at some point we've all tried to stream a fine episode of Techquickie and run
up against a Wi-Fi range limit so have you ever wondered why can't we just
boost it to maximum power and extend the
range to answer we reached out to our good friend and Wi-Fi expert Joel Crane
and we'd like to thank him for his contributions two of the most obvious
ways that we can increase range present other technical problems you see at slow
speeds the modulation scheme the small
adjustments in the waveform that actually carry the data is much simpler
and easier for equipment to understand but as speeds get faster and faster the
modulation schemes are more complicated and more prone to errors and
interference so the farther away from the access point you get the slower you
have to go in fact if your access point is sending out a signal and not getting
any kind of reply from another gadget acknowledging that it received the
signal the AP will keep slowing the speed down and down and down until it
gets a response and this is a big part of the reason that speeds get slow if
you walk farther away from your router now as we demand faster speeds for
hi-def streaming gaming and file transfers simply slowing down our Wi-Fi
to make it go farther isn't a viable solution so back to more power then
right well not quite the Wi-Fi standard
doesn't have a super high transmit power to begin with in order to comply with
telecommunications laws in different countries for example in the United
States you can't go higher than 200 milliwatts and most routers are
configured by default to transmit at this maximum so you can't turn it up any
further legally however that doesn't mean that getting better Wi-Fi range is
a fool's errand one trick that actually does work fairly well is to focus the
Wi-Fi signal in one direction you see a typical home router has omnidirectional
antennas where the signal is transmitted
evenly in all directions and kind like a big doughnut shape but if your router is
at one end of your house and your couch is at the other that's not the best
setup instead you can get something called a patch antenna which looks like
a big flat panel and sends the signal out in one direction they're more common
in commercial settings or at trade shows but there is nothing stopping you for
example from sticking one on the side of your house and blanketing your backyard
in a strong Wi-Fi signal another trick that's built into some Wi-Fi standards
is the use of a long guard interval here's what this means between short
parts of the transmission called symbols are short time intervals before the next
symbol is sent these guard intervals are there to cut down on the interference
between symbols so if they're short you get more data but if they're long you
get less interference and therefore longer range at the expense of some
speed Wi-Fi 6 by the way is introducing extra long guard intervals for outdoor
use where ranges often need to be longer of course another winning strategy is to
cut down on interference in other ways you can do this by using narrower
channels so by using 40 megahertz instead of 80 on the 5 gigahertz band as
well as making sure that you don't have unnecessary transmissions flying around
your house like from baby monitors or Bluetooth devices that you aren't
actually using and this one can make more of a difference than you might
think in fact a huge part of how wired
Ethernet has gotten faster has simply been by cutting down on noise inside the
cable however other than the tips we've mentioned in this video I wouldn't
expect too much new tech in the near future that can extend Wi-Fi range
without adding more antennas in something like a mesh network speed and
range are always going to be balancing acts so you got a pick do you want the
Baconator or do you want to lose weight and feel good you only get to pick one
are you concerned about a data breach causing your credit card info to fall
into the wrong hands here Brandon take this no that's the wrong hands then
check out today's sponsor privacy context Ikey they have a free
easy-to-use service that hides your credit card number the way it works is
by creating a virtual card number that is locked to whatever merchant you're
shopping at so even if that merchant gets hacked the bad guys can't take your
card number and then go use it somewhere else as they please and if they try
you'll even get a push notification so that you are always in the loop and you
can cancel that card immediately cards are super easy to set up you just create
an account linked your virtual cards to your checking account or a debit card at a
limit and that's it you're all set we've
also got a browser extension that auto fills information for you when you're
making a purchase so there's a convenience factor as well privacy comm
is PCI DSS compliant uses military-grade encryption to secure your information
and they offer two-factor authentication and because they make their money from
merchants there is no cost to you it's free so try it out today and you will
get five dollars in your account privacy com forward slash Techquickie that's
privacy com forward slash Techquickie so thanks for watching guys like dislike
check out our other videos I'll leave a comment if you have a suggestion for a
future fast as possible and don't forget to subscribe it's worth it I promise