Working remotely? Understanding your internet connection capacity is an important component to a successful remote work experience.
Weak Wi-Fi signal or a poor broadband internet provider -- meaning less than 15 Mb/s download speeds, 5 Mb/s upload speed, or high latency -- can make it difficult to work remotely.
First, consider whether your internet provider is up to the task. Depending on your city and neighborhood, not all of these options are available to you.
- Fiber and cable internet providers (i.e Verizon, Xfinity, etc.) generally offer the highest quality connection and will work well for remote work.
- DSL (Digital Subscriber Line) service is a generally lower-quality service but is the best choice for some rural neighborhoods and homes.
- A cellular hotspot may work, depending on the strength of the cellular coverage in your area, but often restricts how much bandwidth you can consume.
- Satellite broadband and dial-up internet options won’t work well for access to most resources.
Next to the internet provider you use, the next most important factor is how you connect to the network within a house or other location. Things to consider:
Is your router in some remote corner of your house? If so, move it. If the Wi-Fi signal from the router can’t reach you, your internet connection will suffer. Position your router toward the middle of your house, preferably on whichever floor you hang out on the most. If you spend all your time in the living room on the first floor, put your router on that same level. Avoid having two or more walls or one floor between your computer and your home’s internet router/access point.
Periodically reboot your router. Your router is also a small computer. It holds memory and background processes and caches information. It can benefit from the occasional reset to get things going right again.
If possible, directly connecting to the internet router or access point via a wired (Ethernet) cable will provide the best quality, especially for audio/video applications (e.g. work related apps like WebEx, Blackboard Collaborate, Skype or Zoom).
If you connect via Ethernet, you don’t need to worry about Wi-Fi quality.
Cabled connections like Ethernet, will always be faster and more reliable than wireless ones. The cable gets the signal directly to your device rather than relying on over-the-air transmissions
If you need to use Wi-Fi, the quality of your wireless connection will significantly impact your overall internet quality.
If you’re using the wireless access point that came with your internet connection, note that these often have average to poor coverage.
Houses larger than 1,500 square feet or so (depending on layout and building materials) will usually need multiple wireless access points for good house-wide coverage.
Consider installing a newer Wi-Fi access point, or Wi-Fi mesh networks that cover your home with multiple access points. The Wirecutter by The New York Times as well as techradar website, regularly tests and recommends Wi-Fi access points and mesh hardware.
Wi-Fi signals are transmitted at two different frequency modes: 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz. 2.4 GHz is an older technology; it’s more prone to interference and runs at slower speeds. For best results, make sure your computer is using 5 GHz Wi-Fi; then, disable 2.4 GHz on your router and update other devices on your network to use only 5 GHz.
You can test the speed of your internet service to make sure you are ready to work by using the free Speedtest.net website. This provides an end-to-end test of all the factors affecting your device’s connection: your internet provider, your home network setup, and the device you’re on. Speedtest.net is currently available for the web and download on IOS, Android, macOS, Windows, Google Chrome and Apple TV.
