Wi-Fi Learning Lab
Free interactive Wi-Fi tools: channel map, MCS index, WMM, MLO, OFDMA vs MU-MIMO, WPA3 and key hierarchy simulators. Everything runs in your browser.
Free for private and educational use. Please link to the tools rather than copying or re-hosting them; for commercial use, ask Siam Wireless first.
Disclaimer. These interactive models are simplified teaching aids and may contain mistakes. They are provided as is, without warranty, and Siam Wireless accepts no liability for decisions based on them. Use them to understand the concepts, not as a substitute for a site survey, vendor documentation or professional design advice.
Sine Wave Explorer
The building block of every radio signal. Change the amplitude, frequency, wavelength and phase, travel the spectrum from AM radio to gamma rays, then add a second wave to see constructive and destructive interference.
Open the explorer →Wi-Fi Modulation Simulator
See how bits become a radio wave: each constellation point sets the amplitude and phase of the carrier. Add noise to see why dense modulations need a clean signal.
Open the simulator →OFDM(A) Transmission in 3D
Watch Wi-Fi send hundreds of subcarriers at once, symbol after symbol. Change the channel width, guard interval and modulation and see what happens to the data rate.
Open the visualiser →mW to dBm Calculator
Convert power between milliwatts and dBm with the formula worked through, plus a conversion table from 0 to 43 dBm.
Open the calculator →Free Space Path Loss
How much a Wi-Fi signal weakens with distance, and why. Move the receiver away, double the distance, and see the inverse square law and the frequency's effect on the loss.
Open the calculator →Power Budget Calculator
Add up every gain and loss between an AP and a client to find the received signal, the margin, and whether the link is balanced both ways.
Open the calculator →Fresnel Zone Calculator
How much clear space a point-to-point link needs around its line of sight, with a side view of the zone and every step of the calculation.
Open the calculator →RF Propagation Simulator
A live wave simulation of how Wi-Fi signals reflect, scatter, refract, diffract and fade through walls, with real material sizes at 2.4, 5 and 6 GHz.
Open the simulator →Multipath Simulator
See why moving a phone a few centimetres can change the signal by 20 dB. Drag an access point and a client around a room and watch the reflections add up or cancel, and how MIMO turns them to its advantage.
Open the simulator →Beamforming Simulator
See how several omnidirectional antennas steer a signal: their waves add up at client A and cancel elsewhere, including at client B.
Open the simulator →MCS Index
Data rates for every 802.11n, ac, ax and be MCS with up to four streams. See how each rate is calculated, or find the MCS behind a device's link rate.
Open the MCS Index →Throughput Simulator
Why one slow client can drag everyone down. Watch clients take turns on the channel, then remove the slowest or switch on airtime fairness.
Open the simulator →802.11 Medium Access Simulator
Watch stations defer, count down, collide, retry and transmit on a shared channel, one microsecond at a time.
Open the simulator →802.11 Connection Walkthrough
Step through every frame a client and an AP exchange to connect or roam, with and without 802.11r, and open each one to see what's inside.
Open the walkthrough →Wi-Fi Frame Decoder
Paste an 802.11 frame from Wireshark or any hex dump and see every field decoded: header, elements, security, handshakes and action frames. Each field shows an explanation of what it is, with its IEEE 802.11 clause.
Decode a frame →Hidden Node and RTS/CTS
Drag two clients on a floor plan and watch why they collide at the AP when they can't hear each other, and how RTS/CTS and the NAV stop it.
Open the explainer →High Ceilings: Omni vs Directional
See why ceiling omni APs fail above about 7.5 m, why more power or a high-gain omni makes it worse, and how a downward-pointing directional antenna fixes it.
Open the comparison →Sticky Clients and Minimum Basic Rate
Walk a client between two APs and watch it cling to the far one at a low data rate. Then use AP power and the Minimum Basic Rate to make it roam in the right place.
Open the simulator →The Cost of Legacy 802.11b Rates
See what leaving 1, 2, 5.5 and 11 Mbps enabled costs on 2.4 GHz: slow beacons that fill the air, one old client that drags everyone down, and protection frames in front of every modern frame.
