Thursday, February 1, 2018

Understanding Wifi



Wifi use within the home and business continues to grow with more and more devices demanding use of this technology. The “internet of Things” will mean increasingly non computer devices in your home will rely on this technology to communicate with you. Understanding how it works, why it fails, and how you can optimize  can make your life much easier. Confusion reigns, not surprisingly, amongst many users of the technology and it’s failings. From streaming TV to accessing your email from your phone at home you rely on the technology to perform well. Unfortunately many factors can affect its performance.


Types of Wifi
Wifi is NOT 3g 4g or 5g. Your phone is equipped with both methods of communication but its important to understand these are separate technologies. For the purpose of this article I will address WiFi only.

Wireless B G N and AC
 The original wireless technology was wireless B and since its introduction faster versions have been released up to the very latest wireless AC. It is highly unlikely you have more than one device you use that has Wireless AC and even if you do the rest of your configuration is probably wireless N.

Wireless N can easily support streaming of TV, gaming, and your regular phones but it comes with several caveats as follows:

#1 your Wifi Connection is only as good as the strength of the signal to the broadcasting source.(usually your broadband modem).

#2 Your Wifi Speed is only as good as the speed of the connection to the broadcasting device and onward what speed that device has to the internet.

#3 The more devices you have on Wifi the more it will degrade the speed of ALL devices using the wifi signal.

#4 Any single Wifi enabled device can hog the wifi connection meaning it can consume virtually all of the bandwidth of the wifi signal,

#5 Wifi technology suffers from “phantom signals” and also channel saturation.

Next Month, God willing, I will continue on this topic.