Home Tech Tips

How much bandwidth are you paying for?

It's easy to blame your Internet Service Provider (ISP) for your slow connections, and this might be true, but there many "ingredients" to a good, fast connection.

If your house if full of people streaming Netflix and gaming, you might need more than whatever minimum Altice or FiOS is offering. Here's a calculator to help you figure out what you really need.

WiFi

If you have Internet from FiOS or Altice, you most likely have a wireless access point (AP). Getting the most from it requires proper setup, placement, and configuration. If your home is large or 2 or more floors, you might need a wifi extender.

For example, most APs offer 2.4GHz and 5GHz access...you might see two APs when you connect, like wirelessap and wirelessap-5. Which one to use? Well, if you are close to the AP, use the 5, which is much faster. If you are going to be far away from the AP or will have walls and whatnot between your device and the AP, you might choose 2.4 which is slower but the signals travel farther.

Here's a quick story that's all-too-common:

My sister had terrible wifi in the house. Turns out the AP was in a desk and buried under a mountain of papers and other junk! Not only did this kill the signal, the AP was roasting hot (heat is the enemy of all electronics). Moving the AP out of the junk pile and on top of the desk helped a lot.