Can You Hear Me Now? (by Tony Fortunato)

I was working on site the other day and heard the typical WiFi complaints:

• I can see the network, but can't get on
• Why can I get on the WiFi network with my laptop, but not my smartphone
• My Wifi connection only gets dropped on my smartphone or tablet, not my laptop.

In Wifi testing and design there are a few concepts that I've seen left out and want to review.

The idea is actually fairly straight forward;

• just because you can get on a WiFi network with a laptop, there is no gaurantee you can do the same with a cell phone, or tablet.
• just because you can get a good signal reading from your wireless device doesnt mean the AP hears you the same way.

To demonstrate this, I created a simple test by putting an Acess Point about 30 feet away, behind a drywall wall and recorded how well the devices hear the signal and how well the Access Point heard the devices.