So, following advice from people here, I downloaded NetSpot and did my first WiFi survey around my apartment.
Good news: I actually have heatmaps now.
Bad news: there are like… a lot of them. Signal level, SNR, SIR, noise, frequency band coverage, secondary signal, low signal level, overlapping channels, download speed, upload speed, and probably five more I already forgot.
I’m a beginner and I’m not trying to become a network engineer overnight. I just want to know why WiFi is bad in a few rooms.
Which heatmap am I actually supposed to look at first?
correct answer is: all of them)))
ALL. Not all at once, and not with equal importance, but yes — they all tell you something different. WiFi problems usually aren’t one single number. Good signal can still perform badly. Fast download in one spot can still have poor roaming. A clean-looking channel can still have bad SIR. Start with Signal Level, but don’t stop there.
@nightblade_13N_1 That’s kind of what confused me. Signal Level looked mostly okay, but my internet still feels bad in one room. So I thought maybe I was looking at the wrong map.
You probably were looking at only one part of the story. Signal Level answers: “Can my device hear the router?”
SNR answers: “Is the signal strong compared to noise?”
SIR / Overlapping Channels answers: “Is other WiFi stepping on this network?”
Download/Upload maps answer: “What performance did I actually get during the active test?”
Secondary Signal Level helps with roaming / whether another AP is available nearby. So yeah, all heatmaps matter because they show the network from different angles. You analyze them together, not as separate magic verdicts.
This is not really a “two sentence” topic. Read NetSpot’s heatmap guide first:
NetSpot WiFi heatmaps – types and benefits . At first it may look like “oh god, why are there so many maps,” but you don’t need to be a network engineer to understand the basics. You just need some interest and a little time to read what each heatmap means. Once you understand what each one is showing, the whole thing becomes much less scary.
Also don’t just stare at the colors. Check the legend and the values. A heatmap is useful only when you understand what the colors mean on that specific map. Red on one visualization doesn’t always mean the same thing as red on another. The maps are not separate answers. They’re pieces of the same diagnosis.