Field notes · placement
Placement guide
Where an access point sits matters more than how expensive it is. These are the rules of thumb that tinkerers keep rediscovering, with a note on how to test each one in the mapper.
Treat them as starting hypotheses. Every building has its own surprises, and the map is an approximation, so the last step of any placement is always the same: carry a device around and look at the real numbers.
Six rules of thumb
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Go central, go high
Signal falls away in every direction, so an access point in a corner spends much of its reach on the garden. Near the middle of the area you care about, and up on a shelf or wall above the furniture, it gives more rooms a clean path. Test it: drag the access point from a corner to the centre and compare the −67 dBm coverage figure.
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Count walls, not metres
In WSRM’s default numbers one concrete wall costs about as much signal as almost tripling your distance from the access point. Where you can, put the access point so that the busiest rooms are one lightweight wall away rather than behind the heaviest one. Test it: edit a wall’s loss and watch how much of the map hangs on it.
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Keep clear of metal and bulk
Metal cabinets, foil-backed insulation, mirrors with metal backing and big appliances all swallow or scatter signal. An access point shut inside a cupboard or behind a fridge turns the whole house into the far side of a wall. Give it a few clear centimetres on every side.
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Mind the kitchen on 2.4 GHz
Microwave ovens work at about 2.45 GHz, right beside the 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi band, and can disturb it while they run. An access point on the kitchen counter is the classic bad spot. If you cannot move it, 5 or 6 GHz keeps clear of the oven, at the price of shorter reach.
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Two modest beat one loud
If the far rooms stay weak, a second access point in the middle of the weak patch usually does more than turning the first one up. Devices have to talk back too, and they are generally weaker than the access point, so shouting louder does not fix a poor reply path. Test it: add a second access point and compare the Fringe share.
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Wire the backhaul if you can
A second access point needs a way back to the router. A network cable is the most dependable. A wireless link between access points shares airtime with your devices, so it works best when the link itself is strong. Plan the cable route as part of the placement, not after it.
Band chooser
Two questions, one starting suggestion. The answer feeds the mapper through a link, so you can see what the choice does to your plan.
Which bands your devices support is on you to check. This chooser does not know your hardware.
WSRM placement checklist · wsrm.online · approximation, not a survey
Survey-day checklist
Work through it with the mapper open on one screen and a device that can show signal in dBm in your hand. Ticks are kept in this browser so you can come back later, and the sheet prints cleanly.
Try a placement now
Open the mapper with the example flat loaded, drag the access point between three candidate spots, and let the coverage figures argue it out.