How crowded my neighborhood with 2.4 Ghz radio
More than a year ago I joined my friend to shared internet connection wirelessly and it run pretty well… until 3 months ago I found it’s hard to connect smoothly. I always found my connection getting slower and slower and sometimes time out.
Since my antenna is as small as pig tail and connected directly to the access point I put them indoor. Now I thought it will be better if i put the antenna outdoor to gain a better signal.
Last night I bought an 16 dbi directional outdoor antenna. The price is Rp. 225.000 (approx. $22.5). Again the cable from the antenna is just about 50 cm and I put the antenna indoor because of that.
I started do site survey…. and surprised to found so many 2.4 Ghz radio in the neighborhood, I noticed 11 others SSID.
Wow… 11 SSID…. that’s explain why my connection was so bad lately…it interfere each other.
I did some experiments to find the best signal, first I point my antenna to the other end of radio in my friend’s house, afterward I try to change the polarization from vertical to horizontal and found that horizontal is best for me. When vertical I just got -13 dbm and got -28 dbm in horizontal.
After that I tried to ping my other radio with 65500 byte. In channel 4 i found that the ping was time out after 10 times success … I choose 4 because it was not used by others, but in theories only 3 channel among 11 channel available can be used which are 1 ,6, and 11. Those channel will not interfere each other. In this case channel 4 will interfere with 1,3, and 6 it means i competes with other 10 radios.
I try to use channel 11, in this channel I only competes with 1 radio that using the same channel. I ping with 65500 bytes to other far end radio, and never found time out again, this is the best signal i can get
So you guys if found the same situation as mine…. do these to get the best signal :
1. using directional antenna and point to the other radio.
2. experiment with the antenna polarization different situation will need different solution, you may find that vertical is the best or viceversa.
3. choose the channel with little competition, find as little rival as you can to get the best signal.
Happy experiment.
