Identify network interference

> When you look at the Wi-Fi Settings on your Mac or iOS devices you can see the names of all the networks in the area around your home. Unfortunately, the Wi-Fi Settings panel doesn’t provide much info beyond the names of those networks, so it’s worth using an additional app that can delve deeper into all those networks. There are lots of network monitoring apps available for both Macs and iOS devices, and many of these are free to download. However, the free apps tend to bombard you with ads and in-app purchases, so it’s worth spending just £1.99 on a straightforward app such as WiFi Explorer Lite.

WiFi Explorer Lite can be a little daunting at first, as it shows a lot of information about all the networks around you. Fortunately, it has a useful filter option that enables you to focus on key bits of information, such as your network’s signal strength, and the frequencies and channels that your router is using.

To start with, try hiding the graph section of WiFi Explorer Lite, as it can be a bit confusing for new users. Then use the app’s filters to just focus on the 2.4GHz frequency band and the channels within that band. In this example, the network is using Channel 6, and has a signal strength of 80%, which could certainly be improved. We can see that Channel 6 is really crowded, though – with a dozen nearby networks using that channel – so switching to the less busy Channel 8 would probably improve the performance here.