If you’d like more insight into how the wireless signal strength varies in different areas of your home, 50p will buy you the WiFi Solver FDTD app for Android (pcpro.link/249wifisolver). This engaging little tool lets you upload a floor plan of your residence, then tap to position a virtual router in various places. An animated visualisation is generated showing how wireless signals radiate outward from the router, and how they bounce and fade on encountering obstacles and interference.
Although WiFi Solver FDTD is based on some serious physics, the animations it produces aren’t perfect representations of reality: it can’t account for the full 3D complexity of a room, and currently it will only map a 2.4GHz signal. All the same, it’s a fascinating and revealing illustration of the complexities of wireless…
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PC Pro (Digital) - 1 Issue, July 2015