What homeowners need to know about WiFi

Products ePMP
1

I saw on another group that service providers spend a lot of time explaining residential WiFi to their customers:

  • download speeds
  • Upload speeds
  • number of devices
  • indoor coverage
  • WiFi passwords
  • what you the customer need to do to have good WiFi
  • more

What do you have to repeatedly cover for your WiFi residential customers? What do you wish they would understand? I would like to collect these thoughts and ask for a volunteer service provider to film a 3-5 minute video that all WISPs can use.

Thanks

Ray

cnPilot e700 passes humidity testing and water ingress
cnPilot fish tank b.jpg540×720 95.6 KB
cnPilot e700 passes humidity testing and water ingress

2

Wireless cctv cameras, audio bridges, certain motion sensors...etc kill 2.4Ghz WiFi. Please let us know before you decide to have any of these installed as your outside unit and indoor router both work on this band, leaving little spectrum for any of the aforementioned devices. 

Your broom closet, closed up inside your entertainment center, etc... is -not- a good place for your AP; if you can not see it, neither can your devices.

If your alarm system uses it's own AP, it needs to be locked down on a non-overlapping channel from your internet AP.

Same alarm AP does not need to be sitting directly beside your internet AP.

Having all your hard wired wireless AP's on channel 6 (or any channel), -will- cause issues. Adding more hard wired wireless APs also all on channel 6 will make it worse, not better. We can help you with channel planning.

3 devices barely connecting and holding connection, will give all other devices slow speeds. Sharing your AP's password with your neighbor 100 yards away is the best way to experience this. If you have shared your password with your neighbor 100 yards away, change it and give your neighbor our number for service. 

If your AP is mounted on top/beside your microwave, then yes Netflix will buffer while making pop corn for your movie. And yes it will make voice calls over WiFi broken. 

We can install the AP in the garage on this end of the house but do not expect to watch Netflix on your smart TV on the opposite end of the house. We would prefer to install it in the middle of the house, or closer to the heaviest concentration of devices. We can install a repeater if needed. 

If you have a 15Mbps package and your son is on Youtube and your daughter on Hulu, you will not see 15Mbps when you visit any speed test site. You must test when there is no traffic on the network. And no, each device does not get 15Mbps.... the entire service to the residence is 15Mbps, shared amongst all devices, unless you have asked us to prioritize certain devices. 

If the internet we installed slows considerably when you turn on your Verizon/ATT/etc hotspot you brought home from work, and speeds up when you turn it off, it is because the hot spot is on the same frequency as either our outdoor unit or your indoor router. 

If you purchase a new router in the future, please let us know so we can help you lock it down on a certain frequency so it does not interfere with our outdoor unit. If you purchase a router from us, we will do this as part of the set up.  

Wireless cards in the majority of Smart TV's are junk. Hard wire TV whenever possible, or at the least use a wireless ethernet bridge.

All of your wireless devices except your phone/tablet/pc works fine on your home WiFi. Have you tried it on another WiFi network? Oh...You have and it does the same thing on your work WiFi...then you have a defective phone/tablet/pc.

I am sure there are many many other situations/experiences out there. 

6 Likes
3

This is great!!

Very good images on what you can and cannot do with Wi-Fi - I assume that you have had these conversations.

My favorite is putting the AP on top of the microwave.

Ray

4

Yep, had calls/conversations about everything listed.  As for the microwave situation, home had an open floor plan with large kitchen in central part of house. Installers installed router in the kitchen closest to middle of home in all directions. Some months later wife of that home decided to rearrange kitchen. Moved microwave to other side of kitchen where router was located. Put router on top of microwave. 

1 Like
5

Add the hell of crappy "range extenders".  None of our customers seems able to understand that a $20 "range extender" uses half of it's time talking to the existing wifi, half talking to connected devices, and all of it interfering on the same channel.  If you're at just the 'wrong' spot you will see each of them at the same signal level, meaning whichever you're connected to you have signal==noise.

But customers seem endlessly to be convinced (by uncomprehending retail electronics salespersons, I assume) that such devices will magically fix their smart TV in the bedroom frequently buffering and stuttering.

j

2 Likes
6

"Moved microwave to other side of kitchen where router was located. Put router on top of microwave. "

Had one recently that had moved the microwave to the end of the counter where the router was and then stuffed the router back in behind the microwave to hide it...  

1 Like
7

I always talk about mesh with new customers. It is too bad the Cambium R200 routers lost their mesh features a few sofware updates ago, but none the less, Mesh is what wifi customers need to know about. 

1 Like
8

Hello,

My story to tell is about a support phone call, a client reporting internet service not working, client is located in my same office building so I went to check what was happening.

My surpirised was wireless router inside of a cabinet, inside a closet!!! I explained my client why the router ubication that her IT outsourced support choosed wasnt the ideal and they thanked me.

Another intenresting place where you should not locate a Wireless device is a Telecom cabinet because you are puting device inside of a Faraday's cage.

1 Like