SonicPoint / SonicWave - Low Wireless Signal

This article provides tips when experiencing bad unit performance like low wireless signal-coverage.

If you experience bad unit performance like low wireless signal-coverage, please follow these steps:

1. The recommended configuration is to set channels manually without overlapping. Non overlapping channels are 1,6,11. You can test your wireless environment by going to RF Analysis. Perform an RF Analysis to find out overloaded and highly interfered channels before choosing the least interfered and overloaded channel.

2. Under SonicPoint Configure > Advanced Tab, lower the Transmit Power to Half for SonicPoints to reduce interference and set Preamble Length to Short. On the Radio tab change Radio Band to Standard - 20 MHz

3. Reduce or increase Beacon interval to reach the optimal one. For each VAP created, you need to increase Beacon Interval by 100. So, if you have 4 VAP’s, the Beacon interval should be set to 400. If you don’t have any VAP’s just leave it at 200.

4. Set Thresholds (Fragmentation and RTS) to 2304.

5. Increase the noise sensitivity level. To do so, please go to the diag.html page of your firewall (example - http://192.168.168.168/diag.html), scroll down to the wireless section and set Noise Sensitivity Level to High if the RF environment is getting noisy. NOTE: This is only applicable to SonicPoint Ni/Ne.

6. Please, make sure the SonicWall firmware is on the latest release.

7. Consider to double check SonicPoints physical setup. Check if:
    
    a) SonicPoints are placed on the wall and not on desks or on the floor
   
    b) there are no other wireless emitting devices, microwaves etc. near SonicPoint that could cause interferences
   
    c) low wireless coverage could be caused also by thick walls of any material (even glass) or metal structures placed within the building/room