Ways to increase Wi-Fi speed. How to speed up your home Wi-Fi: expert advice

How to increase WiFi speed on laptop and other wireless devices? This article will consider the case when the WiFi transmission speed is significantly lower than the wired connection speed on the same router.

First of all, you need to make sure that the problem is hidden only in the wireless connection.

WiFi Speed Test

Before we start doing anything, turn off all WiFi devices except the one we will be testing on. Reboot the device including the router, after which we begin the test. Download a large file, and track how long it takes for the file to be transferred to calculate the download speed. Or use a torrent client or DC++ where we can observe the download speed in real time. Select a popular file so that the number of distributors is as large as possible and so that during the test, disconnecting several people from the distribution does not affect our measurements. Start the download using wireless connection and wait until the download speed stabilizes.

Please note that during the test, the WiFi signal level should be good, experiment with the distance from the router to your wireless device. Find the position where the speed is best. We remember how fast the download is and move on to the next step.

Turn off WiFi on your device and connect via cable. Wait until the download speed increases and stabilizes using wired connection. If the speed relative to WiFi increases slightly, then this may be normal for your equipment and identifying the problem will not be easy, if it exists at all. But if the speed increases more than twice, and sometimes four times or more, then follow my advice. In most cases, they will help solve this problem.

I recommend checking the speed via WiFi and cable repeat, to finally make sure what values we are dealing with. Otherwise, we may end up in a dead end.

Why is WiFi speed low?

So, we found out that the drop in speed is observed exclusively over WiFi. All that remains is to figure out how to increase WiFi speed. The reason can be either software (network card driver, router firmware or settings) or physical, in the form of electromagnetic waves that cause interference.

Here are some reasons for slow WIFI speed:

Changing the WiFi channel

By default, the channel setting is in automatic mode and the best channel is supposedly selected. But this is not always the case. You can try setting the channel manually and see if there is a change for the better.

If I were to choose a channel at random, I would start with channel (1, 6 and 11). But the best way to find out which channel is less busy is to use the program.

You can also use mobile applications such as or. The lack of some functions compared to inSSIDer is compensated by the convenience of easily moving around the apartment, observing the dynamics of the radio broadcast.

Reduce channel width to 20MHz

Even if changing the channel had a positive effect on the speed, it is worth trying to also reduce the channel width. By default, this option is set to “Auto”. Change the value to “20MHz” and check the speed. This method once helped me quadruple my WiFi download speed.

Router firmware

Update your router's firmware. It also wouldn't hurt to update the WiFi adapter driver. Sometimes this solves not only problems related to speed, but also many other possible problems.

Use modern standards

Do not use outdated security standards such as WEP or WPA/TKIP. Temporarily disable security to test speed. If you manage to achieve the desired result only with security disabled, you can enable the MAC filter, allowing access only to your devices, which will allow you to use WiFi with security disabled.

Use 802.11N standard on all devices. All modern devices use this standard. Keep in mind that if you are running the N standard, but an older device sharing the legacy G standard is running on your network, the speed will be reduced.

Sometimes it is worth lowering the WiFi signal strength

High WiFi signal strength does not always have a good effect on speed and stability. In some cases, it is recommended to reduce the strength of the WiFi signal, or change (if possible) the antenna to a less powerful one.

How to increase Internet speed through a wifi router if providers promise users high Internet speed under any conditions and often this promise is not realized?

Internet speed is the amount of data transferred per second of time (measured in kilobits or megabits per second).

In browsers and other programs, the speed of uploading or downloading files is measured in kilobytes or megabytes per second. These two concepts should not be confused.

Possible reasons for low Internet speed

Internet speed may decrease due to the following reasons:

the device is too far from the router;
the network is simultaneously used by several devices that consume a large amount of traffic;
software problems in the router;

Before you start troubleshooting the problem, you should test the speed of the Internet using online services.

During testing, disable third-party browser tabs and programs that may interfere with the speed test. Some popular services:

Updating router drivers

Updating all router drivers can help increase the speed. The installed driver may not be compatible with the operating system version.

Open Device Manager (a system utility that displays all connected devices) and select the Network Adapters tab.

Find your wifi adapter in the list and, by right-clicking, select the “update” menu item.

The drivers will be downloaded and installed in the background in one to two minutes.

Advice! After updating the drivers, be sure to restart your computer and router.

Changing the network operating mode

The router operating modes are responsible for its throughput on a specific device.

There are modes that can increase the speed of the router by improving the QoS level.

To change the operating mode, go to the device manager and right-click on the wifi adapter.

Select the properties item. The “advanced” tab lists all possible operating modes of the router through which you can increase its performance.

WiFi adapter

To ensure the fastest possible internet speed, select WMM, Preamble or Power Output mode.

Changing the router security standard through the settings window

The frequency range for Wi-Fi operation is divided into 12 channels (in some countries there are 13 or even 14). Therefore, when several devices operate on the same channel, they begin to interfere with each other, which leads to a mutual decrease in the speed and stability of communication. The matter is further complicated by the fact that, while broadcasting on its channel, the router actually captures two more channels on the left and two more channels on the right. Your task is to configure your router to operate in the most free range. It's not difficult to do this.

1. Download and install the program. It will help us identify open channels in your environment. The program is free and works on all versions of Windows.

2. Launch inSSlDer. After a short scan you will see something like this:

Here we are primarily interested in the numbers of channels occupied by competitors, as well as the range overlap map. You need to find out which channel is free. Ideally, you want your new range to have almost no overlap with your neighbors' networks. In my case, as you can see, this is quite difficult.

