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This is one of the coolest gadgets I've played around with in a long time. It's

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an expensive prograde solution, but if you or a client is having an impossible

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issue with a wireless network, it could absolutely save your bacon. Oh, and I'll

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cover some more practical stuff for home users as well. Welcome to how to

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optimize your Wi-Fi. I

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guess the Flash Voyager GTX USB3 drive

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from Corsair provides SSD- like performance and fits comfortably in your

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pocket. Click now to learn more. Now, in a perfect fantasy world, only two Wi-Fi

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devices would be in one place at one time, an access point and a single

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client. That would work awesome. Unfortunately, in the real world, that's

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not really how it goes down. and you'll have sometimes dozens of devices

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chattering at the same time. Now, Wi-Fi devices are designed to be very polite

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and not talk over each other. So, as long as they're all on the same channel,

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every device will wait its turn to communicate, which means there's a

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finite amount of communication that can be done per channel. Once you reach that

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limit, you're pretty much done. There are a couple of solutions, though.

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Solution number one is to change the operating channel of your wireless

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equipment. But that needs to be done with care. If you or an inconsiderate

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neighbor chooses overlapping channels, that complicates communication because

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instead of every device waiting its turn to communicate, they'll all just kind of

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try to yell on top of each other. So, choose non-over overlapping channels.

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The problem is that in the 2.4 GHz band, there are only three non-over

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overlapping channels. So that's still a very finite amount of communication that

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can be done. Which leads to solution number two. Reduce other wireless

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signals. This can be done by asking very close neighbors to kindly turn down

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their antenna strength, by turning off unnecessary Wi-Fi hotspots, and by

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wiring up as many devices as you can so not every piece of electronic gear in

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your house is competing for airtime. This kind of tweaking is actually pretty

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easy to do with either Metaggeek's in SSID or 4 tool or an Android app like

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Wi-Fi Analyzer. But what if these solutions? What if these solutions don't

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work? It's possible there's a non-ifi

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device interfering with your network. Switching to newer dualband 5 gigahertz

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wireless equipment is one solution that will probably work because while ranges

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are slightly reduced, there are many more available channels and much less

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equipment that uses them. But in an office environment where you can't

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control what people are using or even in the home, it's not always an option. So

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this is the Wispy DBX from Metgeek. This

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professional-grade device combined with the Wi-Fi card in your PC and MetaGeek's

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channelizer software is a powerful spectrum analysis tool that lets you

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visualize the 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz wireless

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activity around you, including both Wi-Fi networks and non-ifi compliant

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interferers. The device itself is pretty straightforward. Included in the box is

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this little black box, an antenna, a USB

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2 cable, and a little clip that you can use to attach it to your PC. Like so.

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This is the way I'd recommend using it since diagnosing interference is often

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going to be a pretty active process with a lot of running around. Let's get into

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the software. So, first we'll take a look at both density and waterfall view,

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which show real time and historical

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wireless activity. and they both use the x-axis to show which channel the signal

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is being transmitted on, but you still use them a little bit differently. So,

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density view shows us the amplitude of the activity on the y-axis, so how loud

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a device is talking, and uses color coding from blue to red to indicate how

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often it's talking. This red blip right here is transmitting all the time, but

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it's not very loud. While the one here only transmits around 10% of the time,

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but is so loud that it's either very powerful or very close by. Waterfall

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view works more like a seismma graph, where the amplitude of the signal is

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colorcoded now, and how often it happens is represented by how often the dots

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appear in a vertical line. So, back to our previous examples, that red spot now

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has a constant blue color code, and we see lots and lots and lots of activity

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in that line, while the tall blue peak has less frequent but red color-coded

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activity. One more trick here is that we can use the navigation feature on the

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left as kind of a PVR to see anything from a short recent 30-cond snapshot for

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on the-fly diagnosis of issues to hours of recorded activity to get a really

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clear idea of what's going on in that area throughout the day. Just don't

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forget to create sessions so you know where you were and what you were trying

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to monitor at the time. All right, so enough theory. I promise this was a cool

