Can you help me interpret this spectrum analysis noise plot?

That's aptly shown by the fact that my WISP has two antennas facing me, one at channel 2 and the other (which is my "signal") on channel 10.

So, his channel 2 is creating noise for me, based on these spectrum analysis results yesterday.

In the middle chart, you can see high signal surrounding channels 2 & 10. So, if I select channel 10, channel 2 is noise to me.

I see what you mean.

I'm only looking at external noise (AFAIK) with these spectrum analysis runs.

These plots are all taken in a direction looking *away* from the city of San Jose. I'm pretty sure I'd get quite different results had I pointed directly at the Fairmont Plaza building!

Hi Jeff, Thanks for chiming in, as I know you're a God in the wireless forums, and, your information is especially useful since we're both on each side of the Santa Cruz mountains.

My speeds are actually OK, as shown in this speedtest, which shows 10ms, 19Mbps down, 18Mbps up, even though the antenna system spans over 20 miles until it gets to a bona-fide wire:

I just want to make it faster. Whatever I do to decrease noise makes the signal that much better. Notice, at 56% and 66%, my signal quality figures aren't close to maxing out yet:

Although, sometimes they get up into the 86% to 90% range:

Hmmm.... I don't have a clue as to the answer. All I know is that he had texted me how to set up my radio, and I set it up just like he had texted me to. I just looked at the settings in the radio, and I see the channel width set to 20MHz and channel shifting disabled, but I don't see where the channel is actually set.

Hmmm... I see the green "average" area to be around -90 at channel 10. Now I don't know if that's a good average or not, but, I'm beginning to think it's actually low signal strength, even though there's a radio aimed right at me on channel 10.

That's an interesting test to run. The radio & antenna are on the roof, so, I will have to climb up there to unplug it, and then climb back down, and then back up. So it will take a while. (Luckily it's something like 70 degrees outside today!)

That's interesting. It makes sense.

I think all the neighbors are on the same channel as the WISP radio, so, from that, I can see there will always be noise on that channel (since we're all using it).

Thanks Jeff for that insight. There are a couple of houses right under my signal, but a few hundred feet lower in elevation than I am. Perhaps some of their signal is bouncing to me. There are also a few to the side, and behind me, and above me, so, they're going to be the most problematic, I would think.

Thanks for the insight. I think everyone should post what they see from their radios so that we can all compare to each other.

Lady friend means untrash house. You should have thought about this :-).

Hi Jeff, Thanks for taking a closer look. I would *never* have been able to see that channel 9 interference in that chart unless you had outlined it as you did in your screenshot below:

A site survey from that same radio doesn't show anyone on channel

To see if that channel 9 pollution was coming from the house, I downloaded InsSSIDer freeware for Windows & Android:

Roaming the house, I could easily see my channel 1 home broadband router polluting channels 1 & 3; and I could see that 4 through

The caveat here is that the radio measures things from miles away while the Inssider program only measures what the absolutely puny antenna and crippled radio on the laptop (or Android phone) can see - which is miniscule.

So, all I can tell from that is that the channel 9 interference isn't coming from *my* house! :)

PS: I didn't stretch any of the screenshots, so, if they're stretched, Flickr did it, not me. :)

Nope. It was my idea. I spent my first 50 years or so accumulating all this junk. I'll probably spend another 50 years or so getting rid of it. Do I really need 5 bicycles? I'm making weekly runs to the recyclers, thrift shop, or municipal dump to get rid of the stuff. (I really miss my pickup truck). At my present rate, I should have the house and office cleaned up in about 50 years.

my friend just retired and moved from a huge custom house in the cold, snowy, Chicago area down to the middle of FL - sitting out on the lanai....

He coined the term ---> de-crapification

Just prior to his leaving, we had our little college ski group lunch gathering (4 guys) with him presenting us each with a token from our past as part of his de-crapification. Some were FORTRAN puch cards, from our CS days, some were check/receipts from our skiiing in Austria, some were photos from frat parties - with fuzzy hair and long sideburns.

Your equipment is the client, so you don't get to set the channel. The WISP sets the channel and all you can do is follow their lead.

Thanks for clarifying that. I had poured over every page of the router setup, and I didn't see WHERE the channel was set.

I did see the channel width, and modulation, but, not the channel itself.

You explained why that is.

Thanks!

What I love about this WiFi gear is that we can connect to an access point five miles away, and it works as well as if the access point was in the next bedroom over!

