Boost Your Internet Speed at Home
Working from home has maintained employees’ health and safety in recent times. Due to the sudden and unexpected work-from-home setup, Australia’s major cities have experienced internet congestion from February up until March this year. Canberra and Melbourne were most inconvenienced, but other cities around Australia saw similar problems with the speed of their internet connection. Similarly, New Zealand also found a congestion in their internet speed, when they began working from home.
Data demand has increased significantly because of this new work setup. Shared WiFi connections as well as family members or flatmates who often stream videos, download files, and make video calls further congest bandwidth traffic, creating a shift in internet speed. Internet providers states that they are doing everything possible to optimise connections, including increasing data capacity allocations.
If your internet speed is still lagging, you can try some of these tips to boost your connection:
- Place the router where it has the best signal. Once you have found the perfect router, store it at a high place. Refrain from hiding routers in cabinets or cupboards. Your router will be able to detect the best signal if it is out in the open, devoid of walls and obstructions. You should also avoid placing them on low surfaces. Antennas are vertical and receive the information they need when place the right way up.
- Put your router away from other appliances. Aside from walls and other obstructions, your router should be placed far from appliances such as microwaves, phones, and other smart devices. All of these devices can disrupt your router’s signal which can have a significant impact on your speed and connection. If it is unavoidable, you may also buy a dual-band router that can separate networks and interference.
- Secure your WiFi. Always make sure that your WiFi is password-protected, and no one is trying to hack in to your devices or data. Use a secure VPN like WiFi Protection when connecting to an unsecured network. If you are still using the default password that came with your router or other device, make sure to change it to one that is hard to crack. Remember to only share your WiFi password to people inside your homes or your trusted visitors.
- Get a network monitoring device or software. Monitor your internet usage by adding a network monitoring device or software/app like Home Network Security to ensure that your bandwidth is not exceeding data limits, which causes your WiFi’s slow performance.
- Set router to reboot on schedule. If you’re tired of rebooting your router to boost its speed regularly, you should set a schedule for it to reset once a day automatically. It varies for every device, but generally speaking you can go to your router’s settings and enable the automatic reboot option.
These tips and tweaks will help with your WiFi connection woes. To help keep yourself secure online, make sure to follow these essential security tips while working from home.
