In a world where many rely on near-instant communications, bad Wi-Fi can result in disconnections from the internet, video buffering, or sites not loading. Sometimes, it can be pretty hard to rely on Wi-Fi, especially when it keeps dropping or isn’t fast enough to meet your needs. Many factors can impact your perceived Wi-Fi speeds. We’ve outlined eight ways to improve any Wi-Fi connection.
Location, Location, Location! The saying applies to wireless frequencies as well!
Wireless frequencies must travel through a medium such as air or materials to reach you. The longer it must travel, or the denser the material it must pass through, its signal will become weaker and distorted. Likewise, your equipment will work harder to process the transmitted data when it must pass through many mediums or travel a great distance. A better location will improve Wi-Fi.
Choosing the location for your router is an essential consideration for good Wi-Fi strength. For example, if the router must transmit through walls, floors, and dense objects, its signal will decay or scatter significantly. Therefore, you should place the router in the central-most spot of the area you want coverage. This spot should be open, away from kitchen appliances, and with as few obstructions in the way to its targets as possible.
It’s important to remember that Wi-Fi travels amongst other invisible frequencies on the electromagnetic spectrum, whether a similarly shaped signal or another wireless network. So the more you can minimize interference, the more you can improve Wi-Fi.
For example, microwave appliances emit the same frequencies as Wi-Fi (and Bluetooth). However, the frequencies can cause destructive interference with wirelessly transmitted data even with their power concentrated in a faraday cage. The same goes for other medium-range networks, as their coexistence can sometimes overlap and cause interference.
Sometimes equipment can get overworked, just like us, and needs a break or reboot. Routers are not shut off as often or put to sleep like computers or workstations. As a result, they see long periods of using the same configuration without doing their standard boot procedure. During extended operations, their internal services can sometimes stop for unknown reasons. More times than not, they require a reboot to restart them and improve Wi-Fi.
Before rebooting your router, let anyone using the Wi-Fi know your plans, as the internet will cut out momentarily. You wouldn’t want someone pulling the plug while you’re in the middle of a Zoom meeting or class session!
Rebooting your router is as simple as:
This process should ensure all internal services start and run.
If rebooting doesn’t help, the router may have a corrupted configuration that requires a reset. Sometimes a configuration file could decide not to play nice with it anymore. The corruption could be due to bad programming or rare cosmic phenomena.
You can tell the router to regenerate these configuration files manually by doing a hard reset. Routers usually have a small button on the back or bottom only depressible with a pin or paperclip that will reset the router to factory default settings.
Be warned that doing this will erase any custom settings on the router. In addition, if factory default credentials are on the router’s bottom or back, these will take precedence. We recommend changing your credentials to what they were before if they get changed during the reset process. This way, so you don’t have to reconfigure every device.
Be sure you understand and have researched what kind of setup is involved with resetting the router. A web search for the router’s model name or looking through the manual should be able to tell you.
In this case, you should update your device, network drivers, and network devices. Updates are crucial for connective equipment since they typically contain fixes, stability improvements, and performance enhancements. If your router or wireless system has an app, it’s as simple as checking for updates through the app.
It’s equally vital to check for updates on the devices connected to your network as they can have network optimizations and fixes. It’s impossible to upgrade some devices manually, like the modem, as your Internet Service Provider is in charge of updating those devices. By ensuring everything is up-to-date, you are experiencing how developers intend the quality of service to be at the current point in time, usually taking into account common issues like Wi-Fi connectivity.
With everything up-to-date, it’s then possible to continue troubleshooting possibilities why the Wi-Fi is sluggish. So, for example, if one device is having problems while the rest aren’t in the same conditions, you can bet there’s an issue with that device in some capacity.
However, suppose all your devices still have the same connectivity issue. In that case, it may be time to replace your internet equipment, whether that means your router, modem, or both. It’s best to get your Internet Service Provider’s opinion on replacing the modem or any additional equipment. Routers typically have a separate Wi-Fi module, so issues can appear in a fashion that only Wi-Fi devices are affected.
There also may be a more significant number of devices on the network than the router can handle. With more people getting online in one place and the addition of Smart Home and Internet-of-Things (IoT) gadgets into our lives, it may seem like there is less bandwidth left on the table.
The solution in most cases would be to upgrade to a router that can handle more network traffic. The router is in charge of sending tons of data to its intended destination all the time, and having a router with more “highways” can significantly increase traffic flow.
A recommended troubleshooting method is to rule things out to help narrow down the issue. For the instance of having bad Wi-Fi, if you can run a speed test directly connected to or even on your router’s app (if it has one), you can understand the degradation happening when running the same test over Wi-Fi.
In this case, the speed test results from a direct connection via Ethernet or tested within your router’s app will be a baseline for your internet performance; if you’re not getting what you pay for, you should get in touch with your Internet Service Provider. It’s normal, however, for the test results to be lower when other devices use the network.
You can run several speed tests with different conditions to understand how the speed is affected. When testing wireless speeds, it is best to note the environment(s) tested in and the testing device’s wireless capabilities. Some devices won’t surpass a particular mark simply due to their technical specifications.
It’s impossible to achieve the same data transmission rate over wireless as over wired (at least to my understanding of physics) due to signal attenuation (waveform degradation through air and obstacles) and overhead needed for wireless processing.
With the internet increasing in definition and fidelity, what we had then might not be apt for what we have now. Having faster internet may be more practical for using the modern internet. Broadband, as defined by the FCC, is any connection with a download speed of 25 Mbps and an upload of 3 Mbps. This standard is 500 times faster than dial-up internet, which underlines the evolution of accessing the web today.
Our needs evolve as the internet continues to redefine technology, such as the ability to communicate and stream in high definition. As long as your modem/router and end devices can support the higher speeds, upgrading your internet plan would be the most noticeable increase in perceived speeds.
Getting in touch with your Internet Service Provider (ISP) is useful when you have intermittent connectivity or slow speeds. Sometimes, they have information on their end that can give more details about the problem at hand, like outages or the status of your modem.
Internet Service Providers can also help troubleshoot issues related to internet speeds, such as wiring and configuration with the ISP’s servers. However, this usually requires a technician, which may be associated with a fee on your internet bill.
Nevertheless, in many cases, the ISPs will want their customers to be able to experience their services as intended without interruptions and will help investigate the issue. This help usually includes walking through some troubleshooting procedures and delving deeper into the case if more customers are affected or if a technician must repair any connections to where the internet comes in.
