attention! After all, there is a perfect place to put a Wi-Fi router!

Contrary to what many people might think, there really is a perfect place to put a Wi-Fi router. However, there are also two rooms in the house that are killing signal. In fact, they can make you completely ineffective and that is something no one wants. So here’s the biggest piece of advice the experts can give you. Where you place your Wi-Fi router at home is important, as this will determine the signal effectiveness of your wireless network.

attention! After all, there is a perfect place to put a Wi-Fi router!

As far as a Wi-Fi router is concerned, there is one very important thing. In fact, it is one of the most important rules.

The router should be one and a half to two meters from the floor. If it’s higher, it’s even better. In fact, we should think of the router as a light bulb. When you turn on the lamp, you want the light to shine as bright as possible. With a Wi-Fi router, you must place it in the center of the house and at a good height. This is because the signal will have a better chance of reaching all the devices in your home.

However, many people place a Wi-Fi router in the office, upstairs (when there are two floors), or even in the basement. However these are the worst places to put a router. This is because this way the router is far from all areas of the house.

Placing a Wi-Fi router in your office may make for a great connection for your devices in that room, but it will weaken the signal for the rest of your home.

In addition to the room in which you place the router affecting the Wi-Fi signal, the devices you place next to it can also affect the signal.

From the start, placing a Wi-Fi router close to the TV and game and multimedia consoles will weaken the signal.

If your Wi-Fi router is close to a console that produces heat, such as the PlayStation 5, the connection will be weaker because the heat disrupts the router’s frequencies.

In addition to the position of the router, there is something else that can affect speed.

To understand how an outdated device can slow down your network, it’s essential to look at Wi-Fi and how it works. Wireless networks use either the 2.4GHz or 5GHz frequency. This frequency determines the number of waves that pass through a fixed location in one second. So, if you are using 5GHz Wi-Fi, a total of 5,000,000,000 waves will reach your smartphone in one second.

To transmit data, the WiFi router changes these waves based on the data that needs to be sent. However, in the middle of this there are different protocols. These protocols define different modulation techniques that result in a difference in the amount of data transferred over a Wi-Fi network.

Let’s take a quick look at the available protocols:

IEEE 802.11a

standard IEEE 802.11a It is no longer used. However, it should be noted that it was a common pattern in the business world. Why? Since the traffic was large, companies needed an efficient Internet with a high speed in order to provide streaming to a large number of users. In addition, in this type of situation, there must be no interference, that is, no obstacles to the passage of the signal. That is why this standard has a frequency of 5 GHz. However, as I noticed from the frequency, the problem associated with this model is the short range.

IEEE 802.11b:

Unlike the previous model, this one uses a lower frequency, with a value of 2.4 GHz. It’s the most widely used network model in domestic homes, which is why it was the standard that made Wi-Fi popular. In this criterion we have the advantage of better range, but on the other hand, lower speed.

IEEE 802.11g:

standard IEEE is 802.11g Equivalent IEEE 802.11b, at a frequency of 2.4 GHz. We have a difference however, the Wi-Fi speed has increased, from 11Mbps to 54Mbps. Interestingly, although this standard has been somewhat narrowed, it has been adopted with some success.

IEEE 802.11n (Wi-Fi 4):

In this form, we are going to increase the Wi-Fi version to Wi-Fi 4. Wi-Fi 4 operates at frequencies 2.4GHz and 5GHz, which supports the use of multiple channels. The transfer rate of IEEE 802.11n varies between 54 Mbit/s and 600 Mbit/s, with each channel giving a transfer rate of 150 Mbit/s.

IEEE 802.11ac (Wi-Fi 5):

IEEE 802.11ac, also known as Wi-Fi 5, has become the most widely used technology today.

The data transfer rate has increased significantly in this benchmark. In addition, it has added MIMO technology, which allows for high data transfer even in environments with a large number of connected devices.

IEEE 802.11ax (Wi-Fi) 6)

Wi-Fi 6 is the next step! We can identify Wi-Fi 6 by the abbreviation AX, which stands for the new Internet transmission model, which in turn operates at a frequency of 6 GHz. In addition to the high speed of data transfer available, this model offers lower latency, which benefits some work areas.

However, in this model, we have more subchannels for transmission, which allows for a larger simultaneous data flow, allowing multiple users to be connected to the network at the same time.

Now why does 802.11b slow down our Wi-Fi?

Different protocols use different modulation techniques to transmit data. Because of this, a device using the 802.11b protocol cannot understand the data transmitted by the 802.11n protocol.

However, the Wi-Fi network must be backward compatible, and if an 802.11b device connects to a router that uses 802.11n, it should work. Therefore, to solve this problem, the 802.11n router uses the 802.11b protocol to communicate with this device. This is why your Wi-Fi slows down due to an older device.

However, the data transfer speed does not change when the router connects to an 802.11n device, because it uses faster protocols.

How to solve this problem?

Now that you know that old hardware can slow down your network, you may be wondering if this problem can be avoided. Even though there are many solutions to your problem, the 802.11b device on your network will always end up slowing down your Wi-Fi.

There is still a trick.

Using dual-band Wi-Fi can help if you’re using both devices using the older and newer protocols. To solve your problem, you can connect older devices to the 2.4GHz network and newer devices to the 5GHz band. This will prevent older devices from interfering with newer devices, providing better speeds.

Like all this and knowing the perfect place to place your Wi-Fi router will ensure the best internet speed.