Open the simulator →Mandatory, Basic and Supported Rates
Build a rate set and see which clients can join and which rate every beacon, broadcast and ACK really uses. Then see what goes wrong when the minimum basic rate isn't a mandatory rate.
Open the tool →SSID Overhead Calculator
How much of the channel beacons and probe responses take with your SSIDs, APs and basic rate, and how much fewer SSIDs, Multiple BSSID or a higher basic rate would save.
Count the overhead →Multicast Airtime Simulator
Why one video stream or a room of chatty devices can slow a whole Wi-Fi network. See how much airtime multicast takes at the basic rate, when unicast to each client is more efficient, who loses frames, and which fix to use.
Run the stream →Barker, CCK, OFDM and OFDMA Compared
Four ways Wi-Fi has put bits on the air. See how chips, codewords, subcarriers and resource units build the signal, what each does to the spectrum, and how each copes with echoes.
Open the comparison →Wi-Fi 7 Multi-Link Operation (MLO) Simulator
Watch a Wi-Fi 7 client use 2.4, 5 and 6 GHz as one connection. Compare MLSR, eMLSR, MLMR-STR and MLMR-NSTR on busy channels: throughput, gaps and what each client radio is doing.
Open the simulator →CSMA/CA Basics: One Talker per Channel
Only one device can transmit on a channel at a time. Add clients and watch each one's share shrink, then compare two APs on different channels with two APs on the same channel.
Open the simulator →Frame Aggregation: A-MSDU vs A-MPDU
See how Wi-Fi packs many packets into one transmission, how much airtime A-MSDU, A-MPDU and both save, and why one bad bit costs an A-MSDU far more than an A-MPDU.
Open the simulator →Wi-Fi PHY Frames: From 802.11b to Wi-Fi 7
Explore every generation's PHY frame field by field, see the legacy start they all share, and what an older device can still understand of a newer frame.
Open the explorer →Wi-Fi Frame Airtime Calculator
How long one frame really takes, from 802.11b to Wi-Fi 7: the wait for the channel, the preamble, the data symbols, padding and the Ack, with a drawn step-by-step TXTIME calculation.
Time a frame →Multi-User Wi-Fi: OFDMA vs MU-MIMO
Serve several clients at once by slicing the channel's frequencies or by beaming through space. Drag clients around the room and see which method wins for small packets, big downloads, and clients bunched together.
Open the simulator →Wi-Fi WMM: How Priorities Work
Follow a packet from app to one of four queues, then watch voice, video, best-effort and background traffic race for the air. See why calls stay smooth during downloads, and what happens when WMM is off.
Open the simulator →Wi-Fi Power Save Simulator
Compare staying awake, legacy power save, U-APSD and TWT for an idle phone, a voice call and an IoT sensor. See when the radio wakes, the frames exchanged, the battery life and how long frames wait.
Simulate the battery →TKIP vs AES (CCMP) vs GCMP
Encrypt your own message with WPA's TKIP, WPA2's AES (CCMP) and GCMP, step by step with the real algorithms. Then flip a bit as an attacker and see which receiver catches it, and why TKIP caps you at 54 Mbps.
Open the tool →WPA2 vs WPA3: How the Key Is Agreed
See Diffie-Hellman with small numbers, then compare how WPA2-Personal and WPA3-Personal (SAE) get their keys, and what that changes when a password leaks or someone tries to guess it.
Open the tool →802.1X and EAP Walkthrough
Follow an enterprise Wi-Fi login between client, AP and RADIUS server with EAP-TLS, PEAP or EAP-TTLS, then break it: untrusted certificate, wrong password, wrong shared secret.
Walk through a login →Wi-Fi Key Hierarchy: From MSK to TK
Follow the keys from the passphrase, SAE exchange or 802.1X login down to the PMK, PTK, KCK, KEK, TK and group keys, including 802.11r. Click any key to see how it's made, who holds it, and a real worked value.
