WiFi: How To Improve Your Home WiFi Network

More and more households have a broadband Internet connection (fiber optics, mainly) and, also, their own private access WiFi network. The possibility of using the wireless network throughout the house allows us to enjoy our smartphones, tablets and other devices with Internet connection capacity without depending on mobile “data“.

Now, these WiFi networks can be intermittent, or they can be slower than expected in certain rooms, and many times it is a matter of making a few adjustments and “touching” something in the router to considerably improve its range.

How To Improve The WiFi Network With A Few Small Adjustments

We start from the basis that no neighbor is stealing the WiFi signal, that is, we start from the fact that we have the network protected by a good password and that we have followed all the security recommendations in this regard.

The appreciable loss of signal in some room of the house is usually due to wrong placement of the router, outdated firmware or interference caused by other WiFi networks in the nearby environment. Also you can do wifi speed test for finding the speed of the internet.

Improve The Router Position

The router should ideally be located in the center of the home. That is, at a point more or less equidistant from any other place where we want to connect. As the exact center is not normally viable, we will seek the best possible location that is close to the ideal.

In addition, it is convenient to slightly raise the position of the device to take advantage of the waves emitted downwards. We will try not to place it inside a closet, or so that the signal has to cross many partitions or walls.

Correctly Place The Antennas Of The Router

In all manufacturer photos, routers that have antennas display them vertically. However, this is not the best way to place them to maximize coverage. If we arrange them so that they are perpendicular to each other (that is, one vertically and the other horizontally, forming a 90º angle), we will be giving a maximum coverage.

Update The Router Firmware

The firmware is the software that provides the logic lowest level in a device, thus controlling electronic circuits. Also known as firmware. This software is usually in constant development to gradually optimize the performance of the devices, and in the case of routers, this is more frequent than in other types of devices.

Many routers update the firmware automatically, so you may not have to do anything. Others, however, do need manual updating, usually through the device administration page (accessible through the IP addresses 192.168.1.1 and 192.168.0.1).

There are other little things we can do, such as choosing between the 2.4 GHz or 5GHz band (known as “5G routers”, which have nothing to do with the 5G network ). The first is the one that has the most range and is the most used and, therefore, can suffer from more interference; the second has more channels, less used, and has less coverage.

Within each WiFi network, we have up to 13 channels to choose from. These channels will be more or less used by the WiFi networks in our surroundings and, although the router usually chooses the most underused channel to improve signal quality, it would not hurt to use an application such as WiFi Analyzer (free, Android ) to visualize more specifically the use of channels.

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