The Internet network is a dominant factor ruling all of our lives. With the novel coronavirus outbreak, the entire world has been introduced to an utterly new aspect of life. From schools to big companies, every institution has transformed its entire setup. Online classes and working from home, make people rely more on their home networks.
The result of this transition to online setups has been a dramatic spike in the average bandwidth usage at homes. This has led to frozen video conferences and buffered videos for most of the users. Most installers have to face the question of how customers can strengthen their critical home network. The following five tips can help you speed up your network and help strengthen it.
Strategic Router Placement
Most users tend to hide the routers due to their ugly and bulky look, but router placement is a vital key for a strong home network. Routers emit radio waves in all directions and accessing your router panel using good sites can help you create a strong network, thus placing them in an open area, near the middle of your home, as far away from the walls is highly recommended by IT experts.
Besides providing a strong home network, this router placement ensures minimal interference from appliances such as refrigerators and microwaves. Walls obstruct the Wi-Fi’s signal, and placing the Wi-Fi as far as possible also ensures that the network travels outside the home and at longer distances.
Selecting The Right WI-FI Band
Most of the routers tend to broadcast dual bands, that is, 2.4 Gigahertz (GHz) and 5 GHz. Large homes with multiple walls or floors need to opt for, 2.4 GHz band, which provides a network at longer distances but slower. However, the 5 GHz band provides a much faster speed over shorter distances and better protection from hackers.
IT experts recommend testing both bands before opting for one of them, according to the size of your house and the area. Besides the band, changing channels is also highly suggested. Using a less crowded channel, one that isn’t used by other networks (such as 6,1 or 11), helps avoid interference which further strengthens your home network.
Changing The Default Network Name And Router Password
Buying a new router comes with a default service set identifier (SSID) name and router password. This default SSID and password are needed initially to connect your computers or laptop to the wi-fi. However, IT experts recommend changing these default settings to a stronger one since the default settings make it easier for hackers to guess these based on your router’s manufacturer information.
Avoid keeping your personal information, such as your name or your address, as the name for your wi-fi network. Choosing a strong password and changing it every couple of months is also a critical key to avoiding mishappenings.
Using The Bandwidth Judiciously
Using these techniques only works when used in conjunction with judicious use of the wi-fi bandwidth. Checking what kind of internet service provider you are buying before paying is also important to know if it is worth it. On a brighter note, during the pandemic, the ISPs, have stepped up by lifting data caps. And providing increased speed for the current customers.
However, if the lagging continues, additional measures need to be taken to increment the bandwidth efficiency to ensure everybody who needs it can work properly. One of the methods that can be used to do this is decreasing the resolution of 4K televisions. Changing the resolution to 1080p or even 720p from 4K can make a big difference and further strengthen your network services.
Protecting Your Smart Appliances
All of us have multiple smart appliances, starting from mobile phones to laptops, computers, and smart TVs, all of them using an internet connection. Any smart appliance you use is at risk of being hacked.
While adding any smart device to your network, ensure that you scrutinize the security settings by changing default settings. Like usernames and passwords, setting up multi-factor authentication, and installing software updates and security patches.
To keep your home network strong, you need to consistently change your device’s software. These regular security updates can help secure your network and make it function properly.
Conclusion
These changes in your router and appliances minimize the risk of a slow network and help it strengthen to a large extent. Thoroughly scrutinizing your network’s security and ensuring the tips mentioned above. Regularly provides you with one of the strongest network services.
Not only does it ensure a strengthened network, but it also provides you with a secured network. You can now easily video call with your boss or take your 8 am classes for school. No buffering would now be the cause of your absence.
