
While this may not make your WiFi faster, it will provide a much larger Internet access area, eliminating dead zones. This best selling range extender by Netgear should do the trick for cheap. If your WiFi is having trouble reaching all ends of your house or large office, consider buying a range extender.

Make sure the router is relatively close to where you’ll be using the WiFi. Resist that urge as a wide open router, clear of obstructions and with antennas pointed upwards, will perform better. Routers can be disgusting looking things and your first instinct is to hide it behind your television or in a box. Here’s Amazon’s best selling N router for only $24.99. Wireless N is all the rage when you want the fastest speeds possible. Apparently WiFi speeds are much slower on wireless A, B, and G routers.

I had no idea I was using caveman technology. The Internet installer laughed at my wireless B router.
#Wireless signal how to
This guide will help you understand why your WiFi signal can become weak and how to improve it on the cheap. Poor loading times and lost connections can test your patience browsing the Internet or playing video games. “Every instance of every communication that goes over Wi-Fi is exclusive in that it’s encrypted and only the two parties involved understand it,” says Figueroa.A weak Wifi signal is a modern day nightmare. government to keep data safe as it transmits from one device to the other. There’s another security feature called Advanced Encryption Standard (better known as AES) that was developed by the U.S.
#Wireless signal password
This is where you put in your password to get onto the Wi-Fi network. To access the network, users must have a password for WPA2, also known as Wi-Fi Protected Access (the 2 represents the fact that this feature is in its second generation). Wi-Fi also has a number of security features.
#Wireless signal full
You could be standing next to the extender and have full bars on your phone or laptop because, technically, you’ve got a strong wireless signal, but your Internet speed and performance will be degraded and poor. So, if your wireless Internet is only transmitting at half the speed it should, the extender will repeat that signal, pushing out an even weaker signal itself. “They’re repeaters, so they take what might be a faint signal coming from upstairs into the downstairs environment and then, essentially, they’re repeating that signal.” But the problem with these extenders is that they propel an already weak signal. “Network extenders are becoming more popular,” says Figueroa. And 5 gigahertz networks have many more channels than networks broadcast on the 2.4 gigahertz frequency, another reason to use the new standard, if you can.įor people who have patchy Wi-Fi, fine-tuning their network is a better idea than simply installing a network extender. Most routers are good at automatically detecting the best channel to use. While that sounds technical, it’s really not. One way to get around this is by setting your frequency to broadcast on a certain channel. The issue continues today with neighbors and their Wi-Fi networks. “So for most people, the distance is not really as much of an issue as the speed.”īut ever since the age of cordless phones, people have had problems with radio signals crossing. “Five gigahertz Wi-Fi offers enough coverage in terms of area that it can cover the whole home,” he says. By comparison, 5 gigahertz Wi-Fi is a highway that doesn’t go as far, but it offers 6 lanes, so it can make traffic move faster. “Imagine if you had a highway that went very far but it was only a one lane highway,” says Figueroa describing 2.4 gigahertz Wi-Fi. But 5 gigahertz offers the capacity to carry more transmissions. With Wi-Fi, 2.4 gigahertz is the lower frequency, so it can reach computers located farther away than than the 5 gigahertz band can. According to physics, the lower the frequency, the farther a transmission can go. “Essentially these frequencies are like two different FM radio stations,” says Figueroa.
