Tips to Stabilize Your Wi-Fi Connection
Whether you are working from home or just enjoying surfing the net in your leisure time, stable Wi-Fi is of utmost importance. And if you are experiencing long buffering periods, sluggish Wi-Fi or unstable speeds, it’s time to find out why this is happening. Before calling up your ISP, try out the following tips to stabilize your connection by yourself first:
1. Place your router in a central open location in the house. This would ensure that it can connect to every Wi-Fi-enabled device with the least latency and without becoming blocked by walls, ceilings or even wooden furnishing.
2. Rebooting your router by simply switching it on and off is another classic old solution that still works. By rebooting it this way, your router disconnects from all wireless and wired networks and reconnects back again. Do note however that you shouldn’t perform reboots randomly unless there is Wi-Fi interference or slowdown.
3. All new generation routers have the dual-band feature. And with most modern devices being able to connect to the 5GHz band, enabling both bands on your router will ensure optimal performance of your Wi-Fi connection. Though the 5GHz band offers 6x the bandwidth, it has a shorter range as compared to the 2.4GHz band. However, when the two are combined together, they adjust and provide better speed and coverage while lowering signal latency and interference.
4. Another option is to hardwire your devices using Ethernet cables. Most modern routers come with at least 4 ports, so hardwiring takes you off the overloaded Wi-Fi, while offering more reliable bandwidth too!
5. Wi-Fi range extenders are an effective device for improving your bandwidth and stabilizing your Wi-Fi connection. They are basically signal boosters that rebroadcast the same signal from your router to less accessible corners.
6. And if all this doesn’t work, you could try updating your router’s firmware. In old routers, this might require you to download it from the manufacturer’s website and install the file manually. With modern routers, you can achieve the firmware update from the administration interface itself for improved performance.
And if all else fails, then call your internet service provider and have their experienced technicians troubleshoot your Wi-Fi lag issues!