Tips to get the best Wi-Fi coverage and speed in your home

Great news! You now have a full fibre broadband service. The best possible type of broadband connection. It's ultrafast and very reliable. Hard cabled into the router, you are getting fantastic speeds; exactly what you'd expect.

However most of us access the internet via Wi-Fi, wirelessly without cables connected into the router.  On Wi-Fi, the speeds are lower, there's buffering on the TV in the other room, the coverage around your home patchy, and it drops out some of the time.

This guide will help you to get the best out of your Wi-Fi signal and help to ensure you get the best possible Wi-Fi coverage, speeds and reliability from your Wi-Fi connection.

Positioning your Giganet UltraHub Wi-Fi router is important to get the best out of your service

We often don't think too much about the Wi-Fi router placement, but this is such an important step to ensuring you get the best and most reliable Wi-Fi signal in your home.

Ensure that everyone in your household gets clued up, as if someone knocks/tidies/hides away the Wi-Fi router, it may cause your Wi-Fi signal to dramatically decrease, slowing it down, or making it less reliable.

Poor Wi-Fi router placement is a very common cause of support calls. So please ensure you are aware of the best Wi-Fi router placement to get the best out of your service.

Best Wi-Fi router positioning

Dos

• Place the router 1.5m/5ft off the floor, ideally on a table or window sill.
• Place the router on its stand with the front of the router pointing towards the direction where most of your Wi-Fi devices will be connecting from.
  • The front is the side with the various status lights on the bottom. The rear is the side with the cables connect into.
  • The router's antennas are located in the front panel, so if you are pointing the router the wrong way, your Wi-Fi signal will be weaker where you need it.
• Keep you router in sight, in the open, and without any objects immediately in front of it.

Don'ts

• Don't place your router behind any large objects like behind the TV, TV's are great at blocking the signal.
• Don't place the router on the floor, as half of the signal will largely be lost directly into the floor
• Don't hide your router away. We appreciate it may not look great, but if you hide it away in a cupboard or TV media centre shelf, the signal will be dramatically weaker.
• Don't place near to any large metal objects such as radiators. These objects can massively block the signal.
• Don't point the front of the router facing outside if you have it on a window sill. If you have it on a window sill, ensure the rear with the cables connecting into it is the side closest to the window. Otherwise you'll be providing a great WiFi signal outside!
• Don't place near to any sources of potential interference; so keep clear of microwave ovens, any old Wi-Fi routers, baby monitors, DECT cordless phones

We appreciate that the exact Wi-Fi router positioning will be limited by the location of where the fibre service comes into your home, including the ONT, and also where you have a power socket for the router.

Wi-Fi uses radio waves that get blocked or made weaker (attenuated) depending on the materials the waves pass through

Wi-Fi uses radio frequency waves to transfer data back and forth from your Wi-Fi device to the router.

These waves are similar to the ones that your mobile phone uses, or FM/DAB radio. However Wi-Fi uses much high frequencies that have the capability to transfer data at very fast rates. Wi-Fi routers and devices are limited to much lower power levels also.

Due to this combination you will find that your Wi-Fi signal strength varies around your home, depending on how far you are away from the router, as well as what obstructions are in the way.

Thinks like walls, ceilings, wood, brick, stone, metal, and other building materials and furnishings will all weaken the signal strength at varying amounts.

In older homes, brick or stone construction can block the signal more than wooden constructed houses.

But in newer constructed homes, you may have aluminum foil backed insulation which is almost as bad and restrictive as the thick stone walls.

You will also have furnishings, appliances and things such as large metal radiators which all will further weaken the signal strength.

Every home is different.

Giganet's routers are dual band (they work on 2GHz and 5GHz bands), and 'steer' your devices to use the best one

Giganet's UltraHub router is a dual band router, which means that it operates on 2GHz and 5GHz at the same time. It can serve devices on each band simultaneously.

The router also has a feature enabled called band-steering. This technology is where the router will attempt to ensure that your Wi-Fi laptop/phone/device connects to the much faster 5GHz band in preference to the 2GHz band, if your device supports 5GHz. It will only attempt to 'steer; your connection to the 5GHz band if you have a suitable high signal strength, as if not, you will end up on the slower but wider coverage 2GHz band.

These features all happen behind the scenes in the default router configuration to try and ensure that your Wi-Fi devices all get the best performance given their signal strength and capabilities.

5GHz Wi-Fi band offers the fastest speed, but doesn't travel as far as the slower 2GHz band

The 5GHz Wi-Fi band is where all the major speed improvements are coming from. There is a lot more spectrum (radio frequency space) that can be used in the 5GHz band, and this permits much larger channel widths to be used. This offers greater bandwidths or speeds over the connection to each device.

The downside however to 5GHz is that the signals are more easily blocked by obstructions such as walls, floors, ceilings, furniture, and other large building materials and furniture.

This results in you being able to get great performance on the 5GHz band if you are near the router, however if you are the other side of the house, then you may not even be able to pick up a 5GHz signal, and may have to rely on the slower 2GHz band which is better at penetrating objects.

Band steering as we have explained above, helps to move your Wi-Fi device onto the 2GHz band if your signal strength is not great enough to benefit from the 5GHz band. This will have the effect of keeping your Wi-Fi device connected to Wi-Fi, but you may notice a drop off in performance.