7 Tips for Boosting Wi-Fi Speed at Home
Are you having problems with your Wi-Fi speed at home? Rest assured, it’s not uncommon for people to have issues with their home’s wireless network. While there’s no easy fix for boosting Wi-Fi speed, these seven helpful tips and tricks could help improve your home network’s performance.
1. Place Your Wireless Network in a Central Location
Placing your wireless network in a central location to provide the most robust signal coverage across your home can help with boosting Wi-Fi speed. If you have a two-story home, consider placing your router in a central location on a tall shelf to help provide a better signal to the second floor of your home.
2. Don’t Place Routers on the Floor
Remember that floors, walls and even metal objects can weaken wireless signals. When placing your router in your home, avoid these obstructions if you’re looking for boosting Wi-Fi speed.
3. Reduce Network Interference
The most frequently used wireless technology, 802.11g, operates at 2.4 GHz. Unfortunately, many other wireless electronics, including garage door openers, microwave ovens, cordless phones and even baby monitors, use the same frequency. A frequency with many electronics may result in signal noise that could interfere with and impact your connection between the router and your device.
For boosting Wi-Fi speed and to help reduce noise, consider purchasing cordless telephones or other home devices that use 5.8 GHz or 900 MHz frequencies.
4. Add a Wireless Repeater to Your Home Network
Wireless repeaters rebroadcast wireless signals, strengthening the router’s signal to help broadcast to the opposite side of your home or other floors. Wireless repeaters can be placed anywhere there’s an outlet in your home, but it’s best to position them in locations that are halfway between your router and device for boosting Wi-Fi speed. We recommend researching wireless repeaters before investing in one, as some are difficult to configure and could potentially decrease your home network’s performance.
5. Change Your Wireless Channel
Wireless routers broadcast on many different channels, so if you experience interference, a simple solution may be changing the router’s channel via the router’s configuration page. The channel can usually be found by typing in the IP address in your internet browser’s address bar. Learn more about how to change your wireless channel.
6. Update Your Network Adapter Driver or Firmware
As with most technology, router manufacturers also offer free updates. Sometimes, these updates are designed explicitly for boosting Wi-Fi speed and increase performance. To obtain the latest firmware updates, visit your router manufacturer’s website directly.
7. Upgrade to Wireless-N Technology
When purchasing new equipment, opt for Wireless-N, as this is at least two times faster than wireless-G. Wireless-N is compatible with 802.11a, 802.11b and 802.11g
Home Telecom Wi-Fi
Home Telecom offers a variety of internet plans for residential areas. However, if you’re curious about your internet speed and want to learn more about how connected devices impact your speed, take our free internet speed test. You can also explore Home Telecom’s internet plans.