Tips for your wireless home network

With these tips, your wireless home network will work without problems.


Perfectly wireless


The wireless reception at the kitchen table could not be better, but in the living room there were problems? If the WLAN reception in your house fluctuates, it is often because the WLAN router is not the optimal location was selected. With the Smartphone app WiFi Analyzer or the PC software HeatMapper (www.ekahau.com/heatmapper), you can find out how much wireless reception is at different locations in the house.

Based on the results, place your router so that it is possible to have a good reception in all rooms. Helpful for measuring is a floor plan of the apartment as an image file.


If, in addition to your own WLAN router, other routers are within range of your devices, this can lead to errors. Especially when two or even more routers use overlapping or equal radio channels.


The transmission range of your router should not overlap with those of other routers - it is best to have at least five channels removed from the router with the next-highest transmit power. Use the WiFi Analyzer or the software inSSIDer (www.metageek.net/inssider) to check whether there is an overlap. If you find a router that is broadcasting on the same radio channel as your, you should change the broadcast channel of your router. To do this, change to the WLAN settings in the router menu


Properly configured, the router protects all connected devices from unwanted Internet access. However, the security of the WLAN also depends on the encryption. All current WLAN routers support WPA-PSK or their successor WPA2-PSK, which is secure for home use. These encryption methods are preferable to the easy-to-crack WEP encryption.


Watched: A wireless router with pure WPA2-PSK encryption can not connect to devices using WPA-PSK only. In order to avoid complications, you should activate the WPA2-PSK and WPA-PSK (TKIP) mixed mode in the WLAN settings of your router.


The classic method of connecting WLAN devices to the router requires the entry of the long router password. It is much easier to connect WLAN devices to the standard WPS - provided the router also offers WPS.


The Wi-Fi Protected Setup is very simple: First press a button on the WLAN router to put it in WPS mode. Then you have about two minutes to connect any WPS-enabled WLAN hardware to the router.


The correct router default


Disturb your neighbors


The correct encryption


WLAN at the touch of a button: WPS