Open the tool →Wi-Fi AKM Suites
An interactive table of every AKM suite, from PSK and 802.1X to SAE, OWE, FILS and SAE-EXT-KEY. Filter and sort them, see what each is for, and which ones common WPA2 and WPA3 setups advertise.
Open the table →Wi-Fi Security Compatibility Explorer
Will this client join this SSID, and how securely? See the AKM, cipher and PMF being agreed, where a join fails, and who each WPA2, WPA3, Enhanced Open, 6 GHz or Wi-Fi 7 setting locks out.
Check a client →Fast Roaming Compared: 802.1X, PMKSA, OKC and FT
Run the same roam as a full login, PMKSA caching, OKC and FT (802.11r). See how long each cuts the client off, which one your client and network actually use, and where the keys are kept.
Compare the roams →Roaming Decision Simulator
Walk a client past several APs and watch when it scans, when it roams and when it clings on. Change the roam trigger and hysteresis, switch 802.11k, 802.11v and 802.11r on and off, and try a sticky laptop, a coverage gap and ping-pong.
Take the walk →Band Steering: How an AP Moves Clients to 5 GHz
Pick a phone, a laptop, an older client or an IoT sensor and watch how a dual-band AP tries to move it from 2.4 GHz to 5 GHz: by not answering its probes, by refusing it with status code 82, or with an 802.11v BTM request. Then see where steering makes a client slower.
Steer a client →Wi-Fi Channel Map: 2.4, 5 and 6 GHz
Every Wi-Fi channel in 2.4, 5 and 6 GHz with its number, centre frequency and 40/80/160/320 MHz bonding. Switch to the rules for the US, EU, UK, Thailand, Japan or China to see which channels are allowed, which need DFS and how much power each allows.
Open the map →6 GHz Discovery: How Clients Find a 6 GHz AP
Compare a passive scan of every 6 GHz channel, a scan of only the preferred scanning channels and a Reduced Neighbor Report heard on 2.4 or 5 GHz, with FILS Discovery and unsolicited probe responses. See how long each takes, and the pros and cons.
Find the AP →DFS and Radar Simulator
Play through a radar event on a 5 GHz DFS channel under Thailand, Europe or US rules: the channel check, the Channel Switch Announcement, where the AP goes and the 30-minute block.
Trigger a radar event →Co-Channel vs Adjacent-Channel Interference
Move a neighbouring AP's channel and see why co-channel interference only costs airtime while adjacent-channel interference corrupts frames, with the spectral mask, preamble and energy detect, and 2.4 GHz channel plans.
Open the simulator →Wi-Fi Channel Planning Simulator
Place APs on an office, hotel or warehouse floor, give each a channel, width and power, and watch co-channel and adjacent-channel conflicts appear. Auto-plan the channels, then see what 20 vs 80 MHz, DFS and lower power do to the score.
Plan the channels →BSS Coloring and Spatial Reuse
Drag two same-channel APs and their clients, give each a BSS color, and see when Wi-Fi 6 lets one AP talk over another at reduced power, what that costs both clients, and how a color collision is fixed.
Open the simulator →How Antennas Radiate: Fields, Dipoles and ½ Wavelength
Watch a dipole launch a radio wave from changing electric and magnetic fields, then change the dipole's length to see its current, pattern and impedance, and why half a wavelength is the classic choice.
Open the simulator →Antenna Pattern Explorer
Read an antenna datasheet: azimuth and elevation plots, beamwidth, gain and front-to-back ratio, in 2D or turning in 3D. Then mount the antenna and see where its beam lands on the floor.
Explore the patterns →Antenna Polarization: Why Orientation Matters
See vertical, horizontal, slant and circular polarization, turn two antennas against each other to see how much signal is lost, and find out why reflections make it matter less indoors than on outdoor links.
Open the simulator →Antenna Diversity: Beating Multipath Fades
Walk two antennas through a multipath field and see a second antenna fill in the fades, how far apart they need to be, and what selection and maximal ratio combining each gain.
Open the simulator →