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gadget. Let's play with it, shall we? Here's the 2.4 GHz frequency range

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around the office. Lots of SSIDs. We can see them broadcasting with that faint

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blue halo. Um, some of them are strong, others aren't. None of them have

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particularly intense activity going on for now. One thing you might notice if

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we overlay the Wi-Fi networks though is that the configuration here is a total

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mess. One of ours is on channel 2 and seems to have autoconfigured itself to

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40 MHz. A performance boost in theory, but with so much other traffic going on

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around here, uh, it's probably not helping anyone. And there are a couple

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of other nearby networks on overlapping channels, too. But that stuff's easy. We

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don't need a fancy tool for that. So, let's take a look at what different

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kinds of traffic look like. This is kind of cool. So, this is what low bit rate

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buffered video playback on a mobile phone looks like when we have our

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spectrum analyzer. These short bursts mean that we're nowhere near saturating

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our connection. This, on the other hand, is what high bit rate 1080p playback

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looks like. Not nearly as many gaps between data transmission in order to

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build the buffer. Might have a hard time running multiple streams of this at the

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same time. And then, haha, big leagues now. NVIDIA game stream. This is why

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they have a recommended list of highquality routers to stream games over

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your Wi-Fi network. There is no buffer time in between transmission because low

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latency is key. So data needs to be moving constantly and without any

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interruptions. But all of this is stuff that's relatively easy to diagnose cuz

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it's Wi-Fi gear. What about the real reason we got this tool? Non Wi-Fi stuff.

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Whoa there. What's that? Out of nowhere,

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we've got a device hopping around, thankfully outside of our Wi-Fi

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channels, whose red color indicates at least 50% airtime use. This one, in this

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case, it's a G930 headphone from Logitech wireless headphones. This one

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is well behaved, but many devices like baby monitors will accidentally jump on

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top of your Wi-Fi from time to time, causing interruptions. Now, you know,

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switching over to 5 GHz, the first things that jump out are how little

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background interference there is and how many more channels are available. If I

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had capable gear, I could actually spread right out and run a couple of 40

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MHz or even 80 MHz quadruple wide channel access points for massive

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throughput. Sweet, right? There's not much to see here otherwise, but just for

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fun, let's have a look at what it looks like if I run IPF on my phone to

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simulate heavy network activity and then truck myself downstairs where the access

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point is. The intensity of the activity

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doesn't change in the density view, but you can see the amplitude increases

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dramatically. So, this hot and cold style of discovery based on the strength

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of the signal can actually be used in some really interesting ways. Let's pop

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back over to 2.4 GHz for a second. What

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the heck are these two blue spikes here that don't look like Wi-Fi? They don't

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have a Wi-Fi shape. The software lets us

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find out by using the inspector feature to highlight them and basically run

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around with the laptop looking for the signal strength to increase or decrease.

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Turns out it was a 2.4 GHz RC airplane

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radio. It's things like this and other non-ifi 2.4 4 GHz and 5 GHz stuff that

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can be infuriating to diagnose without a tool like this. But if at this point

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you're sitting there thinking, "Okay, Lionus, so I spend $1,000 on a piece of

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hardware and software license so that I can yell at the neighbor kid for flying

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his dub plane. Are you dumb?" No. The Y

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Spy, the less expensive 2.4 GHz only model, and the YSPY DBX are for pros who

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set up like Wi-Fi networks for a living. For normal people, there's the stuff I

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mentioned before or Wi-Fi Helper, which is a wizard-based $10 tool that walks

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you through optimizing your network. Probably a better bet, unless you've got

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like, I don't know, a microwave next to your computer that's constantly running.

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That's what it looks like, by the way. No wonder you can't stream video while

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you're cooking your Hot Pocket. Am I right? Anyway, guys, thanks for

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watching. Like the video if you liked it, dislike it if you disliked it. Leave a comment with suggestions for future

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videos or comments or whatever else.

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small kickback whenever you buy stuff. Thanks again for watching and as always, don't forget to subscribe if you Whoops.

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Haven't already.