Category: WiFi

Has broadband slowed down during lockdown?

tinsleyNET Admin
Broadband

With furloughed workers and people working from home, the UK residential broadband networks have been put under continued strain for the past 5 weeks and users are starting to feel like their broadband speeds are slowing down.

Why so slow?

Most residential broadband connections are sharing bandwidth between several homes, it’s difficult to find accurate contention ratio data, but a few years back it was typical that residential connections had a contention of 50:1, what that means is that 50 homes could share a single connection to the internet.

Businesses often had 20:1 contention ratios, meaning that each business on the connection could share the bandwidth with up to 19 other businesses.

During normal use, this is not an issue. Through the day the bulk of internet traffic is on the businesses networks, and from 5pm onward the trend swinging to mostly residential connections.

During the lockdown, this trend has obviously changed. Many many more users are vying for bandwidth over the residential connections during the day.

Getting the most out of your internet.

There’s not much you can do in the short term to address the speed of your broadband. Longer term you could look at changing provider or moving to a less contented connection, or one with guaranteed minimum speeds.

But here are some tips to making the most of the speed you’ve got.

Go Lite

Us lite modes on your device or browser or apps that support it.

Some mobile phones and tablets have a Data Saver mode to reduce the amount of data apps can access in the background, Windows 10 has a similar feature under Data Mode.

Set your browser to a lite mode, Chrome, Opera, Firefox and Edge all have data saving modes, designed to reduce and compress the amount of data needed to load a webpage.

While you’re at it, using plugins like The Great Suspender will put tabs that you’re not using into a sleep mode to prevent them automatically refreshing and downloading data in the background.

More and more smartphone and tablet apps now have features to reduce the amount of data needed to work by reducing the quality of graphics, video or sound, or suspending some features while working in a lite mode, check your apps settings for details.

Some apps, like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, can be removed or disabled, and you can use the web based version of the app instead. Most (if not all) of the features you use are available via the web version, all without the background updates.

IoT

Smart home devices like lights, switches, TV’s Security Cameras and personal assistants are everywhere, and most of them will be connected to your WiFi and may be sending and receiving data in the background.

Disconnect them from the WiFi if there is a setting to do that, or turn the power off to them while you’re working to stop them using up you valuable internet speed. Once you’ve finished work, you can turn them back on or reconnect them.

Same goes for any tablets or smartphones you’re not using, set them to airplane mode to disconnect them from the WiFi while you’re working.

Go 4G (or 5G)

If you’ve got a massive or unlimited mobile data allowance, and a reasonable enough signal, use that instead of your home WiFi.

Look for the Mobile Hotspot or WiFi or the Tethering settings in your phone to turn it into a WiFi point you can connect to.

Drop the bitrate

If you’re streaming video, use the streaming apps settings to reduce the bitrate or resolution, it’s easier to watch a smooth playing though slightly less HD movie than it is to watch a 4K movie that stutters and buffers every few minutes.

If you’re in a video conference call, opt to go audio only, if you’re still having issues, see if there’s an option to dial in on the telephone.

tinsleyNET IT Servces Consultants #WeCanHelp

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If you need help making your broadband speeds better, or getting your workforce running securely from home, give us a call toady.

WiFi during Coronavirus Lockdown

tinsleyNET Admin
Broadband

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

WEB Stay Connected Logo Full1

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.

tinsleyNET IT Servces Consultants #WeCanHelp

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If you need any help configuring your broadband router and WiFi to optimize it, or would like help getting your guest network up and running for your vulnerable neighbours, give us a call.

Share your WiFi during the Coronavirus lockdown

tinsleyNET Admin
SharedWiFi

As libraries and community hubs have been closed as part of the government’s attempts to manage the Covid-19 virus pandemic, some users who relied on their free internet access may have found themselves cut off from the internet.

If you have elderly neighbours or neighbours who don’t have access to internet services, you could help them during the period of self isolation or social distancing, by sharing your guest access internet connection with them.

Using the guest network segregates their devices from your own WiFi meaning there’s not chance of computer viruses crossing over from one side to the other.

Guest WiFi

Most internet routers have the ability to run a guest WiFi, this broadcasts a different WiFi name (SSID) with a different password, and allows guest users to connect to your internet but without being able to get onto your home WiFi or any of your home devices.

This protects your home computers from getting accidentally infected from a guest device, and means you don’t have to worry about adding additional security measures on your network.

Each brand and model of router is different and will have a different way of enabling a guest network, but typically it will be listed in the router settings as Guest WiFi (sometimes as SSID2 or WiFI2) and should allow you to set the SSID name, which is the network name that gets broadcast.

Make the name easy to spot, so perhaps call it something like “Bob’s Free Internet” and set a password, then let your neighbours know that they can use your WiFi for free, saving them the cost of mobile internet prices.

tinsleyNET IT Servces Consultants #WeCanHelp

#WeCanHelp

If you need help getting your Guest WiFi setup, head over to our Free IT Support page on Facebook or leave a message below, tell us your router make and model and we’ll try to get the instructions you need.