Tag: wireless

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Tech Tip: Wifi Roaming

Many homes nowadays have a Wifi network setup. For smaller homes, apartments, and condos a single Wifi access point would provide full coverage. But in other cases such a homes with multiple floors, a large house, or a business would require multiple wireless access points to provide complete coverage of their home or business. For those using multiple access points some users have separate SSID names for each of their Wifi connections. The more access points you add the more SSIDs you’ll have to manage.

There is an option to consolidate all your Wifi access point to use a single SSID this is calling Wifi Roaming. All your access points in your home or business are named with one SSID. As you move through your home or business your device automatically connects to the closes access point. If you have a new device or computer that needs a Wifi connection you would only have to enter that one SSID and password for it to work throughout your wireless network coverage.  Previously, if you had multiple SSIDs your device would have to remember all your wireless network names for it to work in a similar fashion. If you have guest that needs Wifi access their devices would also need to remember all the Wifi SSIDs to have seamless network coverage. So it depends on your preference if you want to manage your Wifi network with different names or have it all run on one SSID both will work just fine.

Set up Wifi roaming is simple. There are two things you’ll need to do. First login to each of your Wifi routers /access points and name all the SSID to the same name. Second you’ll need to set each of your Wifi routers / access points to use a different wireless channel.  Some of these wireless access point have a limited number of channels it  and it can range from 6 – 11 channels. If you have different models of access points be sure the frequency of each are unique. That’s it. If you have completed those steps then you now have a roaming Wifi network.

Keep in mind that not all Wifi access points work well together in this roaming set up. I’ve ran into a couple of problems due to using different types of Wifi routers and access points but not many. For the most part it’ll just work, but if you run into connectivity issues it might be caused by having different models of access points.

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Tech Tip: Wireless Configuration and Security

There have been countless amount of times where I would scan a neighborhood and see a few unsecured wireless network. Most people who buy wireless routers simply forget to modify their security settings. Here are some suggestions you can do to increase security and protect your wireless access from prying eyes.

  • Enabled the wireless security and use WPA Personal or WPA2 Personal. Avoid using WEP as it has been proven to not be as secure.
  • Change the SSID to something that you can easily recognize as your own, but different enough where no one can pinpoint where it’s from. Better yet disable the broadcast of your SSID. The latter will provide better security, but when you want allow other devices to to  your wifi you’ll have to manually add the wireless network to it.
  • Change the admin login of the wireless device. This one is obvious but people tend to forget to change this sometimes.
  • Place the wireless router somewhere in the middle of your home.  This will give you maximum coverage for you and minimizes the range for access outside your home.
  • If your wireless router manages your internet connection make sure you do not have any unused ports enabled in your Port Forwarding settings. Most newly purchased wireless routers comes with all their ports disabled in Port Forwarding, but it doesn’t hurt to double check.