Are You Currently Working From Home?

James Skinner

Working from home can present new challenges for your home internet connection and your equipment. This blog post covers the most common tips you can do to try and improve your performance.

Optimise your wireless speed

Your wifi is susceptible to interference from other devices such as cordless phones, baby monitors, and electromagnetic interference from appliances like your microwave. Try to position your router away from these if possible.
Wifi signals tend to radiate downwards, so if your router is downstairs and you are upstairs, you may get degraded performance. Placing your router on a shelf may help.
Wifi signals can travel through walls and furniture, but the signal weakens the more it passes through. Try to limit the distance and obstacles between you and the router.
Reboot the router occasionally. Like a computer, a router can slow down over time with temporary caches. A reboot can blow away the cobwebs.
If possible, avoid wireless completely and connect your device to the router directly with an ethernet cable.

Optimise your bandwidth usage

If you have other family members at home, it is likely they are using the internet connection at the same time. Services like iPlayer and Netflix can be set to stream at a lower bit-rate/quality. Both services also allow subscribers to download programmes to their device rather than stream. Of an evening, family members could download programmes they plan to watch the following day.
When video calling, consider if the video is completely necessary, many applications allow audio-only participation in video conferences. This may enable you to still be involved without suffering stuttering and distortion.

Lastly, do not:

Install “internet accelerators” or similarly named software. There is very little that can be done to “enhance” or “boost” internet speed, you can only utilise what you have. These pieces of software are often contain viruses and other malware.