Expert Rated Techniques: Ways to Extend Your WiFi (Indoor and Outdoor)

Wireless network or WiFi utilizes radio waves to transmit data. It eliminates the need to use cables to connect the router to the user’s devices including laptops and smartphones.

WiFi affords users the luxury of accessing the internet from any place as long as they are within range. With this capacity, Wireless internet connectivity is like electricity these days. Everyone relies on it so much that the momentum of their daily routine becomes ruined when WiFi dead ends are experienced or when connectivity becomes slow.

This is because everything stops operating simultaneously; browsers stop loading, movies freeze, Alexa won’t respond and smartphones revert to data plans. While many factors contribute to dead ends and deterioration of internet speeds, the most common are radio frequency interruption, physical environment, distance encryption, and WiFi operation mode.

Read on to discover how these factors affect WiFi signals and how they can be corrected.

The term WiFi range denotes the distance within which a signal can travel from the router to the connected devices. These signals work like sound; when someone is speaking, the words are usually loud and clear but they become weaker as the distance between the speaker and the listener increases.

In essence, the further a WiFi signal travels, the weaker it becomes. Most homeowners experience this problem when relaxing in their backyard, particularly when the router is in the living room. Weak signals lead to the loss of transmission, making the devices re-communicate constantly.

This makes the browsers to slow down or fail to load entirely. The distance through which WiFi signals can travel depends on a few factors as explained below.

The protocol in which a router operates significantly determines the distance over which the emitted signals can travel. A general rule of thumb regarding home wireless networks indicates that signals from routers operating on the 2.4GHZ band can reach up to 150 feet or 46 meters in an indoor environment and 300 feet or 92 meters in an outdoor setting where there are fewer interruptions. Those operating on 802.11n and running on 5GHz can only cover a third of these distances.

In essence, routers with the lowest speeds boast a longer range. Conversely, signals from routers with higher throughput and speed travel shorter distances.

Different routers come with varying power levels. Some have stronger transmitting powers than others. Also, different receivers, for instance, laptops, smartphones, and desktop computers have different receive sensitivity.

These capacities determine how well the signals from the router will connect to the internet devices and the distance that should be maintained between the two.

A homeowner could have a very powerful router and still have very slow internet. This is, particularly true if a laptop, smartphone or desktop computer has a weaker radio receiving power; the connection won’t be as strong as expected.

Sometimes, homeowners may find that a certain area of their house lacks a reliable WiFi signal. Things might not get better even when they try to move the device.

One possible explanation is that physical barriers like walls and couches can hinder the ability of WiFi signals to reach the intended laptop or smartphone. This can again be compared to a person’s voice. If someone is speaking to a partner who’s in another room, they’ll find that it’s quite difficult to hear their reply particularly if the door between them is closed.

Similarly, in the presence of construction barriers like wood, plaster, synthetic materials, glass, bricks, concrete, marble or metal between the router and the phone or laptop requiring the connection, WiFi signals won’t be effectively transmitted to the intended devices. As such, devices in the neighboring room will receive a very weak signal, while the one in the furthest corner might not receive any signal at all.

While a WiFi booster works perfectly enhancing the signal, it still doesn’t completely solve the problem brought about by large walls, which is where extenders come handy. Since extenders use wires to transmit the signals, they can effectively deliver the waves to the other side of the wall. Although it’s not a bad idea, this doesn’t necessarily mean that every room must have an extender.

You can choose to install the device in a room that’s separated from the thickest wall. In doing this, they will also increase the signal strength in the next room or the one above the extender.

Radio signals are everywhere around us. Other than WiFi routers, they are also emitted by electronic devices, cell towers, and Bluetooth software. Although WiFi operates on a different frequency than most of these devices, excessive radio noise causes a certain level of interference that can lead to a slow internet connection. Luckily, homeowners can minimize interference by dealing with the common culprits as illustrated below.

