When setting up your wireless home network, you may not encounter many troubles with your range and signal strength; especially if you don't have many (or any) neighbors!

However, most folks may encounter trouble in a typical neighborhood where almost everyone has a wireless network in operation. Interference and other issues can get in the way of your home setup. Read on if you're having troubles, as we can help tune and tweak your wireless network to get the best coverage!

You may need this advice if:

• You want much better coverage than you're getting.
• You use multiple access points or wireless routers. (You'll probably be using more than one channel.)
• You aren't the only person nearby running a wireless network.

Simple Spacing of Channels

Improving signal strength is not as simple as adding additional devices. Devices that transmit powerfully — such as routers, access points, and cell phone base stations — can confuse one another. It's necessary to distance them and to have them use different channels.

For 802.11b and 802.11g, there are 11 channels for wireless equipment (13 channels in Europe.) In the simple situation where there's little interference, you can choose any channel that works for you. When there is interference from wireless networks that overlap with one another, each network should use one of the non-overlapping channels: 1, 6, or 11 (1, 7, 13 in Europe.) Then, three networks can use the same space with minimum interference. If you can't do that, choose channels that are as widely spaced as possible.

You can use a combination of access points, antennae, and other equipment to create local "spotlights" of strong transmission, rather than trying to blanket an entire area.

What If a Channel I Want to Use Has Too Much Noise (Interference)?

If your neighbor has a wireless network, it wouldn't be surprising that they are already using channel 1 and channel 11. Unfortunately, you can't completely avoid interference just by using other channels. Wireless protocols 802.11b and 11g only have 3 non-overlapping channels. Therefore, when four or more channels are used in the same area, the level of interference can increase notably. If you and your close neighbor both have a router and a wireless access point, for example — which makes a total of four powerful transmitters — both of you will have a certain amount of interference.

If there's a severe problem, a practical and sociable thing is to talk to your neighbors about using different channels. Together, you can choose optimal channels for your respective networks. You'll want your own channels at least 5 apart. So, for example, you could use channels 1 and 8, and your neighbor could use 5 and 11.

You may be able to place routers and access points further away inside your homes. After all, the kinds of physical barriers that reduce your transmission range also reduce the signal that your neighbor doesn't want to see. Note: Super G technology is faster, but it uses two, non-configurable channels. Therefore it may not be possible to pick other channels that avoid its interference.

If you can use a directional antenna, or an antenna cable to shift an antenna, that can help you both!

Reducing Wireless Network Traffic

When there's noise, your network performance drops, so one approach is to reduce the amount of network data being transmitted.

In a noisy environment, it may be useful to keep part of your network wired. If Ethernet cabling isn't an option, consider NETGEAR's Powerline products — using existing home wiring instead of cables.

When SSID Broadcast is turned on, it's easiest for equipment to find the strongest signal. However, this also causes network overhead. When the SSID is broadcast, your neighbor's equipment may keep a record of it, and automatically try to connect several times a second; this can cause a significant performance reduction. So where there are networks in close proximity, turn off SSID Broadcast, and change the default SSID.

Turning off WEP and WPA may increase network throughput, but could also expose your network to hackers or other intruders. This is not recommended, except for testing purposes.

We hope that this guide has helped you tune your network for optimal performance. You can visit our Setup and Troubleshooting areas for more information!

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