Amplify the wireless signal of your router


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It's easy to amplify the wireless signal of your router! Below, I'll explain how.

However, before you continue: it might be better for your health to reduce the signal somewhat....

Contents of this page:

Pick a good spot for your router

1. The place where you put your router, is important for its performance. Don't hide it behind a cabinet door nor put it on the floor.

There should be as little obstacles between your router and your computer as possible; especially metal, concrete and foliage can weaken or even block a WiFi signal. Also the router will perform better when he's placed high up, because then the floor won't block the WiFi signal as much.

Select the best channel and the best bandwidth

2. A wireless signal deteriorates when there are other wireless routers in the vicinity, that transmit on the same channel. Because of interference.

The solution is then, to select another channel. You can set that in the configuration of your router, which is usually accessible as a "web page" that you can view in your web browser (Firefox, Chrome, ....).

For most routers (amongst which Linksys devices) this "web page" is located at "web address" 192.168.1.1, but for your router this can be otherwise. See the manual of your router. Lost your manual? Then visit the website of the manufacturer of your router; usually you can download a copy there.

First check which channels are being used by the wireless routers in your vicinity. In Android you can use the app Wifi Analyzer for that and in Windows you can use inSSIDer. In Linux you can use LinSSID.

Now select for your router the channel that's least in use.

Technical sidenote: Because of inevitable overlap, what you select is in fact the centre channel of a channel range that consists out of multiple channels. The centre channel does have the strongest signal of the range.

For a 2.4 GHz network: Only the channels 1, 6 and 11 hardly overlap amongst each other, so choose one of those three. Some countries allow for channel 13, which is often the best choice, simply because its availability is little known.

For a 5 GHz network: Usually, routers default to the middle channel range. You'll probably find that the networks of your neighbours are all clustering in the middle, happily interfering with each other (as an aside: this gives an entirely new meaning to the word "clusterf***"). So select the lowest or highest channel that's available.

Also the bandwidth is a matter of consideration. For a 2.4 GHz network in a crowded area: always select 20 MHz (least interference loss).

For a 5 GHz network, a bandwidth of 40 MHz is in most cases the best compromise for speeds up to 200 Mb/s (roughly). If you have a faster connection, 80 MHz is likely to be the best bandwidth.

Note: A change of bandwidth affects the range of available channels! So check after a bandwidth change whether your channel selection is still correct.

Usually this will cause a noticeable signal improvement.

Deploy a second router (and definitely don't buy a repeater)

3. Sometimes it's useful to deploy a second router in your house. In order to improve wireless connectivity throughout the house.

You can read how to do that on this page.

Note: Don't buy a so-called repeater! Because with a repeater you usually lose half your bandwidth, as the repeater has to receive and transmit the bandwidth simultaneously. Most repeaters do that on the same channel, which causes the loss of half your bandwidth. It's technically an inferior solution.

Deploying a second router is technically a far better approach than deploying a repeater, because with a second router you do preserve your entire bandwidth.

Disabling the 2.4 GHz network on an ASUS router, without thereby automatically broadcasting an unknown network with a long random name

4. Long story short: when you disable (the "radio" of) the 2.4 GHz network on an ASUS router, it might.... automatically start broadcasting a replacement 2.4 GHz network with a long random name(!). That's a bug in the router firmware which probably affects more ASUS models than just my ASUS RT-AX53U.

It does that when you've previously set security for the 2.4 GHz network to WPA3 Personal. Workaround: set security for your 2.4 GHz network to WPA2 Personal, before you disable its "radio".

Long story (with more explanation):

When you have an active ASUS router with its WiFi switched off, it's possible that you'll notice an unknown WiFi network with full signal strenght in your home anyway. With a really long random name, example: B89846SLKLMFGT499Z4937176 (just an example, because this changes after enabling/disabling the radio).

This might be transmitted by your ASUS router, even though you don’t use this router with WiFi and have disabled the radio on both the 2.4 GHz and the 5 GHz band.

When you enable the 2.4 GHz band WiFi, this random network should disappear and be replaced by the normal SSID of your 2.4 GHz network (but it should reappear after you disable the 2.4 GHz radio again).

This can happen when you have the normal router mode enabled, even when you haven't enabled its AiMesh feature. It's a known bug in many ASUS routers, like the ASUS RT-AX53U.

The cause is probably that you've set the wireless security of your 2.4 GHz network to WPA3 Personal. The AiMesh feature doesn't like that; it can't handle WPA3 and wants WPA2.

Even when AiMesh is disabled and when all WiFi has been disabled as well, the bloody router firmware will start transmitting a 2.4 GHz network anyway, that AiMesh can handle. Which is of course both useless and annoying.

Unfortunately there is no true fix at the time of writing this (bad job from ASUSTeK), but there does exist an easy and effective workaround:

- Temporarily enable wireless on the 2.4 GHz band and confirm it by clicking on the Apply button;

- Change the security of your 2.4 GHz network from WPA3 Personal to WPA2 Personal (your 5 GHz network can keep WPA3 Personal, that doesn't matter), and confirm it by clicking on the Apply button;

- Disable wireless on the 2.4 GHz band again, by turning off its radio in the Professional section of the wireless settings.

That should suffice to rid you of that obnoxious extra network.

Want more?

5. Do you want more tips and tweaks? There's a lot more of them on this website!

For example:

Speed up your Linux Mint!

Clean your Linux Mint safely

Avoid 10 fatal mistakes


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