How good is my wifi signal?

Submitted by Jochus on Wed, 06/03/2013 - 20:30 | Posted in: Mac
Mac


While holding down the ⌥ key when clicking on the wifi icon, you can learn more about the strength of the current wifi connection.

RSSI

RSSI or Received Signal Strength Indication can go from 0 to -100. Generally the higher (closer to 0) the better, and the closer to -100 the worse. In telecommunications, RSSI is a measurement of the power present in a received radio signal (cf. Wikipedia).

Transmit Rate

The number to pay much more attention to is the Transmit Rate. This value is the rate of which information is processed by a transmission facility. The transmit rate will drop if you have too much noise or interference or if you are too far away from the base station.

For reference:

0   - No connection
6   - Half 802.11b
11  - 802.11b
54  - 802.11g
130 - 802.11n on 2.4 Ghz
300 - 802.11n on 5.0 Ghz

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