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  • Author Author: rscasny
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Poll: How Do You Make Your Wi-Fi Go Faster?

How many times have you complained (or your wife, significant other, kids) that the Internet is too slow. After doing all the typical thinks (clear your cache!), you finally think it's with your IP. And, of course, you call them, and they say it's just fine.

 

Poll Question: How do you typically make your home Wi-Fi go faster? Click below or leave a comment.

  • in reply to shabaz

    I've done No.3 too, mainly because service provider wireless router keeps crashing (strangely the 5Ghz works well but not the 2.4GHz) and I also feel you get double firewall protection with this config. So was wondering what wireless features did you disable (as per No. 2).

  • I've done several things, the combination (or parts of it) seems to have helped:

    1. Move to 5GHz. That makes a noticeable difference where I am (built-up location), the effect was easy to see on video calls

    2. I disabled the wireless features on the home (service provider) supplied router, so that it has less to do, and less chance of it falling over maybe (speculation)

    3. Use an office or small-office wireless access point rather than a consumer one, my current one is 802.11ac Wave 1, but I installed a 802.11ac Wave 2 for a friend. The Wave technologies potentially get higher throughput than Gigabit Ethernet! (depends on various things including the devices connecting to it).

    4. Positioning could help, that's easier with power-over-ethernet (PoE) since it is just one cable

    I'm using quite an overkill wireless access point (Cisco), but I installed a Ubiquity UniFi nanoHD for a friend and he seems happy. We used the PoE feature of it, so he was able to install it easily within his ceiling. If I was buying new, I'd probably go for that nanoHD for myself too.

  • With the kids doing their schooling online, I had to extend the Wi-Fi using an extra Wi-Fi router I had (connected via ethernet link), to make sure they get strong enough signal and enough bandwidth in the room they are using to study in. With the few days of nice weather we had so far, the kids wanted to do their work while sitting in the garden, which posed quite a challenge for the Wi-Fi, so I had to resort to build a little yagi antenna mod, which fits on the router's antenna, to make it directional, and indeed this trick works (I found the instruction on how to build it on the internet, cannot find the link at the moment, and it is for the 2.4Ghz frequency).

     

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  • Upgrade wifi router and get more of them to allow you to split usage (if more than 6 using a single wifi router). Recently switched tv wifi to 5GHz for streaming and found it's pretty reliable although range appears to be an issue when using 5Ghz on laptops (5Ghz is pretty good for gaming - so I'm told by the kids).

  • Generally, the bottle neck of a WiFi connection is the wireless component itself, so better positioning the antenna, changing to a less crowded channel, boosting the power or using a better antenna are the first options that come to my mind.

     

    I agree with others, I do a lot of gaming and sometimes file transfer, in these scenarios will do it wired.

     

    Luis

  • You can switch to a different, less crowded channel, with as few overlaps as possible.

     

    It's also good to check the spectrum for non-Wi-Fi transmissions that might not be visible to a wireless card, but which might interfere with your connection anyway.

  • I recently upgraded to a newer service with a 5 Ghz router instead of the 2.4 one I had. I had an immense effect.

     

    Rick

  • WiFi is great, but it can't beat wired if you have the option.