It’s tempting to assume that the latest router or the next speed tier will fix our Wi-Fi issues, and there’s probably some merit to that. But even the most powerful Wi-Fi 7 router still can’t make signals pass through walls seamlessly, and even the fastest speed tiers will suffer from occasional hiccups withlatency and interference.

I live in an older house with plenty of sturdy walls and the subsequent occasional Wi-Fi issues. While these tricks typically work for me, results may vary for you depending on the layout of your home, your router, and interference. That said, to give my Wi-Fi a boost in the rooms that need it most, here are the steps I take.

First, I map some dead zones

You need to know what you’re working with

Testing to figure out where you’re going wrong is the most essential step in a network upgrade. The data you pull from running tests in different rooms can reveal a lot about your setup, where your dead zones are, and help you avoid spending money on upgrades that you might not need.

To test my Wi-Fi regularly, I use free apps like Orb and speedtest.net. Orb is a favorite of mine because it consistently monitors your network with small-payload tests and provides a holistic view of its overall health. Additionally, Orb uses other metrics besides “speed” to grade your network on a scale of 0 to 100. Responsiveness (or lag) and reliability are other measures considered that give you a full picture of how your network can perform tasks like gaming online, streaming in 4K, or downloading a file.

To test my network, I ran a few tests in different rooms of my house using both Orb and Speedtest.net, with speed and responsiveness as metrics. Unsurprisingly, the living room, which is furthest from my router, had some of the “slowest” speeds at 298 Mbps. For context, I pay for AT&T Fiber’s cheapest tier at 300Mbps down and up, and I typically get speeds around 350Mbps down and up. I’m fairly conservative when it comes to paying for internet speeds I don’t need, and that 300 has been more than enough for my partner and me.

When in doubt, move your router

You’d be surprised what repositioning your equipment can do

Generally, the best place for your router is in a central location, at a raised level, to provide the best signal throughout the house. Make sure that no walls, metal, furniture, appliances, or water obstruct it; the Wi-Fi signal diminishes as more solid objects come between your router and your devices. If you can’t move your router to a more central location, you can use access points (APs) to extend your router’s signal.

My router is currently installed in my office, on a shelf near my desk. Originally, I thought this was the best place for it, so that the devices that demand the most bandwidth can get a direct Ethernet connection to my router. I decided to rearrange my office and try positioning my router elsewhere. Following best-practice router placement, I raised my router slightly on the shelf and ensured my PC or monitors didn’t obstruct it.

To test how repositioning my router might have improved the signal in my living room, I retested from there and found significantly higher speeds: 345Mbps down and 363Mbps up. Responsiveness remained relatively stable, with a score of 89/100 from Orb and a 25ms lag. Granted, this was not a controlled experiment, and there are plenty of variables that could have influenced the results, but repositioning your router even a few inches can noticeably boost your Wi-Fi signal.

Changing Wi-Fi channels

A simple, but effective trick

Routers broadcast Wi-Fi signals on specific channels, and it’s very possible that your neighbors’ routers and devices are overlapping on the same channels, especially if you live in an apartment or a densely populated neighborhood. This channel interference will slow your network down and make it unreliable, but you can experiment with adjusting channel width to see if your connection improves. Most routers automatically pick the best channel, but the “auto” setting may not always get it right.

Wider channels allow your router to transmit more data, potentially leading to faster speeds. However, the wider the channel, the more likely it is that the signal your router broadcasts will be prone to interference. The right channel size will depend on your network, but in general:

• On the 2.4GHz band, try setting your channel width to 20MHz.
• On the 5GHz band, try setting your channel width to 40MHz. If reliability doesn’t improve, set it to 80MHz.
• If you have a Wi-Fi 6E or Wi-Fi 7 router, you have access to the 6GHz band. The 80MHz or 160MHz channels should be fine because the 6GHz spectrum is much wider.

Optimizing band usage

I wish I’d done this sooner

If you’re experiencing Wi-Fi connectivity issues throughout the house, switching to the 2.4GHz band is usually a safe bet if you’re farther from your router, as the 2.4GHz band has a much longer signal range and is less prone to attenuation than the 5GHz band. Conversely, the 5GHz and 6GHz bands are less prone to interference, but they work best when you’re closer to your router.

One of the last tricks I’ll recommend is to isolate your Internet of Things (IoT) devices to a guest network. In an ideal world, you’d create a VLAN for your IoT devices, but a guest network is a simpler, quicker solution that offers the same level of privacy and reduces network congestion.

You don’t have to spend a lot of money for a good network

Understanding your network is the key to improving it. Once you know where your dead zones are and what may be causing interference, you can come up with better solutions that work with your house’s layout and your budget. In my case, a few simple adjustments were enough to give a small but noticeable speed boost in the room that needed it most, but eventually, the next best step for my home network is an upgrade to a mesh router system or using APs throughout the house for whole-home connectivity. But for now, the speeds I pay for are more than enough.