The location of your router does matters!
The Conventional Location
Many of us would install our router beside or near a pre-installed internet fibre optic point, but is that the best position for the device to distribute its WiFi around your home/office? This case study will demonstrate how can Maven’s WiFi measurement help in identifying ideal router location to achieve maximum coverage at the lowest cost.
OpenNet Fibre Point - Credits NetLink Trust
Installing Your Router Beside the Fibre Point
The truth is the location of your fibre point is not necessarily the best location to install your wireless router. Below is an example (before relocation) of a real-world WiFi Coverage measurement of a router the engineers at Maven have conducted during a site visit.
Pre-measurement of WiFi Coverage
For the interested readers, the table below would represent the range of WiFi signal strength with its respective colour mapping.
Colour Legend of the WiFi Coverage Map
The pre-measurement result is indicative that the wireless router at the existing location is not ideal for distributing WiFi evenly across the house. For instance, only the Living Room, Balcony and Bedroom 2 have good WiFi signal strength (Green Zone) for the users to stay connected reliably. The current setup poses several issues for users to conduct their work/study effectively daily.
To conduct video conferencing reliably (e.g. Zoom), users have to cramp together in the Living Room. However, if there are two or more video conferencing session conducted simultaneously, the environment becomes too noisy for a conducive video session, respectively.
WiFi signal is unstable at best in the Master Bedroom where users are not able to utilize WiFi to perform daily work task effectively (e.g. data gathering, online research).
WiFi distributed to the balcony area is underutilized as the users seldom work there (balcony can become too hot in the afternoon to work in).
In this scenario, there are several avenues users can explore in hopes to improve their WiFi experience in their home/office.
Relocate the wireless router to achieve wider WiFi coverage or focus on distributing WiFi to the important spaces (e.g. work areas).
If relocation is not possible, another alternative would be to deploy wireless access points to expand the WiFi Coverage.
Below is the measured new WiFi Coverage of the relocated router.
Post-measurement of WiFi Coverage
Conclusion - Relocating Router
With the consideration of power and cabling in mind, the engineers at Maven were able to achieve a broader WiFi Coverage by just relocating the wireless router to a suitable location. The post-measurement result illustrates that WiFi signals are not able to reach all corners of the house. Users are now able to conduct their respective work/study separately in their living quarters.
In conclusion, Maven’s onsite WiFi measurement has helped improved the WiFi experience effectively by expanding the usable WiFi coverage throughout the house. The improvement was achieved by relocating existing hardware to a preferable location based on Maven’s WiFi measurement. Other than the cost incurred for ethernet cabling extension, there was no other additional hardware cost (e.g. replacing new access points), the users were able to experience a 75% improvement in WiFi Coverage. WiFi speed has also become more consistent throughout various parts of the house.
Comparison of WiFi Coverage between wireless router’s existing and relocated position
Maven’s WiFi Assessment can help
Identify WiFi dead spots.
Recommend ideal router location to boost WiFI performance.
Improve WiFi speed.
If you are looking to improve your WiFi experience, contact us today!