MarcinOC
Level 1 (16 points)
Apple TV

Q: Best router placement?

My Airport Extreme is located on one side of my two story home, in an upstairs home office. I have an Airport Express located downstairs, towards the other side of the house.  My wifi coverage had been spotty downstairs. Recently I read a review suggesting that the a router ideally should be centrally located (not possible for me) and that the router should be off the floor at least four or five feet.  I tried this and now have it about five feet off the floor.

 

My question is, would the coverage be even better, if I positioned the router even higher?

 

So far the Speedtest app on my iPhone show my download & upload speed much faster than what I used to get.

 

Thanks

iMac, OS X El Capitan (10.11.4)

Posted on Jul 14, 2016 2:17 PM

by Tesserax,Solvedanswer
Tesserax Tesserax
Level 9 (53,877 points)
Wireless
A:

Thanks for giving it a try and posting back your results.

Using iStumbler the SNR is showing as 58 dBm (protocol ac).

With iStumbler the "S/N" column would represent SNR ... so the values should be in dB, not dBM. Regardless, if you did find that you were getting 58 (whatever) in this column then you are getting exceptional signal quality at the location of your desktop from the AirPort Extreme. The other thing to look at is how consistent this value is. If there are major swings, especially to the lower side, that may indicate that there is some form of Wi-Fi interference present nearby that is affecting your Wi-Fi's ability to broadcast a "clean" signal.

My same network also shows up with different protocol initials, some with higher SNR's and some with lower SNR's.with much lower SNR's. I'm not clear what that means.

I am guessing that you have an 802.11ac AirPort Extreme. If that's the case it will broadcast two networks simultaneously. One on the 5 GHz band and the other on the 2.4 GHz band with different radio modes. For example, 802.11ac can only operate on the 5 GHz band. 802.11n can operate on both bands.

 

iStumbler will see these as multiple Wi-Fi networks which is perfectly normal. The SNR value will be different for each of these bands.

I also checked SNR on El Capitan which showed 132 dBm/-88 dBM. The Airport Extreme is three feet away from the iMac, so this seems puzzling.

From a Mac, running OS X El Capitan, you would hold down the Option key, and then, select the Wi-Fi icon in the OS X menu bar. The resultant drop-down has a number of useful bits of information that is directly related to how the host computer "sees" the the Wi-Fi network that it is currently connected to.

 

Specifically, you would be interested in the RSSI, Noise, Tx Rate, PHY Mode, and MCS Index values.

 

To calculate SNR, you would subtract Noise from RSSI.

Posted on Jul 15, 2016 10:02 PM

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MarcinOC

Q: Best router placement?

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  • Helpful answers

  • by LaPastenague,

    LaPastenague LaPastenague Jul 14, 2016 3:20 PM in response to MarcinOC
    Level 9 (52,255 points)
    Wireless
    Jul 14, 2016 3:20 PM in response to MarcinOC

    Extending wireless across the diagonal of a two storey home .. through as much solid material as is possible always will lead to the worst possible wireless. Raising the Express to get it above some of the furniture is a small help.. higher than that is probably going to meet diminishing returns.

     

    The best way to solve the problem is using ethernet.

     

    If your house is big and difficult then just ethernet to the room directly below the Extreme's location and put another Extreme in there.. buy a second hand gen5 AE from ebay etc.. it is far superior to another express. Set it up in roaming network mode.

  • by Tesserax,

    Tesserax Tesserax Jul 15, 2016 8:11 AM in response to MarcinOC
    Level 9 (53,877 points)
    Wireless
    Jul 15, 2016 8:11 AM in response to MarcinOC

    The way to determine the best base station placement is to perform a wireless site survey.

     

    This would work best if you have either a Mac or Windows laptop available.

     

    For a Mac or PC, one third-party application that can do this is NetSpot. You would first use it to create a baseline site survey map of your home. Then make some placement changes of your base station and then perform another survey to check the results.