While this is among the most efficient file-sharing apps available, it happens to operate on channel 2.4GHz. To minimize possible disruptions, Bluetooth manufacturers employ frequency hopping—a technique that makes the software rotate between 70 different channels.

Modern devices can also detect and avoid the channel in which the router is operating. However, interference can still occur especially where older Bluetooth devices are running. To determine whether Bluetooth is the cause of a slow connection, you can turn off your devices and see whether there will be an improvement.

It turns out that microwaves, one of the most frequently used kitchen appliances are culprits of slow internet connection. This is because it operates at 2.4GHz, the same channel old routers function, which means that they can overlap the WiFi frequency. When this happens, the data being sent through the affected signal becomes disrupted thus making the browsers fail to load.

Just like their name suggests, these phones don’t rely on cords to transmit data or sound. Instead, they rely on radio frequencies and just like the above devices, they also operate on the 2.4GHz channel. It should, however, be noted that cordless phones only cause signal interference during a call. Interference mostly manifests through a static sound that’s audible when a call is in progress.

Other less common devices causing radio interference include wireless cameras and baby monitors. To understand how these devices cause interruption, compare radio signals to sound. For example, when a person is speaking and another one in the same room turns up the TV volume, it becomes quite harder for other people to decipher what’s being said.

The same thing happens to wireless networks, only that the connection gets interrupted before it reaches the intended devices. Such interruptions cause disruptions in the broadcasted signals, which makes the router and network adapter repeat the same information over and over. This is what makes browsers to take long loading or even fail to load entirely.

When selecting a different channel, homeowners can choose any random number and check to see if there’s an improvement on the performance.

In general, there are fourteen channels but people in the USA use channel one to eleven.

To test if the problem has been solved particularly if they think the interruption is from an old wireless phone that operates on 2.4GHz, the homeowner should make a call and try to browse. If the cordless phone is causing the interruption, the user will hear static sounds.

If the above solutions don’t completely solve the problem, you can get a WiFi extender. Given that this device uses coaxial cables, it’s able to reduce signal interruptions effectively. This is because it takes the transmitted data closer to the intended device.

This issue occurs when different WiFi networks use the same wireless channel in a single neighborhood. A significant number of manufacturers set channels one, six and eleven as their default, which means that there are numerous devices connected to the same channel as a user.

Network congestions are similar to traffic in a big city. With so many vehicles trying to use a single road, they all travel slowly trying to avoid a collision while also waiting for other cars to join different lanes. Likewise, when too much data is sent through a single channel, the time in which the data travels through that frequency becomes extended. Also, just like excessive consumption of fuel during traffic congestion, slow internet also causes substantial loss of data.

While the above network issues can be solved through different, simple ways, a better and more advanced solution would be the use of a WiFi extender. This denotes an electrical device that’s used to expand the reach of WiFi signals.

The extender is installed between the primary router and devices requiring the connection. It’s connected to the main router via an Ethernet cable, which helps it to pick up the transmission. This device subsequently transmits the signal like a secondary router. In essence, WiFi extenders enables you to rely on both wired and wireless connections.

People who reside in large apartments benefit a lot from the use of intercoms. These devices transfer direct sound from a guest to the homeowner and enable them to communicate without having to shout at each other. The very same mechanism is utilized by WiFi extenders.

For example, when the router is located in the living room and there’s a device that needs connection but it’s situated in a far off room, you can plug in the extender in a power source located close to the device.

Then you can use a coaxial cable to connect the extender to the main router. In turn, the cable will act as a superhighway, transmitting the data and delivering it to the extender, which will broadcast the signal to the device.

Numerous factors affect the performance of wireless networking. Some of these factors are dependent on the router’s capabilities, physical environments, and the fundamental physics behind wireless transmissions.

Such factors include the distance over which the radio signals can travel, the obstacles they have to cross before reaching the intended devices and channel interruptions from devices that use related frequencies.

These issues can be solved through the use of WiFi extenders, which transmit data through cables and broadcast them wirelessly to the intended devices.