Hard to imagine not using Wifi these days. It seems like life would be difficult without it, but sometimes it seems difficult with it. 🙂
Generally it works tirelessly in the background but sometimes thing go awry and we need to take some steps to get it working like we expect.
Whether you get your signal via cable or fiber, the router will create a signal for your device to use for a connection.
As a reminder, routers produce signals at 2.4Ghz which travels further and is popular with many devices for cameras, hubs and other older tech gear. Signals are also produces in the 5Ghz frequency which is faster for data transfer but does not have the same range.
The following are suggestions that you can use to see why things are slowing down.
- First, run a speed test with https://www.speedtest.net/ or https://www.speedcheck.org/
- Is this what you are paying for with your plan?
- Does your ISP (internet service provider) have data caps and when you exceed them, you get throttled and things slow. This is not often the case, but if you have an “old plan” that is a few years old, you should see what the terms are.
- Sometimes local traffic and time of day can affect speeds
- Some websites don’t use best practices or have poor design and are very slow to load. Maybe look for an alternate.
- Is your router old if you are using your own? Three or four years can make a difference. When was the last time you looked to see if there was new firmware available?
- Check with your ISP to see what they offer for lease for routers. It will be the latest technology and they will take responsibility for keeping firmware up to date. It may well be worth it for a few dollars a month. Most come with apps that you can use to configure, add guest wifi and see what’s going on.
- The location in your home or office matters. Try a more central location and place it higher up rather than lower (i.e. on the floor). Home construction could make a difference too. Change the orientation of the antennas on the router if they are external. Go to the manufacturer’s website to see what is suggested.
- Look in your local tech store on on the internet for repeaters or range extenders that can help get rid of dead spots. Available on Amazon. These are helpful but not as good as a mesh network (following)
- Without getting too technical a mesh network is a local area network topology in which the infrastructure nodes connect directly, dynamically and non-hierarchically to as many other nodes as possible and cooperate with one another to efficiently route data to and from clients. This lack of dependency on one node allows for every node to participate in the relay of information. This system is newer technology and an improvement over extenders. They work well for larger homes/offices. As expected, it costs more but time is money. They are made by Netgear, EERO, Google, TP Link and others.
- What is running in the background? Are all the kids streaming movies? What devices are consuming your bandwidth? On a Mac use Activity Monitor (a built in app) to see what is running in the NETWORK Tab and Task Manager on PCs. Just look around and get familiar with what it tells you. Loads change and Apps move up and down as they perform tasks.
- Who and what is connected to your network and how much bandwidth are they consuming? We forget about our phones, tablets, TV’s, game consoles, cameras, door locks, garage door openers, and so on. Sometimes our neighbors pirate our wifi if it is not password protected. It’s ok to share your network with those you know who are visiting but it’s best practice to set up a guest network separate from your personal of business network. There are apps to monitor what’s going on and let you see what is connected. See glassware.com or https://www.lifewire.com/free-wifi-network-apps-3984721 which lists several apps. I have personally used the app, Fing to monitor my network.
- Or sometimes, just shut down your router and modem (if it’s a separate device) and start them up again.