Improve Your Home Wireless Signal for Free
Reach a Wi-Fi High
Here are three possible ways to improve your home wireless signal for free:
1. Rethink the location of your router. This may seem easy and obvious, but if you haven't tried it yet, what are you waiting for? In order for the router to broadcast the best signal and receive replies from your computer(s), it should have free space all around. Don't place your router underneath furniture, on the bottom shelf of a bookcase, behind a desk, next to metal cabinetry, or in the far corner of a room if you need to reach other rooms. If possible, place the router on an open table to improve its capabilities. Try keeping it near a doorway if the wireless signal in adjacent rooms is weak. This will require some experimentation, but relocating your router is free and only takes a few minutes.
2. Update the drivers for your network adapter. Especially if your computer is a few years old (as mine was when I experienced a problem in a new home), download fresher drivers. Confused? Fear not. Drivers are simply a special type of software that allows devices - like a wireless adaptor in your laptop - to communicate with the rest of your computer. Go to Control Panel > System > Hardware Tab > Device Manager. You'll see a list of all your devices, including your wireless network adapter. Right click on the adapter and pursue the driver update, following the prompts. When I updated the drivers for my own network adaptor, I was able to improve my computer's response to the home wireless signal.
3. Reduce wireless signal interference or change the channel. The average 900 MHz cordless phone won't cause any problems for a home wireless signal, but certain other wireless devices, including higher-end phones, might hamper the signal because they operate in the same section of the S band as wi-fi: 2.4 GHz. You can also try changing the channel by accessing the router's page and making a switch. See your router's instruction guide for more details.
Good luck improving your home wireless signal for free!
Published by J. Bartleby
I've been writing, in one form or another, for years. I'm a thirtysomething liberal in the Midwest. View profile
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- Move the router - the obvious first step.
- Update your network adapter's drivers.
- Watch out for other 2.4 GHz wireless equipment.
7 Comments
Post a CommentUpdating my driver was all I needed to do... it has been 60% more reliable - thanks!
great article! i would just like to add some material. If you are a linksys user as i am, you can buy aftermarket antennas for the router and/or one for the computer. They run pretty cheap. usually about 20$ for the router (2 antennas) and prolly the same for the one that goes in the back of the computer. i have these and it helped alot, but there are other solutions. Get a piece of cardboard and wrap it in aluminium foil and mount it to your antenna so it catches the signal. You know what im talking about just experiment, IT HELPS ALOT! YES ALUMINIUM FOIL!
That is also a good comment about putting the router in a higher location of the house. My daughter just moved to a student rental house for college in Sept. She found the router but did not recognize it sitting in her closet. So maybe someone else found that to be the most practical place to keep equipment also.
Good point about the microwave. I will have to ask my daughter what having the router so far from the kitchen works for her wireless setup.
Thank you ever so much. High speed just arrived to my rural neighbourhood in Cottage Town, Ontario, this weekend. My daughter, my husband, and I all use computers--usually in different areas of the house. We each probably like to move around more than we had previously realized.
When the budget is limited, it is nice to explore and exhaust the "free" options first.
Try adding an inexpensive antenna to increase signal gain these antennas cost between $15-60$ just look at the dbi on the package to see what kind of gain the antenna has, the higher the number the better. Oh and Microwaves total mess up a wifi connection stay clear of the microwave;).
Great article. Thank you so much for the suggestions and the explanations!
Another tip: Put it as high in the house as possible, and close to the center of the house. Ours is about 14 feet above floor level, on a decorative beam that connects the two sides of the house. This may mean putting it in a bedroom, upstairs linen closet, or other area you don't associate with computer equipment, but it improves the signal.