3. Open your router settings in your browser and change the channel. Usually, all you need to do is enter in the address bar 192.168.1.1 .

If you have a different address, you can easily find out. Press the Win + R key combination and enter the command in the window that appears cmd. A terminal window opens where you need to enter the command ipconfig. This is the value of the “Main gateway” parameter - this is exactly what we need.

4. In the control panel, find the option to change channels. It is usually located in the Wireless Settings section. Some routers have an “Auto” option that allows them to independently search for free channels. For everyone else, it is recommended to set this parameter manually, specifying the channel that you discovered using inSSlDer.

5. Reboot the router and reconnect your computer to the network for the settings to take effect.

I would like to make a reservation right away that these tips do not always help and not everyone. You may need to experiment with different channels. However, very often this method helps to increase the stability and speed of your connection, so it’s definitely worth a try.

If you still open the router settings, then do not forget to check its security, as described in!

IEEE (Institute of Electronics and Electrical Engineers) specialists are constantly improving the communication standard numbered 802.11, popularly known as Wi-Fi. Pundits have already made wireless networks exchange data at speeds of several gigabits/s. But for ordinary users whose Internet is slow, these achievements do not console them at all. This material will help you learn how to increase the speed of your Wi-Fi router without changing it to a newer and faster one.

Radio frequencies are an intangible resource, but limited. To ensure high-quality operation of all types of communications, special state commissions are involved in the distribution of frequencies between their users. Some of them are reserved for the needs of the armed forces and security services, the rest are sold and leased to companies operating in the communications sector.

Unfortunately, there are not many frequencies available, since only a part of them can be used in practice. Anything below 200 MHz is not suitable for modern computer communications, as it does not provide the required bandwidth. Only radio stations that do not need to communicate with several devices can operate in this range (they do not communicate with anyone at all, but only broadcast their signal). Frequencies above 5 GHz are also poorly suited for communication, since a short wavelength (and the higher the frequency, the shorter the wave) is jammed by an ordinary brick wall.

The “war” for frequencies broke out in the range from 800 MHz to 3 GHz. Operators pay millions and billions of dollars to rent a couple of bands, 10-100 MHz wide, from the regulatory organization. In this “tasty pie” for “mere mortals” they left a rather narrow band, broadcasting low-power devices on which does not require licensing. It is in the range from 2400 to 2480 MHz.

A narrow band of 80 MHz, located in the 2.4 GHz band, was chosen for Wi-Fi networks due to the lack of alternatives. However, Bluetooth devices, transceivers of wireless mice and keyboards, wireless headphones, stereo systems, and cordless phones also operate in the same range. In addition, the magnetrons of all microwave ovens emit at frequencies of 2.4 GHz. By the way, the 2.4 GHz frequency was chosen as a household frequency, largely thanks to microwave ovens. The fact is that electromagnetic radiation of precisely this frequency resonates best with water molecules. And since the range is already “lost” for communication systems, due to “clogging,” then we can make it publicly available and try to use it as efficiently as possible.

The abundance of devices polluting the airwaves in the 2.4 GHz band is the main reason for the deterioration in the quality of wireless Internet. To increase speed over WiFi, you need to know this to determine the “root of all troubles.” And it often consists of a large amount of interference and background noise.

How to increase WiFi internet speed

The main reason for the deterioration in the quality of data transmission over Wi-Fi has been identified. Now it remains to consider all the methods that can improve the quality of the signal and reduce the harmful effects of interference on it. All configuration operations are carried out through the router's web interface. The address at which it is available is indicated in the instructions (often 192.168.0.1 or 192.168.1.1). The name and password are also indicated there; often the default login/password is admin/admin.

Location

Channel selection

In order to reduce the influence of neighboring Wi-Fi devices on each other, the available range has been divided into 14 separate channels. Since the channel width is 20 MHz, a range of 280 MHz is needed to eliminate the intersection of signals from different channels. Considering that only 80 MHz is available, each channel overlaps part of the frequencies of the two neighboring ones. That is, if your router broadcasts on channel 5, and the neighboring one broadcasts on channel 6, then they will interfere with each other. It is possible to make three independent routers work without interfering with one another only if they work on channels 1, 6 and 11, respectively.

If a neighboring router operates on the same frequency as yours, they will interfere with each other. One of the ways to increase Wi-Fi speed is to change the channel to one that will not overlap with others. To do this, you need to scan the available networks and find out which channels use those whose signals are the strongest. This can be done using the InSSIDer utility for Windows. It will display networks and show signal strength. In the router settings, you need to select the channel (preferably from 1, 6 and 11) on which no one is working. If this is not the case, you need to choose the channel with the weakest network signal.

Bandwidth

Initially, the channel width, as mentioned above, was 20 MHz. With the advent of the 802.11n standard, to improve speed, the bandwidth was expanded to 40 MHz. Only when you activate the 20/40 MHz mode in the router settings, it becomes possible to use the new Wi-Fi standards at full speed. If Wi-Fi is slow and only 20 MHz channel width is enabled, you need to activate 40 MHz in the settings.

When activating the 40 MHz mode, you need to take into account one nuance: the doubled bandwidth already occupies two non-overlapping channels. If channel 1 is selected in the settings, then the range of channel 6 will also be occupied. If another router is already working nearby on channel 6, interference will occur. Therefore, if the 40 MHz channel is turned on, but the Internet is slow, you need to check with inSSIDer whether there is another router nearby that also uses this range. If it is, in this case it will help not to turn on the 40 MHz mode, but to turn it off and select the most free channel.