How to troubleshoot your home’s Wi-Fi

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge

Many former commuters are in their third year of working from home now that the coronaviruses has been around for three years. People who are back in the office a few days a week are more likely to work from home than they used to be. Here are the best ways to get your wi-fi back up and running.

Free options

Test your connection

Do you know if the internet is bad in your home or just in certain areas? Does it slow down randomly or only during certain activities? Is there a problem with your internet connection?

It's the easiest way to start. Go to Speedtest.net on a computer, then download and run the Speedtest app on a phone, or a mobile device. Don't use your cellular data if you're using your wi-fi instead.

The speed of your connection with a server on the internet will not be higher than the speed of your internet connection or your wi-fi. It can't distinguish between a bad internet connection and a good one. We have more than one tool for that.

Speed tests can be run from the internet. You should do that if you can. Speedtest should be run from a computer with an ethernet port that you can plug into your routers if yours doesn't. You should get a result within spitting distance of the speed you pay for. It is time to call them up and complain if you can. You can buy more bandwidth below.

Check your Wi-Fi signal strength

It is time to check the wi-fi in your house if you have more than you need. Speed tests can be used as a proxy. You can check your speed and ping in a variety of rooms. Take note if there are places with lower download and upload speeds, or higher ping, than others if you start next to the routers.

You can check your signal strength on your laptop or phone.

If you hold down the option and click the icon in the top bar, you will get a lot of information, including signal strength and interference, which is a measure of the strength of competing signals. On Windows, there's an app that does the same thing as the open-sourced Wifi Analyzer, but it's unrelated. Information about your neighborhood can be useful later, but for the time being we just care about signal strength.

A good connection should be indicated by a number above 70dBm. Here are a few things you can do to improve your signal if you have a weak signal. If it helps, try them one at a time and check your connection after each one.

Move your router

If you see dead spots on the bandwidth or signal strength tests, you might want to move your wireless device. The corner of the house or apartment where the service enters your home is the most common location for a wi-fi routers to be stuck. The worst place for it is that one. radios have trouble penetrating walls and wi-fi is radio You can use a longer cable from the wall jack to move your routers to a more central location.

If you can't move the router far, try to keep it out of cabinets and away from large pieces of metal, like fridges and microwaves. If you want to use wi-fi around a lot of water, be careful.

It's possible to reduce interference and increase signal strength by just moving books. It helps increase the flow of air to the device. It's speaking of which.

Clean your router

When was the last time you cleaned your computer? Your connection to the tank will be affected if the vents on your routers are not clean.

Move to a different band

The 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz frequencies are used for modern wi-fi. The latter is quicker and less subject to interference, but can't penetrate walls. The latter is more robust but has a lower maximum speed and is susceptible to interference from nearby signals.

If you can, switch as many devices to 5 GHz as you can. If you are having trouble with the 2.4 GHz band, that could be a problem. The lack of range on the 5 GHz channels can work in your favor since you won't have to worry about interference from neighbors.

If your device is on 5 GHz and can't get a good signal, switch to 2.4 GHz. It could make a difference.

The 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz have the same name and can be assigned to different devices. It usually shoves every device onto the 5 GHz band. If you allow it, it can be better to separate them.

The 6 GHz band is rare and the range is worse than 5 GHz.

Change the channel

You may be experiencing radio interference if you are near a lot of other other other wi-fi networks. Some frequencies are designed to sense interference but not all of them are great at it.

You can use one of the wi-fi analyzer apps to scope out the radio neighborhood, then manually change to a less crowded channel when you get home.

Wire it up

Every device that is on the internet is not competing for the same signal as another device. From a more civilized time, it was an elegant weapon.

Options that cost money

Buy more bandwidth

You may be using more bandwidth because of the data requirements. Several people are working from home. You might have bought a new TV during the Pandemic, or you might have taken up interactive gaming, or your kids are home from school before you finish work. It's added up.

If traffic is getting congested by your internet service provider, you won't be able to improve your internet service. You can see your current plan and options for upgrade by looking at your bill. Depending on where you live, your internet service provider may offer a higher bandwidth plan than they did last time you checked, or they may have competition from cable, fiber, or even cellular carriers. If you still have a local phone company, make sure that there is no faster alternative. It is now easy to find plans with 100 Mbps or more in many parts of the country. It is possible that you are nudging up against data caps if your connection only slows down towards the end of the month.

Get a Wi-Fi extender (but probably don’t)

It is1-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-6556 is1-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-65561-6556 If you don't want to replace your routers and only have trouble in one part of your home, a range extender is a good option. The range extenders are designed to work with the routers in order to act as a mesh networking system. You can grab an inexpensive TP- Link.

In certain situations, range extenders can be helpful, but they aren't very efficient and don't provide fast connections everywhere. They are helpful if you just need a signal. A mesh routers is usually a better option.

Photo by Jennifer Pattison Tuohy

Get a new router or a mesh networking kit

If your routers is more than five years old, you should consider replacing it. A mesh network like Eero or TP-Link Deco can be used if your home is over 2,000 square feet and has multiple stories. It's a good bet to have a single powerful routers.

We are starting to see more routers and mesh networking kits that support wi-fi 6e, which adds a 6 GHz band, but not many of them. The wi-fi is working. If you are due for a computer or phone upgrade soon, you might consider the 6E.

It's worth the effort to make sure your home's wi-fi network runs well, especially when your income or your kids' education is concerned