Improving Your Home’s Wi-Fi

In today’s era of smart home technology, Wi-Fi and home networks have become the backbone of our daily lives, with its performance in the intelligent home becoming increasingly important. Nicolai, caught up with Intelligent Homes Magazine, as part of their ‘Ask the Expert’ series to discuss how you improve your home’s network and Wi-Fi. 

We’re connecting more and more devices onto the home network, such as TVs, audio systems, phones, laptops, doorbells and more, and they all compete with each other on the network. Ultimately, your smart home will only be as good as the network infrastructure that supports it.

 Improving your home network to enhance its speed, reliability, and coverage can involve several steps

1. Upgrade Your Router: If you’re still using an older router or a low quality one supplied by your Internet Service Provider, consider upgrading to a newer model that supports the latest Wi-Fi standards like Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax). Newer routers offer faster speeds, better coverage and improved performance.

2. Optimise Wi-Fi Router Placement: Place your Wi-Fi router in a central location in your home, away from obstructions like walls, metal objects, and electronic devices that can interfere with the signal. Elevating the router off the floor and positioning antennas vertically can also help improve coverage.

3. Use Ethernet Connections: Whenever possible, connect devices directly to the router using Ethernet cables. Wired connections typically offer faster and more reliable speeds compared to Wi-Fi.

4. Update The Router Firmware: Regularly check for firmware updates for your router and install them to ensure it’s running the latest software. Firmware updates often include bug fixes, security patches, and performance improvements.

5. Optimise Wi-Fi Settings: Access your router’s settings interface and adjust Wi-Fi settings for optimal performance. This may include selecting the best Wi-Fi channel, enabling Quality of Service (QoS) to prioritise certain types of traffic and adjusting transmission power. This can be a slightly daunting task if you are not familiar with it, but is well worth doing. Alternatively get an expert involved!

6. Use Wi-Fi Range Extenders: If you have areas in your home with poor Wi-Fi coverage, consider using Wi-Fi range extenders or a mesh Wi-Fi system. These devices can help extend the range of your network and eliminate dead zones.

7. Ask An Expert: Not all of the above tips are for the faint-hearted. If you’re not comfortable making these adjustments yourself, then consider getting an expert to
help you.

Control4 Touchscreen on Bedside | Home Automation | What is Control4

For anyone planning a project and to seriously improve your networking performance, we recommend that speaking to a professional CEDIA integrator to help plan the wired and
wireless infrastructure as early as possible is the best thing to do. CEDIA is the trade organisation for the smart
home industry, and its members are fully trained experts in this field.

Wireless systems can be useful and do have their place in the home. But, as a rule, professional integration
companies prefer wired infrastructures for the house to do the heavy lifting to ensure wireless channels are kept free for mobiles, tablets and laptops.

IndigoZest is a CEDIA member skilled in designing and installing home networks to improve speed, reliability and coverage and provide a better online experience for all your connected devices and systems.

Contact us for more details. 

Share the Post:

Related Posts

Experience It For Yourself!

Book a demo at one of our Control4 certified showrooms.

Cinema Room showing screen, lighting and seating
Start your journey to a smarter home

Book a Showroom Demo or Online Consultation

Our demos and consultation sessions are designed to give you the opportunity to learn more about home automation and the services we provide. For more details on our showrooms please click here.