5 Ways To Improve Your Wifi

You use wifi? Check. You want a simple guide that can help you to boost your wifi performance? Check. You love Chinavasion? Check. For all the wi-fi geeks out there who want to boost their wifi signal, here are the most simple but effective ways. Whether you’ve got a home wireless network or you’re connected to hotspots at the local coffee shop or airport, you deserve to get the most out of your wifi.

1. Improve Your Wifi Coverage with Smart Placement
The simplest and most convenient way to boost coverage for your wireless network devices is to optimize placement. We recommend this as the first step.

The base station should be located centrally on an upper floor if possible, or on top of furniture; this is because radio waves spread best laterally (sideways) and downward, so use this to your advantage. Placing your base station near the center rather than near windows also minimizes the chances of signal leakage outdoors so that neighbours and passers by are unable to detect the wifi signal.

Position your wireless network components far from other devices that can cause interference. Examples of these include cordless telephones, microwave ovens, baby monitors or halogen lamps.

The wireless reception will be better if the signal does travel at very steep angles and also if it doesn’t have to go through thick concrete walls, mirrors, fish tanks or anything metal. All of these will degrade and worsen signal quality for your wireless network devices.

Manually change the default signal channel (this is usually set to 6) to avoid interference with neighbors’ network devices.

2. Enable WPA/WPA2 Encryption for Security

You can never too safe with your Wi-Fi security, so it pays to ensure that access point is protected properly to prevent hackers from creating problems or at least make them more likely to move on to another access point.

Nowadays, most wireless access points are set to use the WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) protocol by default to password their connections. However WPA (WiFi Protected Access) or WPA2 is less easy to crack than WEP – both WPA and WPA2 are supported on most modern routers and computers.

Switching to WPA encryption is simple: on your access point’s administration page, change the security level and set your WPA passphrase to something long and difficult to crack. With passwords, use a combination of letters, numbers and even characters such as @! for peace of mind.

3. Stop Broadcasting Your Network’s Name to Everyone
Access points and routers all use a network name called the SSID (Service Set Identifier). Manufacturers typically ship their wireless products with the same SSID set. For example, the SSID for Linksys devices and routers is normally “linksys.” If a default SSID is used, it is seen as a poorly configured wireless network and are much more likely to be attacked. Change your SSID from the default immediately when configuring wireless security on your network.

In fact, it might be better to simply turn off SSID broadcasting altogether, this will keep regular old laptops and other devices from listing your network as one of the detected options. To do so, go to your access point’s administration page, uncheck “Enable SSID Broadcast.”

While this won’t prevent users with the right software from seeing your access point, it provides another security measure to protect your precious wireless network and your electronic wi-fi devices.

4. Enable firewall protection
Most modern network routers come with built-in firewalls, however it’s worth checking that it is turned on via your access point’s administration page. However, for best results, you should install and run firewall software to run alongside it. There are some effective and reputable freeware options to provide you with solid firewall protection so that you can run your network and Chinavasion wi-fi products with peace of mind.

5. Unlock Your Wi-Fi Router with the DD-WRT Firmware

The Linux-based DD-WRT firmware is able to unlock a huge number of configuration options on your Wi-Fi router. Examples include boosting your wifi signal, throttling bandwidth for specific applications, turning your regular old router into a signal repeater and more by installing the fabulous DD-WRT firmware. It’s not only easy to do, it’s also free!

Simply go to the main DD-WRT website and choose your wireless router from the supported list. You might find that this helps you to increase the range of your Wi-Fi router by a few meters if not more. Get the most out of Chinavasion wireless gadgets and Chinavasion wifi accessories with this great software.

To increase the signal strength on your Wi-Fi, you can increase the router’s transmit power. You can also disable both frame burst and afterburner, these settings can be accessed from the router’s web dashboard. If you find that DD-WRT firmware is not available for your router, try the Tomato firmware. Both are excellent choices and free.

We hope that this Chinavasion blog can help you to get the most out of your wifi accessories, wi-fi gadgets and wireless products.