What is RSSI? What is Noise?

RSSI and Noise

When troubleshooting wi-fi connectivity, two of the important values to looks at are RSSI and Noise. When troubleshooting, Meter Support will often ask to see the wi-fi details from your machine. For example on MAC and in the Meter Dashboard (as signal):

What is RSSI?

RSSI is a measurement of how well a device can receive and send data to the wi-fi access point. RSSI is measured in a negative value, where lower numbers indicate a weaker signal. For example -36 RSSI indicates a better signal than -67 RSSI. Client devices will tend to try to roam to a different wireless access point somewhere below -72 RSSI (this is why values -72 and below show as red on the Meter Dashboard).

Some factors that can affect RSSI are the distance between the Wi-Fi access point and the client device, obstructions (pillars, walls) and material of those obstructions. For example, concrete will affect RSSI more than drywall.

If you notice your RSSI is bad - sometimes just toggling Wi-Fi off and back on will force your client device to move to a closer Wi-Fi access point.

What is noise?

In Wi-Fi noise is any signal that is not coming from your own Wi-Fi network such as neighboring businesses/buildings and things like cordless phones, radar, and even microwaves!

Noise is also measured with a negative value (0 - -120dBM) In the case of noise the closer you get to -120 the better. In most cases, a range of -90 - -98 is considered excellent.

In most cases, noise comes from environmental factors, like those mentioned above. But if you notice that your noise is quite high Meter Support may be able to adjust your wi-fi access points to avoid the noise as much as possible by selecting different wi-fi channels (see What are Wi-Fi Channels and Widths).