When I was in college you could spot a nerd because he had a pocket protector and a rectangular box of punch cards under one arm. Pocket calculators came out later, cost around $400.00 and had nerds drooling over them. I was out of college when I saw my first HP calculator but I still had boxes of punch cards. ^_^

TDD

Yeah, that was the theory but it didn't quite work at Cal Poly Pomona in the late 1960's. Among other divisions, Cal Poly had an engineering skool and an ABM (agricultural business management) skool. One would assume that the engineering students carried slide rules and punched cards, and the ABM students looked like TV cowboys. Nope. The engineering students wanted to look like cowboys and wore boots, jeans, flannel, but not the hat. The ABM students wore suits, ties, hats, and carried briefcases. There was also a skool of environmental design, which true to the stereotype, everyone looked like hippies. I tried to make sense of it at the time, and gave up.

Incidentally, it took me about 10 years to work my way through all the punched card decks I had accumulated and used mostly as scratch paper. I didn't make the same mistake with paper tape, which I converted to floppy and burned the tapes.

My first calculator was an analog computer that I built into a brief case. There were several 10 turn pots to input the numbers, and a big mirrored meter to read the output. Basically, an electronic implementation of a slide rule.

When I graduated from college, I could throw everything I owned into my pickup truck and drive off into the sunset (and actually did that a few times). If I tried that today, it would take at least two large moving vans and a project manager.

He who dies with the most toys, wins.

Punch cards were for the CS weenies. ;-) The real nerds had slip-stick scabbards hanging from their belts (I carried mine with my books). Over my senior year, the slip-sticks were being replaced by calculators (and holsters for scabbards ;-). I bought an HP, and yes, it was $400 (about 10-weeks gross pay).

I'm still wondering what problem you are trying to solve. Is your WiFi not working properly or are you just concerned about reading -88 dBm noise level on the analyzer? I wouldn't be surprised to read -88 dBm from a high gain antenna. Do you think that is abnormal or is there some other problem?

Mark

Here in Alabamastan we actually have a state college, The University of Auburn, which is both the premier agricultural and engineering school. I traveled to Auburn one year to visit some friends and drove past "The Swine Research Unit". The smell could gag a maggot but the pigs were happy. In the mid 1960's at The University of Alabama, I started playing with and learning a tiny bit of Basic and Fortran in order to play with the Univac which was on its way out and the new IBM 360/50 RAX system which was replacing it. Kids these days have no idea how user friendly computers are now compared to what I started playing with like the analog computer at my school but I really believe computers were more fun all those years ago. Now they're tools, not so exclusive anymore and any kids gaming computer has much more computing power than what was considered a super computer at one time. ^_^

TDD

Huh? Wow. I had never heard of that, for antennas & reflectors. Hmmm... I've seen it on the inside of monitors I've disassembled, especially the white ones (where the inside is a scratchy gray painted color).

Hmmmmm..... so what would I paint?

I guess I'd paint the backside of the Rocketdish reflector. Would I also paint the outside of the Rocket M2 radio unit? I guess I could also paint the CAT5 cable coming into the rocket.

Oooops. I just realized, I did NOT use shielded cable for my cat5. I used indoor plenum stuff. I wonder if shielded cable would have made a difference?

Oh I had a slide rule too. It was a K&E as I remember and I wish I still had it. ^_^

TDD

I'm still amazed that you saw that, lurking inside the graphs!

You must have eyes like an eagle, because I had not seen it (until you pointed it out).

Although, for the life of me, I can't determine the *source* of that channel 9 interference since nothing inside the house or nearby seems to have a strong enough signal to register as channel 9 WiFi...

For example, here is a scan on my laptop for access points:

Nothing is on channel 9.

Here is a scan of the access points from my radio:

So, I do agree with you that there is a good amount of channel

My Dad, bless his heart, taught me how to use a slide rule when I was in high school trig class. His was bamboo and white, as I remember it. He bought me a smaller one, and I cherished it. I hope I still have it, but, I've moved a half dozen times since so it's somewhere.

Hi Mark,

I'm trying to make the numbers add up, and, if I can lower noise, then I can raise signal strength correspondingly. That gives me a better signal-to-noise ratio, which is ultimately what I'm after.

Each time I've improved on my noise figure, my corresponding quality figures go up as shown below:

Here are my signal quality figures that aren't too good:

Here are better quality figures from that same WiFi router:

So, what I'm trying to do, ultimately, is increase Internet speeds (here are my current speeds):

My speeds were half that, with a lesser antenna (NanoBridge M2), so, everything I do to signal quality improves Internet speeds.

In short, I simply want faster Internet (doesn't everyone?).