How to improve your Wi-Fi connection

For nearly 2 years, I have been experiencing unstable internet connection via Wi-Fi. I always thought it was the Internet Service Provider, Mauritius Telecom’s fault but it tends out that the problem was with my router.

These are a few ways to improve the transmission range of your router by only adjusting the configuration.

Wi-Fi can operate on 2 frequency either 2.4GHz or 5.0GHz. 2.4GHz has better transmission range but slower speed compared to 5.0GHz so depending from what distance you are from your router, you should choose wisely which type of router you will use.

First, log in to your router’s portal, mine is a Huawei HG8245H whose portal is 192.168.100.1 and the default username and password are ‘telecomadmin’ and ‘admintelecom’ respectively.

Under Wireless LAN settings, you will see there are a few protocols to choose from as your transmission technology such as 802.11n or 802.11ac. Select the most recent protocols as they tend to offer better transmission speed and range, 802.11ac is recommended but if your router is a little older, 802.11n will work fine and if none of them are available, it is time for you to change your router.

The next optimization is the most important one as it deals with reducing interferences. There are a lot of Wireless Access Points everywhere today and sometimes they are transmitting on the same channel which is the reason why you experience unstable connections. Always choose a different channel than that of your neighbour as this is the main reason we experience unstable Wi-Fi.
You can check the channels on which your neighbours’ routers are transmitting via the Android application, WiFi Analyzer.

For a good connection, a signal greater that -70dBm is recommended. Based on that, you can reposition your router.

From my experience, my connection works better using Channel 11 and a Channel Width of 20MHz for 2.4GHz 802.11n  Wi-Fi. A channel width of 40MHz is recommended only for 5GHz devices.