Wi-fi tips and tricks for working & learning from home
Article published in Northampton Living
(October 2020)
For many reasons, home Wi-Fi is frequently neglected. Maybe intentionally to encourage kids to play outside or not spend so much time in front of a screen. Maybe your Wi-Fi use was limited and you didn’t need a robust network or maybe you just weren’t sure what to do to make things better.
But now it’s clear that working from home for your job and/or going to school isn’t going away anytime soon, which means it’s time to fix things once and for all.
It’s quite common to use your Modem or Router provided by your Internet Service Provider as your Wi-Fi source. This will work if your area of coverage is small, but when the modem is in the far corner of the basement, the signal can get unreliable in the upstairs office. Try moving the modem to a more central location or closer to the primary use location. You can call your ISP to discuss if this is something you can do yourself or not.
Range extenders or signal boosters can be another option if necessary, especially if you can’t move your primary Wi-Fi source. The downside of these devices is that they tend to repeat the signal, causing delay and a speed decrease. This works fine for web browsing and email but not well for things like voice calls, video conferencing, or gaming.
I recommend a Wi-Fi mesh solution that provides a new router, where you disable the Wi-Fi signal from your Router/Modem from your ISP. This provides the best solution as many of these products adapt to changing conditions and route traffic the best way possible. Most of the name brands have products that do this. I believe the best product on the market is from Eero. They were purchased by Amazon a while back and continue to develop and update the product line. The Eero Pro model will achieve the best performance and signal but any of their products will be better than what is provided by your ISP. Most electronics stores carry Eero products and obviously you can find them on Amazon. The work/learn-from-home boom has caused some supply issues. If you have trouble locating any in stock, please reach out as I may be able to help.