If your internet is slow, the easiest thing to do would be to pay more per month for a faster connection, but if you don’t want to spend more money, there are ways to speed up your internet for free.
Unfortunately, you can’t literally speed up your internet for free because a faster Mbps connection will only cost you more, but there are ways to optimize your internet connection to squeeze every last megabit without spending a dime.
In most homes, the internet is likely not reaching its full potential, and this can be due to many different factors, such as whether the router is broken, the WiFi needs some adjustment, or the ethernet cables are going bad. Internet and networking in general relies on many different factors and most users probably don’t know how to channel these factors and optimize them to get the best possible internet connection from what is given to them.
Here’s how you can speed up your internet connection at home without having to pay more for a faster connection from your internet service provider.
Optimize Your Router’s Location
Since many devices in today’s world are WiFi-only, you are most likely connected to your home WiFi most of the time. To get the best internet performance while on WiFi, it’s important to consider the location of your router in your home or apartment.
Most likely, your router is in some corner of your house, but that’s probably not the best place for it, especially if you’re lying on the other side of the house.
The closer you are to your router, the better internet connection you’ll get (makes sense, right?). However, put your router in a room where you spend the most time. If you spend most of your time between two rooms on either side of the house, consider moving your router between these rooms.
Of course, it’s not always possible to move your router to a different location, so it’s important to consider other options, such as buying a second router and connecting it to your main router using it. power line adaptersalthough this route requires you to spend some extra money.
Change Your Router’s Channel
If you live in an apartment complex, there are likely tons of different WiFi networks close to each other, blocking each other’s signal and range. However, by changing the channel your router is running on, you can open your WiFi network to green pastures while all other WiFi networks around you are left in heavy traffic.
Before doing that, you should find out what other channels all other WiFi networks are on so you can make sure to avoid those channels altogether. Fortunately, finding an unclogged channel is pretty easy, as most routers use the same default channel and most users don’t bother to change it.
To find out what channels other WiFi networks are using, you need to download a WiFi search tool. I like to use iStumbler for Mac and there is WiFiInfoView for Windows. After downloading and installing the app, you can view and see what channels other networks are using. For me most WiFi networks are on single digit channels so using 10 or 11 as channels would be perfect.
To change your router’s channel, you need to access your router’s admin settings. You do this by typing in your router’s IP address, which is usually 192.168.1.1. Once inside, you’ll want to look for something like this. From there, you should see an option for and then you can change to another channel from the dropdown.
After changing it, be sure to save your settings and allow your router to reboot if necessary.
Get Rid of Interferences From Other Objects
Your router is not invincible. In fact, annoying home appliances can disrupt the WiFi signal and cause interference. Things like microwave ovens and cordless phones can weaken your WiFi signal and make it harder to connect or keep fast.
Therefore, you can use your router for microwave ovens, phones, baby monitors, etc. It is important that you keep it away from household objects that may cause interference, including However, you can usually buy cordless phones and baby monitors on a different frequency than your router. which runs at 2.4GHz.
Otherwise, you can change the frequency of the router to 5GHz if it supports it. You can do this in admin settings and going to Wireless Settings depending on the router you have.
From here you can change the frequency from 2.4 GHz to 5 GHz or enable both at the same time; this will create two WiFi networks, one 2.4 GHz and the other 5 GHz.
