How to Boost Your Wi-Fi Speed Up to 5x

Are you tired of suffering a slow wireless connection? Maybe you’re paying for a 100 Mbps broadband plan but your actual speed comes out closer to 5 Mbps. Before you blame your ISP, you should check your settings.

Not long ago, a user on Reddit posted a Life Pro Tip that outlined an easy way to fix one of the most common Wi-Fi speed problems: poor channel selection.

Wireless signals travel in waves through channels in the air. If multiple signals use the same channel, they can interfere with each other. This causes data to be lost so the waves have to be rebroadcasted, which is why your speed drops.

If you live near other routers — such as in an apartment building — then there’s a good chance your slow Wi-Fi speeds are due to channel interference.

That’s why you should download and run Wi-Fi Analyzer (available on Windows and Android), which tells you which channels are being used.

·         Run the app and analyze your network.

·         Look at channels 1, 6, and 11. Note which is least used.

·         Consider Wi-Fi Analyzer’s recommended channel.

·         Switch your router to that channel.

·         Done. That’s it!

For me, I went from 4.5 Mbps to 21 Mbps using Fast.com as my preferred tool for testing speeds. That’s almost 5x faster than what it was! Now I can make near-full use of my 25 Mbps broadband plan.

There are other ways to boost your Wi-Fi speeds, such as changing up the location of your router and using a mesh Wi-Fi network. But channel switching offers the most bang for the buck, for sure.