After many people move into new homes and new offices, the network problem has to be solved, as the building area becomes larger and the apartment type becomes more complex, many people will choose a WiFi6 Mesh router with a wider coverage area and faster speed. In order to give everyone a clearer understanding of the WiFi and router at home, we will take the MX5502 and WiFi magic box (test APP) as an example to understand the relevant terms and functions of the router and WiFi.
Before formally understanding, we first download a WiFi test related APP - WiFi magic box, after the download and installation is successful, enter the main interface of the WiFi magic box, we can first see the current WiFi related information. For example, the first thing that catches the eye is the name of WiFi (SSID), such as the high-end router such as the Lingshi MX5502, the WiFi it emits is generally dual-band WiFi, so the name of the WiFi in addition to the model name of the router, there will be a band name, such as MX5502 5G or MX5502 2.4G.
We can understand the 5G band and 2.4G band in WiFi as "fast lane" or "slow lane", if you want to pursue higher network speeds, the mobile phone and laptop in hand can be connected to the 5G band. If the smart home product in your home needs to cover a wider network, it can connect to the 2.4G band. Under normal circumstances, when we initially set up The WiFi, we can choose whether to merge the dual-band WiFi, if you are like my "obsessive-compulsive disorder", you can separate the dual-band WiFi, which one you want to connect to which one. If you find it too much trouble, you can also combine dual frequency, and the Internet device will automatically choose the WiFi band that suits them.
Then next to the band we can also see the word 80Mhz, which is a unit of WiFi bandwidth, the larger the number of units, the higher the speed limit of the Internet device. The bandwidth of different frequency bands will also be different, for example, the bandwidth of the 2.4G band is generally 20 and 40Mhz, while the bandwidth of the 5G band is generally 80 and 160Mhz. Due to the relevant domestic communication regulations, the bandwidth of the router is generally set to no more than 80Mhz at the factory, but we can modify the height later, and on the "Linksys" APP of the MX5502, the bandwidth can be increased to 160Mhz by modifying the transmission area for the United States or Australia.
In the upper right of the screen we can also see the word -25dBm, it is a unit value that represents the strength of the WiFi signal, where dBm is a universal unit, and the value of the signal strength is generally a negative value below 0, when the value is closer to 0, it means that the WiFi signal is also stronger, usually when the value is greater than -30dBm, it can be considered to be a strong signal.
One of the benefits of mesh routers like the Lingshi MX5502 is that they don't have to be overly obsessed with the signal strength of WiFi, because there are multiple router nodes, and even a nearby node is very strong. The above two figures are the signal strength of the Lingshi MX5502 in the 2.4G and 5G frequency bands, and it can be seen that no matter in which frequency band, the signal strength of the Lingshi MX5502 is much stronger than other WiFi, and the stronger the anti-interference.
Below the WiFi name, we can also see a sequence of numbers, English letters, colons, in fact, it is the Mac address of the router, you can use it as the unique ID of the router, because in the Mesh network, the WiFi name emitted by different nodes is the same, if we want to determine which node router the Internet device is connected to, then look at it.
Then we can also see the digital unit "Channel: 36", which we can understand as an invisible "network cable" between a WiFi router and an Internet access device. Under normal circumstances, the WiFi signal connected to the Internet access device is first transmitted by an antenna of the router to a number of data streams, and then the data stream will be divided into different channels, and the channels of different frequency bands of 2.4G and 5G will be different, and which signals can be seen on the test APP which signals are better and which channels are worse.
Next to the channel unit we can also see a rate called 1200Mbps, which has a more academic name called negotiation rate, which means the maximum peak speed that can be reached by the current device network speed. The negotiation rate between different Internet devices is different, take the mobile phone, it will often be affected by the communication baseband, antenna, WiFi protocol of the mobile phone, for example, a chestnut, like the Xiaomi 9 in my hand and my colleague's Xiaomi 11, the former supports the WiFi5 protocol, the latter supports the WiFi6 protocol, first of all, the two are much different in the basic speed ceiling. Followed by the Xiaomi Mi 11 antenna also supports 160Mhz 4K QAM 2x2, with the leading MX5502 4K QAM modulation technology, the upper limit of the phone's WiFi rate can be increased by about 20%.
Earlier, by quoting the MX5502 and WiFi magic box, I explained so many related terms and noun units for everyone, in fact, it is also to let everyone have more understanding of the WiFi and routers around them, and more intuitively feel the charm of WiFi6 and Mesh networks brought by routers like Lingshi MX5502.