anGadgets EditorsWi-Fi is something that has become our daily bread in most households. There are very few people in your home who do not have a router that allows for wireless connection, making us forget the tangle of wiring to connect many of the devices in the smart home.
The arrival of Wi-Fi has brought great advantages, of that there is no doubt, but also some compensation, especially in terms of security and performance. In relation to the first, the vulnerability is greater than with a physical connection and the second, the performance, can be seen resented with lower values. For this reason it is important to optimize the performance of our networkThis is something that is within our reach if we use our mobile phone and one of these applications.
These are applications available on both the Google Play Store and the App Store. Utilities that allow you to check the strength with which the signal to a particular point in the house, the saturation of a network, the speed at which it transmits and consequently help us to improve the positioning of the router to obtain better figures.
Signal Strength
The first of the applications is Signal StrengthThis is a utility that we can find in Google Play Store and that offers us information about the Wi-Fi signal that reaches a point in the house. An application that we can configure in light and dark mode and whose menu offers data on the power with which the nearby Wi-Fi networks arrive, the speed or the information of each of the networks.
By working with all the data you provide, we can change the location of the router or the device that is served to achieve better figures. And if we dare, enter the router configuration to change any parameter to improve performance.
Signal Strength
Who’s on my Wi-Fi?
One of the most useful that we can find in Android is this application that allows to know if there is any foreign element connected to the home wireless network. Like the previous one, it offers the possibility of a dark mode and its operation is very simple: it scans all the devices connected to the home Wi-Fi network.
In many cases, the name offered is that of the modem that incorporates the device in question, so we may not identify it at first. To improve the data it offers, we can activate the “Recognize device manufacturer” function or if it still doesn’t register it, we can add it by hand by checking the Mac of each one or the IP assigned to it.
If we find a device that’s foreign, strange, someone may be stealing bandwidth from us, so it’s a good idea to access your Wi-Fi router and change your network password or enable filtering by Mac. Fing is a free application that also has purchases within the app to access some extra services.
Who’s on my Wi-Fi?
Fing – Network scanner
Another application similar to the previous one is Fing. Lets you know which devices are connected to a Wi-Fi network in order to take action in case of finding some unwanted element. It is prepared to work in dark mode so that it integrates better with devices with this type of interface. As a complement, it adds a network speed meter, both upstream and downstream.
Fing – Network scanner
Speedtest
This review could not fail to provide a useful measure the speed of descent and while it may not be the most complete, it may be the most well-known and popular of all applications. It is Speedtest by Ookla, a tool that allows us to measure the speed of our connection by means of a test that makes it easier to know both the downstream and upstream speeds, as well as the ping.
It also offers the possibility of know a history of measurements to check the evolution we have, very useful when we are trying to correct some problem in the home network. As a curiosity, it offers the option of comparing our results with those of other people.
Speedtest
WiFi Analyzer
One of the problems with the Wi-Fi signal can be interference between networks or saturation on a certain channel and this is the information provided by Wifi Analyzer, an application available for Android that it’s also free and open source.
This utility monitors the surrounding wireless networks, offering information about what can cause interference and the most overloaded channels, so that we can search in the router’s configuration menu for the most appropriate parameters for each moment.
WiFi Analyzer
Network Analyzer
This application is available for iOS-based devices and as we can guess from its name, it takes care of analyzing the network we are connected to in order to know if there is any element connected that should not be present. This report displays data such as the IP of each device or the Mac address.
With a simpler information and interface than the previous ones we have seen, this app is free, but has a more advanced and complete versionThe Net Analyzer Pro, for 4.49 euros, offers a greater number of functions.
Network Analyzer
WiFi Guard
Another tool, in this case for the iPhone, is WiFi Guard. An application that, like the previous ones, is aimed at finding out which devices are connected to our network. The difference, in this case, is that you have the possibility to set a notice to send us an alert if a new device is connected.
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