How to check wifi signal strength around your house

How to check wifi signal strength around your house

Wifi signal strength reduces the further away you are from your router. Ideally, you want to place your router in the centre of your home to allow the signal to spread out in all directions. Radio waves (that power your wireless broadband) can travel through solid objects like walls and ceilings but the thicker the walls (such as thick stone walls) the worse the signal strength will be. 


There are several easy ways to check your signal strength. But first we need to understand what we are looking for. Radiowave signal strength is displayed as an RSSI value (RSSI stands for Radio Signal Strength Indicator) and measured in dBm (decibels per milliwatt). 


The closer the number is to 0, the stronger the signal. As a guide, anything under -60dBm is an excellent signal, suitable for video streaming, zoom calling and more. -70dBm and higher is a poor signal which wouldn’t be capable of fast streaming. You will rarely see anything less than -50dBm unless you are directly in front of the router.


Now we’ve established what we are looking for, how do we find it? 


Wifi Signal Strength using your iPhone

  1. Install the free Apple app - Airport Utility

  2. Head to your settings > Airport Utility > and toggle ON the Wifi Scanner option

  3. Open the Airport Utility app and in the top right corner press Wi-Fi Scan

  4. All of the nearby wifi networks will be displayed. Find your Gigapeak wifi network on the list (it should be the first one!) and check the RSSI value

  5. Now walk around your house watching the RSSI value to see how the signal strength changes from room to room




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