Wi-Fi is no longer air.
My house's Wi-Fi is slow, it doesn't connect, and when I try to see something, it always stops at loading. Wi-Fi isn't cursed, and usually has some physical problem. The equipment you use, the construction of your house, and the arrangement of things affect the ease of connecting to Wi-Fi. Such conditions differ from person to person, but the idea for improving the Wi-Fi environment is the same.
So what should I do when Wi-Fi is slow or difficult to connect? Gizmodo has put together what to do while actually enhancing the Wi-Fi environment at Kelly Bourdet's editor-in-chief's home.
The provider situation and housing situation are different between the United States and Japan, so I will tell you about those parts as much as possible according to the situation in Japan.
Step 1: Review the router placement
Wi-Fi is a radio wave, so if the Wi-Fi router and the device you want to connect to it are too far away, or if there is something extra in between, it will be difficult to connect. But Wi-Fi routers are usually not very beautiful and tend to be sneaked in closets, in the back of bookshelves, or behind TVs. Or maybe there's a big mirror next to it in the middle of the house, or a stainless steel fridge. Also, home appliances such as microwave ovens use radio waves of the same frequency as Wi-Fi routers, so it is better to keep them away to avoid interference.
Ideally, the Wi-Fi router should be placed in a place where there are as few obstacles as possible. In Lifehacker's experiment, simply moving the Wi-Fi router in the IKEA doord TV cabinet onto the TV cabinet has more than doubled the download speed. Also, Wi-Fi radio waves are more easily transmitted from "top to bottom" than "bottom to top", so it is better to place them on furniture than to place them on the floor.
Step 2: Try changing routers
I think that many people rent Wi-Fi routers from providers, but when looking at routers, whether they are rented or bought, the first thing to look at is the standard "802.11 somehow". Now the newest 802.11ac is the fastest and is likely to continue to be used for a long time. A technology called "beamforming" is included as standard, allowing you to identify the wireless device in use and concentrate the signal there. So if you keep using your old router, you can buy a new one as an option.
However, one older standard, 802.11n, is still significant. This is because 802.11ac uses only the 5Ghz band, while 802.11n uses both 2.4GHz and 5GHz. Not only is the speed high in the 5GHz band, but there is little radio wave interference, but it is difficult for obstacles to pass through. The 2.4GHz band is also used for cordless phones and microwave ovens, so interference will occur, but it is easier to reach farther.
That's why I want to be able to use both 802.11ac and 802.11n ... So, with recent Wi-Fi routers, it is called "dual band" or "tri band", and it has become possible to communicate in multiple bands at the same time. There is something that is. In the case of dual band, it means that you can connect to either 5GHz or 2.4GHz network. The tri-band has added another 5GHz, so it's less likely to slow down with more devices.
However, if the device you want to use does not support 802.11ac, you can connect to an 802.11ac Wi-Fi router, but you will not be able to take advantage of it. The latest standards and additional bandwidth come at a cost, so you don't have to buy them if you don't need them.
Another Wi-Fi router function is "multi-user, multi-input, multi-output", or "MU-MIMO" for short. This is designed for an environment where multiple users are accessing the network from multiple locations and requesting a lot of bandwidth. If you live alone, just say, "I don't need MU-MIMO right now, but I might use it someday." A fierce environment where you have a lot of families and they're all heavy users, and when someone is having a video conference somewhere in your house, someone else is streaming on Twitch and someone else is downloading a movie. Then you may consider a router equipped with MU-MIMO. However, not all types support MU-MIMO yet, so even if you can't use it on your home router, it's not the end of the world.
So what kind of router should I buy? This is a difficult problem and depends on your needs. The US Gizmodo editorial department tested the Netgear Nighthawk R7000P, which is 802.11ac, dual band compatible, and MU-MIMO compatible. Even the old brick building on the 2nd floor above ground and 1st basement floor in Brooklyn could be used without any problems. The price is over $ 200 (about 22,000 yen), but in some cases you can buy it for about $ 150 (about 16,000 yen), so it's not enough to go bankrupt. Other good things in this price range are D-Link EXO AC2600 ($ 145 ≒ about 16,000 yen), TP-Link Archer C3150 ($ 220 ≒ about 24,000 yen), ASUS RT-AC68U ($ 160). ≒ about 18,000 yen).
Step 3: Try using a mesh network
But depending on your environment, no matter how great your Wi-Fi router is, the problem may not go away. A house with three stories of reinforcing bars and metal pipes embedded in it is not compatible with Wi-Fi. Anyway, even if the house is too large, one router will not be enough.
The fundamental problem with Wi-Fi routers, no matter how powerful they are, is that they can basically send signals from only one point to a limited range. You can relay the radio waves with a Wi-Fi extender, but in that case, all the traffic will eventually go through the original router.
That's where the mesh network comes in. As the name implies, a mesh network has a base station physically connected to Ethernet, while several "satellite" routers are connected both at the base station and between satellites. Then the network becomes like a chain of beads. This means that if you put your base station in your living room and spread the satellites throughout the house, not only will you have more reach, but you'll also have better traffic flow. Even if one node goes down, you can still carry traffic through another node. Even in the video of Gizmodo in the US at the beginning, Wi-Fi can now be used comfortably in the basement or toilet where it was difficult to connect.
Mesh technology itself has been around for years, but only recently has it become available to the average person. Eero, a startup in the San Francisco Bay Area of the United States, pioneered this field with the launch of hardware in 2015. Eero consists of a nice white base station and a node called a "beacon", which plugs directly into a wall outlet. However, it is more expensive than a Wi-Fi router, and one base station that can cover about 1500 square feet ≒ 139 square meters costs 200 dollars (about 22,000 yen), and there is one beacon that can add 1000 square feet = about 93 square meters. It is 150 dollars (about 16,000 yen).
Following Eero, other companies have begun to handle mesh networks. Google has already launched it in Japan and sells the Google Wi-Fi mesh network router for 16,200 yen, or a pack of three for 42,120 yen. According to Google, their coverage is comparable to Eero. Netgear has also launched Orbi, a mesh network. At the time of writing the article, one Orbi router costs about 15,000 yen on Amazon, and a set of a router with a coverage of 200 square meters and one satellite costs 23,900 yen. In the United States, there is also the option of subscription-based Plume.
Adding satellites to a mesh network will cost much more than a single router. So it's best to first determine if your home is large enough to benefit from the mesh network. For obviously large houses, two-story or three-story, mesh networks are a good choice. But if you have a medium-sized condominium / apartment or a small one-story house, a solid router should be enough. First of all, please create a more comfortable Wi-Fi environment from where you can!
* Prices are as of the time of writing.
