Overview
There are many reasons why you could be experiencing bad wifi in your own home, from your provider not installing the physical cable connection correctly, or your plan not running at a high enough megabytes per second to support your uses. This lesson will cover the reasons that relate to the concepts introduced in the earlier lessons, rather than everything that could possibly go wrong.
Many Devices
A router can often only service one device at a time. When there are multiple devices attempting to use the same router, those devices must take turns. Their time for their turn is managed by exponential backoff(as seen in the previous module). If there is only one device on the network, that device can be constantly sending packets back and forth with the router. If there are two devices they must share that time when they both are utilizing the connection. This problem is exacerbated when you have lots of devices that are constantly communicating with the router ie. streaming, downloading, uploading, etc.
This problem can be solved by using fewer devices at once, or buying a dual-band router which can allow for two devices to communicate with the router simultaneously.
Distance from Router
If there is a large distance between your device and the router, with multiple thick walls in the way, then transmission speed between your router and your computer will be much slower and its possible multiple packets could be lost which would cause the connection to periodically drop off. The problem of many devices will also get worse. If a device that is far away from the router and device that is closer both broadcast at the same time, the device that is closer would get to communicate with the router first. If the close device is constantly communicating with the router then it becomes difficult for other devices to have consistent communication with the router.
This problem can be partially solved by installing wifi extenders to increase the range of your wifi’s signal, connecting your device to the router via ethernet cable to completely avoid packet loss, upgrading your router Antenna, or living in a more open house that has less walls between you and your router
Other routers
If you are using wifi connection over ethernet connection, and you live in a heavily populated area such as an apartment building, it’s possible that multiple routers could be broadcasting and receiving on the same frequency, which can cause the networks to interfere with each other’s connection.
Most modern routers have the ability to manually set your frequency to a less crowded channel, and if your router doesn’t have this functionality it might be worth investing in a more powerful router.
Conclusion
Although these are a few ways that you might be able to improve your connection, there are many ways that your connection can be slow or faulty and before investing in anything expensive it is a good idea to call your internet service provider to make sure that the problem isn’t on their end.
Quiz:
Q1. Why does having many devices utilizing the router cause the network to slow down?
- The router can only handle one (or two) devices at a time
- Packets from devices that are farther away from the router will be less prioritized than messages from devices that are closer to the router
- Devices that are constantly communicating with the router will make it more difficult for other devices to communicate with the router
- All of the above
Q2. Connecting your device to your router using an ethernet cable will eliminate packet loss between the router and the device. True or False?
Q3. How to identify factors affecting network speed? (Written Response)
Answers:
Q1: D
Q2: True