veex_1 19/06/2016 11:25 Page 1
Why Your Hotspot Matters
WiFi should be
considered as a service,
rather than a
convenience, according
to Eve Danel, senior
product manager,
VeEX Inc.
Going Wireless
It’s hard to imagine a world today without
mobile devices where communication,
business, news and personal lives are all
connected. As people connect to the
Internet, gone are the days of wired
technology. Most devices that we use don’t
even have an Ethernet LAN port anymore
and the only way we communicate, work, or
stream video and audio in our local networks
is through WiFi.
WiFi-enabled devices connect to the
Internet via a WLAN network and a wireless
Access Point (AP), or hotspot. Americans
today have an average of five WiFi-enabled
devices in their homes, and with the Internet
14 Cable Media
of Things just around the corner – anything
from the toaster to the water heater – they
too will soon be chatting on our networks.
WiFi is the access technology of choice
used not only in homes but in businesses
and public spaces worldwide. It cannot be
treated as a ‘convenience’ anymore, but as a
Service, with all of the customer expectations
that it entails. Yet very often this piece is
overlooked during the installation process,
leading to costly service calls and
troubleshooting.
quality is not the equivalent in all the rooms
or even within the same room. In most cases
there will be no control over the
environment, but by surveying the signal
levels throughout the home, coverage can
easily be predicted. In areas of low coverage,
you can adjust the Access Point location or
eventually add a wireless repeater, where an
existing signal from the router is
rebroadcasted to create a second network,
ultimately improving signal range and
coverage.
Not as easy as it looks
It is true that WiFi is a very resilient
technology that will connect in even the
most adverse environments. But many
wrongly assume that WiFi is a simple plug
Interference from Neighbours and
Other Devices
Neighbours often argue about overgrown
trees or fence issues, but few would suspect
that their neighbour’s equipment could be
and play technology. Simply having a
connection does not mean that it will
perform optimally or reliably, and satisfy
customer expectations.
For this reason, a complete home
installation plan should proactively survey
the environment to ensure Quality of
Experience for the user. It should include
audits for WiFi coverage, interference,
performance and security.
the cause of their poor WiFi performance.
Most home users never change the settings
on their routers, with most routers
defaulting to the same WiFi channel. In
reality, a neighbour’s Access Point located on
the same or an adjacent WiFi channel
reduces the available bandwidth. The WiFi
RF channel is a shared medium, with each
device only transmitting data when there is
no other device transmitting, effectively
dividing the available bandwidth between
the number of devices attempting to
transmit simultaneously. This sharing
mechanism applies to devices connected to
your own AP and to all devices connected to
your neighbour’s AP, if they are configured
on the same or overlapping RF channel
(provided that their signal is strong enough).
To make matters worse, other non-WiFi
equipment, like a microwave oven or a baby
monitor, could completely overpower the
Access Point’s signal and make it
unintelligible to the receiver. This is in large
part due to the fact that the Federal
Communications Commission (FCC) opened
up the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz frequency
spectrum for unlicensed use. Unlike AM or
FM radio RF bands, where each transmitter
is assigned a dedicated frequency, WiFi’s
frequency bands are available for anyone to
use. The 2.4 GHz frequency band is one of
the most heavily used, especially popular
and crowded. It is used by many common
devices including cordless phones,
Bluetooth, wireless audio or video cameras.
Interference by these competing devices
Signal Coverage
The basis of a home installation plan is to
survey signal coverage, in order to discover
dead zones. When the WiFi signal’s Radio
Frequency waves travel through the air
between the Access Point and the client, they
will encounter many physical obstacles
including walls, dressers and mirrors. These
obstacles will degrade the signal’s strength
and make it harder for the receiver to
decode. The amount of degradation depends
on the obstacle’s nature. For example, a
concrete wall attenuates signals more than a
drywall. This explains why the signal’s
ADVANCED TELEVISION