For everyone new to remote working, working from has revealed just how important a good internet connection is. While a hiccup here or there while playing your favorite online game after work is annoying, having unrealizable or slow internet while working from home is simply unacceptable and can even cost you your job. Between Zoom meetings, Slack and other household members working from home, your Wi-Fi is being stretched out to its max. To make working from home easier, we’ve rounded up five tips that can greatly improve your Wi-Fi network connectivity. The tips below apply no matter your internet provider – whether you have Verzion, HughesNet, AT&T, or EarthLink internet.
1) Use QoS To Prioritize Your Work Tasks
Most routers come with Quality of Service settings that you can adjust to prioritize online tasks you need. These settings will allocate the required bandwidth they need so they’ll work at their very best regardless of what else is running on your network. For example, you could set Zoom and web browsing on the highest priority while setting your gaming system on low priority.
You can also get more granular with your QoS settings by prioritizing different tasks at different times of the day. For example, during the work day you would want to set high priority for Zoom calls or Slack. But at night while you’re off from work you wouldn’t care about work functions so a high priority for something like Netflix would be more appropriate while deprioritizing Zoom and Slack.
2) Switch Your Work Computer To The 5 Ghz Band
If messing around with Quality of Service settings is a bit too much outside of your technological expertise, switch your work computer to the 5GHz band. Just note that even though the 5GHz transmits data at faster speeds, 2.4GHz provides more Wi-Fi coverage, so choose wisely.
3) Choose An Unobstructed Place For Your Router
Make the most of your Wi-Fi by placing your router in the most unobstructed place possible. This includes away from your walls and floors so pull your router out of the closet and pick it up off the floor as soon as possible. Keeping your router out in the open can seriously expand your Wi-Fi’s coverage area and strengthen its signal.
4) Purchase A New Router
We understand wanting to save a few bucks and squeeze every last cent out of your existing router, but if your router is more than 2 years old or struggling, you can’t expect it to deliver the best Wi-Fi possible. Even if it’s still functional, it doesn’t mean that it is functioning at its best. Wireless routers running with the latest Wi-Fi technology will always provide you faster internet speeds and a more stable connection. Plus, it’s much more secure as well and will keep your network safer than an outdated router.
5) Hardwire Your Work Computer When You Can
If you want the fastest and most reliable internet connection available to you, hardwiring your work computer to your router by its Ethernet cable will always provide the best internet connection possible. Unfortunately there isn’t a better wireless option than that out there that’ll deliver you a better connection than the Ethernet cable.
