Where to locate the wi-fi router is vital to have good connectivity. Anyone who has an Internet connection at home, especially if they also have their office there, knows that the location of the famous router is vital to have a good signal in all environments.
It depends on the layout of your house or apartment, if the router is located in the front and your bedroom is in the back, you will be familiar with the frustration of having to wait for the movie to load or for communication with a family member who lives in the other end of the world (so common these days) is constantly interrupted.
Of course, not all cases are the same, the layout of your home has a lot of influence (that there are not many walls that interfere with the signal), the type of construction of the same, as well as the router itself and of course, the quality of the service provided by your Internet provider.
Regardless of all those details, the physical location of the router is essential.
For example , if it is located next to a wall in common with another house, you receive a percentage of the signal, so it is always convenient to protect it with a password to prevent your teenage neighbor from slowing down your connection by downloading movie after movie… in addition to the security problems that you can suffer if you leave the entrance open.
5 Tips To Locate The Wi-Fi Router
1. Locate The Router In A Central Location
Try to locate the most central place in your house or apartment to put the router. Then, if you have your home office and it is not located in a central location, you can always wire it up using a good quality Ethernet cable ( category 6 cable ).
Wired connection is always faster and more secure. In my case, I use the wi-fi connection for mobile devices and my desktop computers are connected by cable.
In the case where you have a house with two floors, remember that the waves expand horizontally in all directions and downwards, so placing the router on the top floor works better than placing it on the bottom.
2. Avoid Obstructions In The Signal Path
Radio waves go through walls, but depending on the material (although I don’t think you have lead lined walls in your house and the thickness of the wall, the wave can be absorbed by the walls and lose signal quality.
The water (be careful with ponds and fish tanks) also opposes resistance to the signal.
3. Avoid Placing The Router In The Kitchen Or Bathroom
Metals and mirrors reflect the signal. In the kitchen, the microwave generally operates on the same frequency band as the router (usually 2.4 GHz), so when we turn on the microwave, we interfere with our router’s signal.
Much the same is true of the cordless phones so common in our homes today; so it is advisable not to locate the router next to the telephone base.
It should be noted that there are routers and phones that work in two frequency bands, 2.4 and 5 GHz, so you have to read the specifications of what you buy.
4. Tune The Antenna
For me it is an image from childhood, when the TV was tuned with an antenna on the roof. Every time the TV made “stripes” dad would get up on the roof and start to move the antenna and we would look at the screen and we would guide him yelling: “Turn a little more to the right, no, no, you went too far, come back for back, there, right there!!!
Well, you will have noticed that the routers also have one or two and now up to three antennas that you can move to tune the signal.
The antennas can be moved, some allow a complete horizontal rotation. Searching the internet I have found that placing the antennas horizontally gives the best coverage when we want to distribute the signal vertically (in the case of having two floors); while putting it in a vertical position contributes to a better horizontal distribution.
5. If Necessary, Amplify The Signal
If your house or apartment is very spacious or has concrete and/or metal structural elements, you may need to extend the wireless router’s signal to get good coverage throughout the house.
There are devices that extend the wireless signal and are called “wireless extenders”, also known as amplifiers or extenders. It is advisable to purchase a wireless amplifier from the same manufacturer as the router to make it more compatible. If this is your case, before buying a router check that it has working extenders.
In an article in RedZones they say that we must place the Wi-Fi repeater halfway between the router and the wireless client that we want to connect (PC, printer, etc).
This detail is very important because if the signal from the main router reaches the repeater badly, even though we have maximum coverage on the wireless client, we will see that navigation is very slow, because the repeater itself does not receive enough signal.
Do you know other tips to locate the wi-fi router? Leave us your comments below and if you find this note useful, please share it on your social networks.
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