This week, we’re looking at easy WiFi wins for home, and how you can make wireless that much better in your life. We’ll even talk to Google and D-Link to find out how. All in five.
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Transcript
The working world has changed and its taking a toll on your WiFi. Somewhere between your phone, laptop, and all the other devices in your life, your WiFi is struggling. So how do you fix it?
On this episode of The Wrap, we’re going to look at easy WiFi wins and how you can get the best out of your home’s WiFi right now.
Wireless networking has long been one of those set and forget things. You might still be using the router that came with your internet connection, and have never really given it a second thought. Until now.
We kind of just expect wireless networking to be good no matter the situation. But we’re using more devices than ever before, because if it relies on the internet, there’s a good chance it’s wireless. It’s not just your computers or phones, it’s everything.
If you have smart speakers, it’s that. Wireless security cameras or a smart doorbell, it’s those, too. It’s your smart TV, your smart lights, video game systems, and so much, and eventually, your wireless router is going to struggle.
Whether it’s an issue with range in your home or performance, your wireless router might not be doing the best it can, and now that so many of us are working from home, it feels worse.
But there are things you can do to fix your WiFi, and that will almost always start with your router.
Graeme Reardon, Managing Director, D-Link Australia & New Zealand
Certainly, you have to start to diagnose any Wi-Fi issues at the router first, because it’s generally the first device into the home.
That’s D-Link’s Graeme Reardon, who suggests testing devices on your router either by plugging and seeing what speed you get, or using an internet speed test to get a gauge on what sort of connection you should be getting.
If the router says you should expect high internet speeds, it may be that your router needs upgrading. The older the device, the less likely you can expect it to support lots of devices and higher bandwidth connections. Newer technologies support more on both, and that’s typical with common WiFi woes.
Graeme Reardon, Managing Director, D-Link Australia & New Zealand
If you’re an ‘average’ household, then you probably have at least 17 devices, according to most major research firms, and that’s only going to grow looking ahead. As such, these days, I recommend if you’re in need of a new router, buying a new device with a minimum of AC2600 Wi-Fi speeds, and gigabit on the switch ports.
Those letters and numbers make a difference in the world of WiFi. The first two letters tell you the connection type: AC is an 802.11ac connection, which isn’t the latest WiFi, but is still fairly high up there. The 2600 tells you how much overall bandwidth the router has to work with. In this case, 2600 translates to 2600 megabits of bandwidth to share. That’s 2600 divided between how many devices you have, and megabits aren’t quite megabytes.
The higher those numbers go, the more bandwidth a router has to offer, and that potentially means a better connection all around.
You can get lost in numbers and prices pretty quickly in WiFi, and typically the higher the number, the bigger the price, but there is an easy WiFi win for people who need it.
Graeme Reardon, Managing Director, D-Link Australia & New Zealand
Definitely the quickest win is to invest in a Mesh System. It’s a quick and easy way to upgrade your Wi-Fi at home, in the simplest possible way, whilst giving you great coverage and decent speeds from the get go.
Mesh networks create what is basically a Venn diagram of wireless activity, allowing you to create a network for your home or business by setting up special access points that talk to each other.
Instead of being one router that sends a signal out, mesh creates a more strengthened network for the entire home, and it’s the sort of technology big names like D-Link and Google are getting behind.
Sanjay Noronha, Product Lead for Google Nest WiFi, Google
No matter where you’re sitting in your home, or even perhaps as you’re walking through your home, while taking a call or something, your devices roam seamlessly, very similarly to a cellular network. So this is why we think mesh systems are really awesome. And they can really help you with spreading signal through your entire home.
That’s Sanjay Noronha, Product Lead for Google Nest WiFi, which is a Google take on a mesh network.
Mesh systems will cost money, and mean you’re setting up a new wireless network, so they’re not going to be for everyone.
If you can’t afford to spend on a newer WiFi network, Sanjay suggests one tip that could make all the difference.
Sanjay Noronha, Product Lead for Google Nest WiFi, Google
Try to place your router centrally in your home. I think that could have just the biggest bang for the buck without investing any more money in new equipment. But it might be hard to do this. It might be hard to string an Ethernet cable through your home, so in that case, what we’d say is if your modem is coming into the home in some corner of the home the best thing you can do is consider adding a mesh system into your home.
Mesh is an answer because of how it works, spreading WiFi more evenly and giving you control of how that happens. But if you can’t afford one, try that tip about a more central approach, and start exploring your router’s features.
And if you have kids, you may want to play with the Quality of Service feature on your router, telling it which devices to give priority to. Starting with you.
That’s it for this special episode of The Wrap, Australia’s fastest technology roundup. You can find out more episodes at thewrap.com.au, and a new episode goes live every Friday at Podcast One, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. For now, we hope your WiFi improves, and have a great week. Stay safe, stay sane, and take care.
