Some of the most common problems you might face while dealing with your Internet are connectivity and configuration issues, therefore it is extremely helpful to be able to solve them. This article will help you to set the best tactics.
Addressing connectivity issues
Wireless clients configured properly should automatically and quickly picks up broadcasted SSID and connect accordingly assuming both the client and WAP support the correct bands. If this has not taken place, it is the time for some troubleshooting. Most of the problems of the wireless connectivity come down to either an incorrect configuration such as incorrect password or for low signal strength.
Without a strong signal, even the perfectly configured wireless client won’t do much here. Every wireless clients use a multi-bar graph, typically five bars, to show off the signal strength to the user. Zero bars indicates no wireless connectivity and five bars indicate maximum signal. Weak signal can result in slow overall data transfer and intermittent connections.
Whatever the cause is, be it the configuration or signal strength, process to diagnose and repair is the same as for a wired network. Very first you want to see, if your wireless NIC has network light, if is passing data packets back and forth the network. Secondly, check the NIC’s configuration utility. The link state generally defines the wireless NIC’s connection status to a wireless network. The status could be connected or disconnected. If the connection status is disconnected, you could have an issue with the WAP. If the signal is weak to receive known as low RF signal, you probably is out of your WAP’s coverage range or there could be any sort of interference.
You can address these issues in number of ways. Wi-Fi signals bounce off objects. You can try little adjustments to your antennas and see if the signal improves. You can swap out the antenna with high gain antennas out there. Another one is you can relocate the PC or access point or locate and move the device causing the interference.
Most the signal interference occur due to the fact that there are lot of other household electronic appliances run on the same frequency as your Wi-Fi signal. Things like wireless phone, intercoms, microwave etc. Can cause serious interference with the Wi-Fi signal. To address this issue, you can try changing the channel and see if any of the channel fix this issue. Another solution here could be changing the channel of the device causing the issue. If you for some reason can not change the channel , try moving the interfering device to another place or area or replace it with a different device. In cases like this, if you need to cover a small area, really small and you don’t care about range outside far away from your home, you can opt in to a 5GHz band to solidify you bandwidth and against any interference.
Addressing configuration issues
The most common kind of wireless networking problem is a misconfigured hardware or software. Given the level of complexities of wireless networking, this is not surprising that sometimes even brilliant tech in the field could mess things up. One slip of the typing finger and off goes the configuration completely. The things you are most likely to get wrong ones are the SSID and security configuration, dual-band routers have introduced some additional complexities.
First, verify SSID configuration, for any bands in use, on your access point. Then check on the affected clients. Most of the wireless devices allow you to use any characters in the SSID which includes blank spaces and fancy emojis as well. It is best not to put any blank characters in the SSID. Careful with any trailing blank spaces that you may have accidentally left there.
In some situations, clients that have always connects to a WAP with a specific SSID may no longer connects. Client may not give off any error message like “SSID not found”. There are workarounds for this. Look for is the WAP is not powered up or down for some reason. Another one is, see if there was any changes in the SSID. If so then, you need to re-connect from the clients with new SSID or change the SSID back to where it was. Sometimes, the client may connect to the new one. In such case, go ahead and delete the old one.
There could be other reasons as well but look out for common issues mentioned here. This should help you fix the networking issue.