     

    Another method for Macs is covered in the following AirPort User tip. Although it was written specifically about the optimal placement of a base station in an extended Wi-Fi network, the Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) measurements still apply for your situation. Again a laptop would help here. In this case, you want the SNR value to be 25-30+ dB where you would want to get Wi-Fi reception.

  • by MarcinOC,

    MarcinOC MarcinOC Jul 15, 2016 11:59 AM in response to Tesserax
    Level 1 (16 points)
    Apple TV
    Jul 15, 2016 11:59 AM in response to Tesserax

    Hello. I followed your directions as best that I could. I don't have a laptop, just desktop & iPad. Using iStumbler the SNR is showing as 58 dBm (protocol ac).  My same network also shows up with different protocol initials, some with higher SNR's and some with lower SNR's.with much lower SNR's. I'm not clear what that means.  I also checked SNR on El Capitan which showed 132 dBm/-88 dBM. The Airport Extreme is three feet away from the iMac, so this seems puzzling.

  • by Tesserax,Solvedanswer

    Tesserax Tesserax Jul 15, 2016 10:02 PM in response to MarcinOC
    Level 9 (53,877 points)
    Wireless
    Jul 15, 2016 10:02 PM in response to MarcinOC

    Thanks for giving it a try and posting back your results.

    Using iStumbler the SNR is showing as 58 dBm (protocol ac).

    With iStumbler the "S/N" column would represent SNR ... so the values should be in dB, not dBM. Regardless, if you did find that you were getting 58 (whatever) in this column then you are getting exceptional signal quality at the location of your desktop from the AirPort Extreme. The other thing to look at is how consistent this value is. If there are major swings, especially to the lower side, that may indicate that there is some form of Wi-Fi interference present nearby that is affecting your Wi-Fi's ability to broadcast a "clean" signal.

    My same network also shows up with different protocol initials, some with higher SNR's and some with lower SNR's.with much lower SNR's. I'm not clear what that means.

    I am guessing that you have an 802.11ac AirPort Extreme. If that's the case it will broadcast two networks simultaneously. One on the 5 GHz band and the other on the 2.4 GHz band with different radio modes. For example, 802.11ac can only operate on the 5 GHz band. 802.11n can operate on both bands.

     

    iStumbler will see these as multiple Wi-Fi networks which is perfectly normal. The SNR value will be different for each of these bands.

    I also checked SNR on El Capitan which showed 132 dBm/-88 dBM. The Airport Extreme is three feet away from the iMac, so this seems puzzling.

    From a Mac, running OS X El Capitan, you would hold down the Option key, and then, select the Wi-Fi icon in the OS X menu bar. The resultant drop-down has a number of useful bits of information that is directly related to how the host computer "sees" the the Wi-Fi network that it is currently connected to.

     

    Specifically, you would be interested in the RSSI, Noise, Tx Rate, PHY Mode, and MCS Index values.

     

    To calculate SNR, you would subtract Noise from RSSI.

  • by MarcinOC,

    MarcinOC MarcinOC Jul 16, 2016 10:14 PM in response to Tesserax
    Level 1 (16 points)
    Apple TV
    Jul 16, 2016 10:14 PM in response to Tesserax

    Thank you for your help. Changing the router placement seems to have solved my signal strength problems.

  • by MarcinOC,

    MarcinOC MarcinOC Jul 20, 2016 10:14 AM in response to Tesserax
    Level 1 (16 points)
    Apple TV
    Jul 20, 2016 10:14 AM in response to Tesserax

    I'm now puzzled because after relocating the router, and getting excellent strength both upstairs and downstairs, I now find that upstairs the download speed is better than ever, and downstairs the download speed is nominal. I get 50 Mbps from my ISP (Cox), and just now a Speedtest is showing that I'm getting 64.74 Mbps download upstairs (near the router), and downstairs I'm getting 3.09 Mbps download speed.  This type download speeds have been typical over the past week or so. Any suggestions?

     

    Thanks