A heat map shows the wireless coverage in an area by use of color, where good wireless coverage will usually appear as green, while weak to no coverage is displayed as red.
The heat maps below show results from the same three-story housing measured with two different wireless setups.
Heatmappers and speed tests are complementing tools that together give a better overview.
If you take your time and do it right, a heat map and a speed test can tell you where in the home signals are good and bad, as well as the speeds you can achieve where the signal is good or bad.
For more on how to complete a thorough test of a Wi-Fisolution, see Testing Wireless: Reality Check for Wi-Fi solutions.
We recommend these heatmappers:
The heatmapper programs are quite intuitive, you just need to be connected to your wireless network and follow the instructions for the program you have chosen.
It is important to make sure measurements are made close to each other so that the measuring ranges overlap.
Article by Jan Pedro Tumusok and Jorunn D. Newth