5 Ways to Boost Your Wi-Fi Signals
Can we all just admit that Wi-Fi can be quite a fickle little thing at times? You might be enjoying a fast and strong Wi-Fi signal but as soon as you change your position, you’ll notice how it drops to one bar. Perhaps there’s nothing more frustrating than watching your Wi-Fi signal drop.
Wi-Fi has become a necessity just like electricity and water, but it can be unpredictable. There’s a high chance that you will experience variations in your Wi-Fi speed from time to time. It can simply refuse to deliver the promised speeds by your internet service provider (ISP).
Here are five tips and tricks you can do to boost your Wi-Fi signals.
What Factors Influence Your Wi-Fi performance?
First and foremost, let’s understand what affects your Wi-Fi’s performance. There are many factors affecting the performance of your Wi-Fi. Here are some of them:
Obstructions
Wi-Fi signals can be partially or completely blocked by certain objects and obstacles, such as ductwork, home appliances, furniture, walls, and people themselves. All these Wi-Fi blockers specifically affect 5 GHz Wi-Fi networks, simply because signals with a higher frequency can’t penetrate obstruction as well as signals with lower frequencies.
Physical Distance
For obvious safety and technical reasons, your Wi-Fi router most probably does not have the same transmitting power as a cell tower. Moreover, if you have an outdated router, it will struggle harder to cover a small space with a stable and strong Wi-Fi signal – let alone the entire house.
You can consider using a Wi-Fi analyzer app to determine how far the Wi-Fi router expands its signals.
Interferences
Wi-Fi signals utilize the same radio frequency band of cell phones, baby monitors, microwave ovens, and other devices that can interfere with your Wi-Fi signals. Wi-Fi networks can also cause interference with each other, and this is a common problem in densely populated areas, such as apartment buildings.
Your Internet Service Provider
In all honesty, you can waste the entire day trying to troubleshoot your Wi-Fi router without realizing that perhaps your ISP is to blame. That said, to know if that’s indeed the case, connect to your internet through a wired connection and run an internet speed test.
Both the download and upload speeds ought to correspond to the speeds promised by your ISP. If that’s not the case, don’t hesitate to give them a call and complain. If your ISP refuses to solve your issue, you can consider opting for Hargray Internet. They offer amazing internet speeds that won’t disappoint you at any point in time.
How to Boost Your Wi-Fi Signals?
Here’s how you can boost your Wi-Fi signals:
Router Placement
If you weren’t aware, not all places are well suited for your internet router. Firstly, you should avoid placing the router near appliances that release electromagnetic waves and metal objects, as it’s one of the best Wi-Fi signal disruptors.
Other materials, such as cardboard, foam, glass plastics, and wood, can also cause disturbance in your Wi-Fi signals, but they have less of an influence on it. Ideally, you would want to keep your router at a safe distance from electric wires and consider placing it somewhere central in the house.
You can further boost your Wi-Fi signals by elevating the router.
Keep Your Router Up-to-date
If you’re someone who follows the news diligently, you must have heard about the increase in malware attacks affecting both individuals and businesses. Most of these attacks will prove to be fruitless if all routers were up-to-date.
The moment malware attacks your router, it can easily steal its bandwidth and spread across the network and the devices connected to it. Simply log into your router through the web browser and check if its firmware is updated, otherwise, download the latest update.
Get Rid of Wi-Fi Thieves
An encrypted and password-protected Wi-Fi is a necessity in this day and age. With more people starting to rely on Wi-Fi, the hunger for fast, and open Wi-Fi networks is real. Don’t have the misconceptions that since your neighbors have their Wi-Fi, they don’t want to leech off your Wi-Fi network, because most will.
You should ensure that your Wi-Fi is well-encrypted and protected with a strong password that’s impossible to guess. Include both uppercase and lowercase numbers, letters, and symbols. Ensure that the password has a minimum of 8 characters, and never include any personal information in it.
Moreover, if you have a lot of guests, you can consider creating a guest network so that you can manage who and when they can connect.
Buy a Wi-Fi Extender/Repeater/Booster
Although they’re all referred to by different names, Wi-Fi extenders, repeaters, and boosters are all the same thing.
Wi-Fi extenders and boosters are very similar, but amplify your existing Wi-Fi signal before rebroadcasting it to form a second network. Whereas, Wi-Fi repeaters are simple devices that use your existing signal from the Wi-Fi router and rebroadcast it as an entirely new network.
Since Wi-Fi boosters tend to have a greater range in comparison to Wi-Fi repeaters, they are more practical to use where original signals are weak. You can also use a Wi-Fi booster app to analyze your existing Wi-Fi coverage, and establish the perfect way to extend your existing Wi-Fi network.
Consider a Better Internet Plan
There is often more than one device connected to the internet via Wi-Fi in a household. From computers to smartphones to various home appliances and smart home devices, all of them need a stable Wi-Fi connection, and not every internet plan can provide it.
If you’ve been on the same internet plan for almost a decade now, it’s time to look at other available options and consider upgrading. Moreover, you can bundle up your internet plan with cable TV plans as well.
However, if you’re looking for standalone cable TV plans, Hargray Cable has amazing TV channels to choose from.
In Closing
Well, there you go! Having a stable and fast Wi-Fi is no longer something to be questioned, and we hope you’ll give these tips and tricks a try to boost your Wi-Fi signals!
