiFi networks of your neighbors to see what wireless channels they are broadcasting on, both those of the 2.4GHz band and the 5GHz band.
Check coverage and speed throughout the house
Once we have followed all these tips, the last step would be to check that the coverage and speed throughout the house are as expected. First, we can check the coverage received in the different rooms of the house using the two previous programs that we have mentioned, both Acrylic WiFi Home and Acrylic WiFi Professional for Windows are ideal for this task, however, we also recommend that you give NetSpot a try, which allows us to upload our floor plan of the house.
Conclusion
To check the speed, the idea is to do it on the local network using jPerf2 or iperf3, to do the tests on the local network and not depend on our Internet connection. It is possible that we only have a contracted 300Mbps fiber connection, but the WiFi network is faster than this, so the best thing you can do is check the speed on the local network, so as not to depend on the operator and the contracted speed.
