Learn English – What do you call this WIFI sign

word-request

I live in university residence, and I have an internet problem. I am trying to send a message to the university to tell them about the problem. this is my email.

Dear Sir or Madam,

I am Marco Dinatsoli, an informatic-master-degree student.
I study at XXX and I live at: YYY
Room number ZZZ.

I live here since three weeks, and I have a big Internet problem.
The Internet in my room is too too slow and keeps disconnecting. I just have one WIFI signal, and in a very rarely cases, I have two signals.
Plus, when I open the window, the Internet almost stops working at all.
Moreover, every 20 minutes, the Internet disconnects.
I am 100% sure that the problem is not because of my laptop for the following reasons:

    I tried to connect to the WIFi from my laptop at another room in the building and the Internet works perfectly.
    I tried to connect to the WIFI from my friend's laptop at my room and it has the exact same problem.
    When I open the door of the room, the Internet becomes better.
    All the other rooms have a hardware above the door to improve the WIFI signal except my door.
    When I put my laptop in the hole (like far just 3 meters from my room), I have a very good Internet.

My room is the farthest room in the building, in front of it there is the kitchen, and beside it there is the washing machine room, that is why the problem happens just with me.

I am really really looking forward to your help as soon as possible because I have to study for the exam and for the practical work.

I count on your support.

Many thanks,
Best regards,

as you read, I stated that I have one WIFI signal, but I don't know if Signal is the correct word here.

I mean this :

enter image description here

Could you tell me please what is the correct word here?

Many thanks

Best Answer

Good question, and one that most native English speakers won't even get correct.

The icon you circled shows the strength or quality of your wifi signal as measured in bars.

Bars doesn't really mean much, though: it's not a regulated unit of measurement like grams or decibels. Different systems use different amounts of bars, so what's important is how many bars you have out of how many bars there are total.

You could say "My WiFi signal is very weak: only 2 out of 5 bars."

And were it a better signal...

"My Wifi signal is okay: 3 out of 4 bars."

"My Wifi signal is really strong: full bars!"

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