white and black modem router with four lights

COVID-19 and social distancing have increased the amount of time people are spending in their homes. Many people are spending more time in their homes because they’ve transitioned to working from home while others are spending more time at home because they’re practicing social distancing. Regardless of why someone is at home more frequently, they’re going to need fast and reliable home internet. A slow home internet connection is frustrating for everyone and can make it impossible for those that work from home to get their work done in a timely manner. Therefore, today’s blog post will focus on some ways you can make your home wifi faster. 

Before diving into the tips, you should test your upload and download speeds. If you feel that your internet is too slow, but your upload and download speeds already match the speeds promised to you by your internet service provider, then you likely need to upgrade your current home wifi plan. 

 

  1. Restart your router: A tried and true strategy that works with most technology, restarting your router can quickly improve your in-home internet speeds with minimal effort.
  2. Make sure you have enough bandwidth: There may not be an issue with your router’s performance or your internet service provider but you could have too many devices connected at once. If others in your household are using the wifi for bandwidth-intensive activities such as streaming video it can drastically slow the connection for others on the network. This can be addressed by reducing the number of people using the home internet during the workday or contacting your internet service provider and increasing your internet plan’s bandwidth. 
  3. Minimize the distance between your router and your workspace: Home wifi is great but is limited by the range of any given router. If your router (or workspace) is in the corner of your house, you may experience slow internet connection because you’re too far from your router. This can be fixed by moving your router to a more central location in your house or moving your workspace closer to your router. 
  4. Keep your network secure: You want to protect your home wifi network by requiring a password for network access. This ensures that others can’t leech off your wifi, which would reduce your bandwidth and overall speed. In addition to having a wifi password, there are a few other ways to ensure your wifi and data are safe and secure. 
  5. Utilize both bands on dual-band routers: Dual-band routers have quickly replaced single-band routers as the gold standard for providing high-quality internet at home. Dual-band routers allow users to connect their devices to the internet via a 2.4 GHz band or a faster 5 GHz band. Newer devices are typically able to connect to either band and may connect to the slower 2.4 GHz channel. As a result, you want to make sure that your 5 GHz capable devices are connected to the faster band. 

 

There’s a number of different ways you can improve the strength of your home internet connection without upgrading the plan you use with your internet service provider. Unfortunately, if these strategies don’t work it may be necessary to switch internet service providers or upgrade your current plan. If you found this article helpful and work from home or are transitioning to working from home, be sure to read about some great remote working tools on this previous blog post.