From the course: Wireless Networking: Advanced Troubleshooting
Cell connectivity resolutions
From the course: Wireless Networking: Advanced Troubleshooting
Cell connectivity resolutions
- [Instructor] Wireless is not all about Wi-Fi. Wireless can include other types of wireless such as cell phones, Bluetooth, as well as radio frequency devices. And they all use different frequencies, but sometimes they can overlap if they are close enough to the same frequency, as you see here. Here are multiple different cell phone providers and the frequencies at which they operate. And here you can see that, with 4G, many different vendors are using the 2300 megahertz, which translates to 2.3 gigahertz or 2.5 gigahertz. So if you're using a 2.4 gigahertz Wi-Fi, then you may end up with a lot of different frequency bleed, which can cause a lot of slowness and disconnects with your Wi-Fi devices. The suggestion here is to go to five gigahertz Wi-Fi or even the Wi-Fi six or seven, which uses six and seven gigahertz types of frequencies. Interestingly enough, 5G at AT&T uses 2.1 gigahertz, which can bleed into 2.4 gigahertz with Wi-Fi. However, the other vendors don't use that. They use either 600 megahertz, or Verizon uses as high as 28 and 39 gigahertz. There are some good cell phone mitigation techniques if you're having problems making connections with your cell phone calls or maybe even some issues with your cell phone data plan. One of the things you can do is to order a mini cell tower. Sometimes we refer to these as femtocells. It's really easy to order one of these cell towers that are available from all different phone carriers. They are typically free and you need a separate one for CDMA or GSM units for older types of cell phones. Newer cell phones all seem to operate in a similar fashion, but older ones, you might need two different types. The tower connects to the internet through a wired ethernet cable and the phone connects wirelessly to the mini tower. They're also referred to, as I mentioned, these femtocell devices. Now many newer phones have the ability to turn on what's called Wi-Fi calling. This allows the phone to use the Wi-Fi connection already instead of using the cell towers to make phone calls. This will avoid the need for the mini towers altogether. You can also avoid using cordless phones because they run at 900 megahertz, at least some of them do. You need to check with the vendor before you purchase it. And you can see that will interfere with certain 4G types of devices. The same can be said of wireless mice. Now Bluetooth operates at 2.4 gigahertz, which can interfere with 2.4 gigahertz Wi-Fi if you're using those types of connections. Poor cell phone connectivity can be mitigated, if not completely remediated, if you find out which types of wireless devices are causing the interference and removing them.