WiFi during Coronavirus Lockdown

If you’ve got a home broadband service, you probably already have WiFi access around your home, but there may be things slowing your WiFi down, we look at the most common causes for a slow internet connection.

If you’ve not got home broadband, there are a few things you can try to get online at home during the lockdown.

Optimising your WiFi

With so many people working from home during the lockdown, the residential broadband infrastructure is being put under extra stress. This can lead to a slower internet connection when you need it most.

There’s not a lot you can do in the immediate future to change what’s happening to your broadband, even changing provider is going to take a while to get sorted, so we look at the options available to you inside your home.

Staying Connected

Ofcom have released some good advice for keeping connected running during the coronavirus lockdown

Move your router

Move your router so it’s a free from other devices as possible. Try to keep it on a table, shelf or windowsill, and away from any other electrical devices, especially lamps, TV’s, Stereos, Speakers, Baby monitors, and anything with a lot of metal in it.

Go Wired

If you’re trying to work from home, try using an Ethernet cable from the router to your laptop or PC. While many routers boast Ethernet-busting speeds, the wireless connection is likely to be less reliable and those extra fast speeds are usually only in busts of data, not a continuous stream.

Router to Phone Socket

Try to keep the distance between the main (first) phone socket in the house and the router to a minimum, plugging into an extension in another room could greatly reduce the incoming signal if you get your broadband over the telephone line.

Cable users are less affected as long as the extension comes from the cable junction box outside your house and not an internal one.

Other tips

Turn it off and back on again!

Yes really! us IT bods don’t make this stuff up!

With many home routers, there’s limited diagnostic and management options available to you, so if your router has got itself stuck or is not working optimally, turning it off (unplug it from the mains so the power is completely removed from the device) leave it a few minutes so the internal memory is cleared, then plug it back in and power it up again.

Try moving it (again)

You might think that your router is in an optimal spot in your home, but hidden steel work in the walls and solid brickwork, especially in old houses, can cause the WiFi signal to drop off dramatically.

If you have a tool on your phone or laptop to measure the WiFi signal, using it in each corner of every room will help you identify black spots, test each spot several times throughout the day to get an average reading, and remember leave your measuring device alone while it works so you don’t block or bounce the signals off your body!

If you don’t have an app to measure the WiFi, but you know the signal is particularly poor in one room, or you identify a WiFi black spot that you can’t overcome, use a booster or an extender/repeater device to enhance the signal in that area.

Using different channels and frequencies

Most home routers will be set to auto configure the channel to use, and will likely broadcast over both WiFi frequencies (2.4gHz and 5gHz) but you can configure these settings yourself to try to boost the range and speed you get.

If you do make any changes to your router, always make a note of what the settings were before you change them, that way you can always undo anything that doesn’t work!

Th 5gHz frequency has more channels available to it, meaning there’s less chance of congestion and interference from neighbors WiFi devices, it offers faster speeds but over a shorted distance.

The 2.4gHz frequency has fewer channels, slower top speeds but a longer range.

QoS

If you’re using WiFi calling, video calling or any other ‘live’ streaming service, switching on Quality Of Service could help to make sure that data is prioritised over other data.

Not got home broadband?

If you don’t have broadband available to you while you’re in lockdown, there are a few things you can try.

First of all, ask your neighbours if they would be willing to share their broadband. Most modern routers have the ability to offer a guest WiFi meaning there’s no danger to you or them as devices on the Guest network can’t access devices on the main network (and vice versa)

We wrote a post about this here.

Free access to neighbours WiFi

If you’re using a BT, Vodafone, Sky, Virgin or some other large mobile phone provider, you can already get free broadband access via any of their home WiFi devices over the guest network.

What that means is, if you have a BT mobile phone contract, and your neighbour has BT home broadband, using the BT app on your phone, you can freely connect to your neighbours broadband guest WiFi without them having to do anything.

Using your mobile

If you’ve got a fairly hefty data allowance on your mobile, you can set it up as a WiFi hotspot for your other devices to connect to.

Make sure you monitor your data usage so you don’t go over your limit.

Contact your provider

If you can’t get any other service, try contacting your provider and explaining the situation. They may have special offers available to help users during the Covid-19 lockdown.