Our neighborhood has at least 5 bars – on my iPhone® that is. But as I walk or move about in my car, or on my bike or Razor® Pro Scooter, those bars come and go. Sometimes, depending on the wind direction and which leg I’m standing on, I can go from 1 bar to 3 bars and down to ½ a bar even while standing still.
But here’s the funny thing – I’ve been on 5-bar connections and couldn’t make a clear phone call, look up a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant’s website or update my calendar. Doesn’t make sense, does it? This can be especially infuriating when you’ve got pressing communications to attend to for your legal nurse consulting business.
Well my CLNC® amigos, here’s what’s happening. The number of bars you get on your smartphone, and this goes for your computer’s wireless connection too, is only indicative of the strength of the signal – not the quality of the back-end connection.
You can be connected with 4 or 5 bars to a cell tower/node or hotspot but radio or atmospheric interference (think honking huge thunderstorms) can mess with the quality of that connection. In other words, it’s emitting correctly and powerfully, but there’s no there there behind it.
Also, downstream issues on the network to which that node or hotspot connects can mess with your connection. The node or hotspot that your phone and computer wirelessly connects to is connected to a wire somewhere. In other words, it’s only as good as the network to which it’s connected, so if the network is acting up, or experiencing connectivity issues, you’ll suffer those same issues trying to connect and do some work. Can you understand why you can’t hear me now?
When it comes to bars – numbers don’t matter unless you’re going clubbing.
Keep on techin’,
Tom
P.S. Comment and share your favorite connectivity tip.