If you are looking to boost your wifi signal here are some simple tricks and advanced techniques to improve to your home Wifi in your house.
Move your router:
It is so simple, but you may not realize that where you place the router really makes a difference. Clearly best location should be somewhere open and central, but often you are forced to having the router where the Internet modem is.
Turns out, the higher your router is on a shelf or furniture, the less physical interference it is likely to encounter. Move the router to the best highest possible position to take advantage of doorways and open spaces instead of walls and corners. Furniture, walls and appliances can weaken your wifi signal substantially.
Walls and physical obstacles weaken your signal, but signals emitted by any electromagnetic household appliances do too. Move your router away from: microwaves, cordless phones, other wifi devices, and Bluetooth devices.
Router Tweaks:
Once you have got your router on a good spot, take these next steps to help further improve your wifi signal.
- If you own an older B or G router it is time to upgrade to an n router to double your range and speeds. There are some new n routers for as little as $30. These n routers can handle local electrical and physical signal interference better than B and G.
- Fact is current N routers can operate at either 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz bands. Make sure your router is set to 2.4 GHz because the wifi signal is noticeably better at travelling through walls.
- Routers have frequency channels within the 2.4Ghz band; make sure your neighbors are not on the same frequency. To find out what wifi frequency you and your neighbors are on use a software tool like inSSIDer. Once you have found the ideal channel, follow your routers instructions to change the channel.
Get a WiFi Range Extender:
I’ll try to make it as simple as possible. The basic Idea here is that the WiFi Range Extender will literally amplify the wireless signal by rebroadcasting it. The setup can sometimes be tricky but try to follow my advise here and things will go smoother. First, you’re going to connect your laptop or desktop directly to the extender using a standard cat5 network cable. Try to do this where you have good wireless signal. Next, you’re going to turn off or disable the WiFi adapter on the PC/laptop you’re using to do the setup. Next, open up your favorite web browser and a setup page will pop up. If you don’t get anything, try again by going to any website or go to the IP address that is specified on the extender (some models want you to enter a username & password that it’s also provided on the back). At this point all that needs to be done really is to enter the current existing WiFi information (SSID and password). Some models will have other advanced settings but you don’t really need to mess around with those settings- defaults should be okay. So click save or apply and the page will verify connection and you’ll be told that the info you provided is good to go or the password was wrong. Once you get the green light on that setup page, simply unplug the extender from your PC/Laptop and relocate the extender somewhere in between where your signal starts getting weak fast. You might need to try different spots in your house to get the best result. The settings you applied should stay saved even if you loose power for couple hours. That’s all there is to it.