Your modem translates internet signals between your home network and your internet provider. If your internet is acting up, a power cycle is a good place to start troubleshooting, as it often fixes connection issues.
Modern wireless routers work primarily on two radio frequency bands: 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz. The band you use for your connections can affect your wireless speeds and Wi-Fi signal strength at different distances from your router.
Rebecca Lee Armstrong has more than six years of experience writing about tech and the internet, with a specialty in hands-on testing. She started writing tech product and service reviews while finishing her BFA in creative writing at the University of Evansville and has found her niche writing about home networking, routers, and internet access at HighSpeedInternet.com. Her work has also been featured on Top Ten Reviews, MacSources, Windows Central, Android Central, Best Company, TechnoFAQ, and iMore.
Cara Haynes has been editing and writing in the digital space for seven years, and she's edited all things internet for HighSpeedInternet.com for five years. She graduated with a BA in English and a minor in editing from Brigham Young University. When she's not editing, she makes tech accessible through her freelance writing for brands like Pluralsight. She believes no one should feel lost in internet land and that a good internet connection significantly extends your life span.
Before we begin, if you think your slow internet or download speed is a result of your device and not your internet connection, check out our guides to speeding up your PC, optimizing your Mac, or getting your Android or iPhone to run faster. Now let's learn how to increase your internet speed.
If the internet is slow on your computer or laptop but works well on your phone or another device, then unnecessary background programs could be hogging your bandwidth and bogging down your internet connection. Stopping these background programs and quitting unused applications can help speed up your connection speeds.
Follow the steps to download the firmware updates. I was able to easily fix several internet speed issues and connection drops after updating both the drivers on my Windows machine and the firmware of my router.
An internet signal map of your home will let you know where to expect slow download speeds or even connection drops, so make sure to put your router in a place in your home that lets you optimize the internet speed for all your connected devices.
Restart your computer
Turning off your computer and restarting it can help fix any electrical issues with your device or tasks that are stuck are now slowing down your download speeds.
Close unnecessary apps and programs
If unnecessary programs or background processes are hogging bandwidth, your download speeds may suffer. Close unnecessary tasks and see if that helps.
Update drivers and firmware
Updating the software that makes your hardware tick helps to fix bugs and ensure that your computer and internet router are running smoothly. A dedicated driver updater will take care of it automatically.
Testing your internet speed and performing speed checks periodically can help you identify and fix a slow or bad connection. Run an internet speed test before you try to increase your internet speed, and then again after, to see if the changes you made worked.
Poor internet connection speeds can be caused by a range of issues, including too many apps running, too much distance between your device and router, a clogged hard drive, too many devices on the same connection, or even malware. Often, a combination of issues will slow your internet connection.
However, the speed you get on devices connected to your network can vary. The number of devices you connect to Wi-Fi, how you use them, their age and type, and Wi-Fi signal strength all can affect speed.
So, We have a wifi router in our bedroom and in there we get speeds of 36 Mbps. In the lounge, we have the extender and that extender means we get a full signal in the other side of the house, but even when the signal is showing full, we're now only getting speeds of 5 Mbps. This is consistent regardless of device.
Why? Because the speed of the transfer drops in an exponential manner the further the repeater and router get away from each other. By keeping the repeater a shorter hop from the router, and then your device a shorter hop from the repeater, you keep the signal stronger along the whole path, rather than having a weaker/exponentially slower signal between the router the device.
We want you to have the fastest Wi-Fi possible, so we looked at information from stakeholders in the industry, online trade publications and our provider websites to compile these 12 tips to increase your internet connection.
Both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz frequencies offer multiple internet transmission channels, but 2.4 GHz only offers 14 overlapping channels, while 5 GHz offers 23 non-overlapping channels. Channel overlap can cause data packets traveling back and forth on neighboring channels to interfere with one another which clogs up bandwidth and slows down your connection.
It sounds simple, but sometimes resetting your router can speed up your internet. Just as restarting your computer can suddenly fix unknown computer issues, rebooting your wireless router can alleviate internet connection problems and boost your speeds.
Wi-Fi signals spread out perpendicular to your router, but Verizon warns that Wi-Fi signals weaken when traveling through walls at an angle. Not all Wi-Fi routers have antennas, such as an all-in-one modem and router gateways. However, if your internet router does have antennas, you can angle them to help your Wi-Fi signal travel straight through walls and retain signal strength.
You may be able to improve the signal and raise your internet speeds by setting up the router on the second floor if you have a multi-level home. Placing your router too close to materials like concrete or brick can limit its ability to broadcast to the rest of your home. The denser the objects around your wireless router are, the greater the signal loss.
Raising your internet speeds in certain parts of your house may be as simple as adding a Wi-Fi repeater. A repeater helps carry your Wi-Fi signal further while keeping the same SSID and password settings. Essentially, the repeater contains a wireless router that picks up your current Wi-Fi signal. Then another wireless router inside the repeater boosts and transmits the stronger Wi-Fi signal to other devices in your home.
Malware is software written to damage your equipment or even gain access to it specifically. Malware can slow down your internet connection by using up your bandwidth. Regularly scan your device for malware and remove any detected infections.
Plug-in range extenders like these can help boost your speeds when you're connecting far from the router, but they can only do so much. The actual speed boost will depend on a multitude of different factors, including the layout of your home, the type of router you're using, the type of device you're trying to connect with and your internet plan's speeds.
If your home's internet connection offers top speeds of 100Mbps or higher, then a decent, well-placed range extender should be able to boost your download speeds in a dead zone or when you're in range by at least 50Mbps, if not 100Mbps. That's enough to browse the web or stream video online. Upload boosts are typically a little lower, but should still be enough to ensure that you can make a video call or upload a file to the cloud.
That said, keep an eye out for client devices (phones, laptops and so on) that automatically connect to whichever network offers the best signal at the time. If you've used a device like that on both your main network and the extender's network, then it's possible that your device will jump from one to the other without you realizing it. For instance, if your laptop is on your main network and you move a bit closer to the extender than the router, then your laptop might lose its connection and jump over to the range extender's network for the stronger signal strength, even though the speeds on that extender network might be slower.
In most cases, no. If you're living in a larger home or if you need speeds that are reliably faster than 100Mbps at range, then it's probably worth it to go ahead and upgrade to a mesh router with its own range-extending satellite devices. You've got more options than ever these days, and just about all of them would likely outperform a stand-alone router paired with a plug-in range extender like the ones tested here.
Wi-Fi extenders are better suited for situations where you've just got a single room or maybe two where you'd like speeds to be slightly higher. They won't work miracles, but in a situation like that, they'll get the job done.
To find a good spot, grab your phone or laptop, connect to your home network, and run some internet speed tests in various spots that are adjacent to the dead zone in question. Once you've found a spot near the dead zone that still hits usable upload and download speeds (preferably at least 50% of whatever you're able to hit up close to the router), then you're probably in a good location.
Plug-in range extenders are a good fit when you need to boost the signal in a single dead zone. If you have more than one dead zone in your home where the speeds plummet, then you might be better off just upgrading to a good mesh router (we've got plenty of recommendations there, too).
The best way to figure out how many dead zones you're dealing with is to grab your phone or a laptop and run some speed tests in each room where you need to use the internet. Start with a fresh connection to your network in the same room as the router, and then pull up a good speed-testing site (I like the Ookla speed test). Run at least three speed tests in the room, jot the download and upload results down for each one, then move to the next room and repeat.
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