5 things you can do to make your WiFi work better at home.

With most people being confined to home working we wanted to put together a few ‘useful’ blog posts to help. Below is how to get the most out of your home WiFi.

1. Move your WiFi box (Access Point) into the middle of your house.

   or at least bring it out from behind whatever it’s hiding behind. WiFi works a bit like sound… the less ‘things’ in front of it the better your devices will be able to hear it. Also, make sure that it’s not near anything highly reflective or metal.

2. Make sure that you’re using 5GHz as much as you can

   2.4GHz is very overcrowded… you should only use 2.4GHz for things that can only use 2.4GHz (some wifi boxes will have separate 2.4GHz and 5GHz SSIDs (network names)). 5GHz is much ‘cleaner’ with less interference. The speeds are also quicker.

3. Try to reduce your channel width and set your channel properly on 2.4GHz

   This is a bit more involved… you may need to google how to do this for your specific WiFi box. On 2.4GHz make sure that you’re only using channels 1, 6, 11. It can look very tempting to use channel 3 (there no-one using it) but actually all you’ll do is cause issues on channels 1 and 6 and you’ll get double the interference form those channels too. Make sure that your 2.4GHz channels are only using 20MHz wide (some WiFi boxes allow, and even have set up as default 40MHz channels). again this will cause interference and increase your ‘noise floor’ (reducing your speed). on 5GHz I’d recommend reducing your 80MHz channels (normally set to that by default) to 40MHz. You’ll lose some speed but end up with a much more consistent connection as you would’ve reduced your noise floor and increased your signal by roughly 100%. If you’d like to check what channels your devices can hear try using WiFi Explorer or WinFi.

4. Turn off devices that don’t need to be on

   WiFi has a limited amount of ‘time’ that it can use. Things that are at the edge of your signal range (have low/poor signal) will make everything else on the network run slowly. All of those ‘smart speakers’ and devices around the house that don’t need to be turned on (or even plugged in) will be slowing down your network. Just turn them off (unplug them) when you’re not using them.

5. Use a cable when you can

   WiFi works best when you use a cable 😉 - Everything you can take off of your WiFi network and plug-in with a cable will make your WiFi work for things that need it (like your Laptop, iPad, and iPhone). If you can’t turn it off, try to use a cable. Powerline range extenders are pretty good now so try to use them too.