Home Wifi Woes Update -- Wifi Channels, New Test Results

Taking a break from work at home, I decided to do a modification and see what the results will be like.

Selecting The Best Wifi Channel


Looking at the scan result yesterday, the best channels to use were 3 and 6.  First I tried 6, but saw that there was another strong signal in the path, so I switched to 3.  Verified that I was the only one on 3, I re-run the test.

The Setup

Here's the layout of my unit.
Area of just 80sqm or 600 sqft

It should be so simple, so perfect for just one Wifi router to work and yet...


Real World Wifi Testing

For this round, I decided to test sitting in various room in the most likely position.  The rooms are small anyway and I am no more than 8ft from the router or access points.

Also to note that it was late in the morning, there should be less traffic.  There were also just 20 (it was 27 yesterday) other wifi signals around.  We should expect better performance, 'cleaner' results.


Living Room -- Wifi Router



Master Bedroom -- Wifi Range Extender, TPLink TL-WA850RE



The most interesting thing happened when I switched it off.  So now I am connected to the router.


Wow!  Before you dismissed the wifi repeater,  it was doing a respectable job.  This result might be due to switching to a un-congested and I was able to get a good connection to the router.  Yesterday,  over a congested channel, I was still able to get a decent transfer rate from the wifi repeater.

Bedroom 1 -- Powerline, TPLink TL-WPA4220KIT

To give you a glimpsed of why I even bother to go to all these troubles, here's what it was like in this bedroom just 20ft away.


Bedroom 1, connecting to the wifi router
Turning on the Powerline adapter, I first turned off the Wifi on my Mac and tried the Ethernet port.


Tremendous improvement!  Although I expected more from Powerline.  Now, let's try the Wifi.


Result was quite close. Which was good: the wifi was indeed transmitted over the Powerline and performance was close to a cable connection.

Conclusion  

Performance over Powerline is not as good as advertised.  Circuit breakers may be the culprit and this may be the Archilles heel of the technology.  However, it remains the most viable solution if your room is far away and you don't want to mess with CAT 5 cables and switches.  I also like it that you can have power, Ethernet and Wifi all contain in a single unit.

Wifi repeater/booster performed much better than I expected.  Make sure they are placed in the mid point and have good connection to the main router and it can handily give you an acceptable speed with little fuss.



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