It might happen that you have setup a wireless network in your house but are not able to get the most out of it. You might face intermittent connectivity issues or slow network connection. Your computer, your router, or the network topology can be responsible for such issues and in this post I will address 10 most common and important aspects which one should keep in mind while setting up the personal wireless network or while troubleshooting such network issues.

  1. Router’s Positioning: Router should be positioned to a central space in the house. If this not so then some of your computers might go out of the range of the router and will experience poor signal or no signals at all
  2. Router’s Vicinity: Make sure that your router is not kept near to the wall or any other metallic objects. The wireless signals sent and received are actually Radio waves and they easily get obstructed by such objects. Router should not be very near to the floor else those signals will lose their penetration power and might not reach where they should actually.
  3. Routers Antenna: Antenna provided the manufacturer in the router is Omni-directional. This means that it send signals in all the directions and thus the signal strength might be low. If you do not have such requirement then yu can go for uni-direction antennas and acan also focus the beam towards the computers where it is required.
  4. Wireless Card: Wireless cards install in the computers are also a key component and they can also be responsible for deteriorating the performance of your wireless network. Your router may be capable of working at very high speeds but what’s the use if your wireless card doesn’t cope with it. You should install updated network cards which can work at the same speeds with router.
  5. Wireless Repeater: If you have a large house or office and a single wireless router is not able to send signals to all the computers then you can use a wireless repeater for boosting the signals. This repeater will receive the wireless signals from the main router and will amplify and resend them in much large area, thus increasing the range of your network connection.
  6. Wireless Channel: All the Radio stations use Radio waves for transmitting there information but our radio sets can easily differentiate between all. This becomes possible by using different channels. Now since everything is going portable and wireless so it is likely that any other wireless device might interfere with your routers signal. Try using some other channels if you face connectivity or speed related issues.
  7. Wireless Interference: Wireless routers generally work on 2.4 GHz frequency sp try avoiding usage of any other device which operates on the same frequency. For example if you have a cordless phone then you can replace it by the one which operates at 5.8 GHz to reduce the interference.
  8. Firmware Or Driver Update: Manufacturers regularly release new firmware or drivers for improving their device. Always keep your router’s firmware and Wireless card’s driver updated. This will help you in getting the most out of your wireless network.
  9. Same Vendor Equipments: Its tough because you do not shop for all the network devices at the same time, but if it is possible then use all the network devices from the same vendor. For example a NetGear router will definitely work with a DLink card, but a NetGear-NetGear, or DLink-DLink setup can give you much better throughput.
  10. Use 802.11g: 802.11b is the most common and most widely used network and is supported by most of the Wireless cards, but the new standard which is 802.11g is 5 times faster than this. If your card supports 802.11g then go for using the new g standard on your network.