Wi-fi internet connections are great and convenient, but sometimes they can be irritatingly slow. Chances are you can take your laptop down to the nearest coffee shop and connect to free wireless internet, but you might be stuck with a slower connection than you’d like to have. With a little finesse, you can get a faster, more reliable connection and speed up your internet.

Especially with a home wireless network, you might notice that your wireless signal goes down in certain areas of your house, or that even though your wireless signal seems to be strong, you still can’t get a stable, reliable connection. The easiest fix to this problem is simply moving your wireless gateway to be close to your workspace.

Wireless signals can be very tricky things, so the closer you can put your computer to your source of wireless internet, the better. If you’ve had someone else set up your wireless internet, and you’re not sure where it comes from, wireless internet sources look a lot like modems, and indeed often are combined with modems when using a high speed internet connection, like cable or DSL. Sometimes the wireless sources are separate, but in any case, they will almost always have an antenna or two protruding from them, making them easy to recognize.

Move Your Wireless Connection for Better Speed

Say your wireless gateway is on the ground floor of your house, but your home office is on the upper floor. You may not receive the best wireless internet connection even though your office is right on top of the wireless gateway.

You can solve the problem in one of three ways. You can move your wireless gateway upstairs to your office, in which case the rest of your house might not receive the best coverage. You can also move your home office downstairs, to be closer to the wireless gateway, but this might not be possible owing to the configuration and layout of your home. A third way, and quite possibly the best way, is to buy and set up a wireless network extender, or repeater. What the extender does is essentially take the wireless signal from your wireless gateway and expand its range. It’s almost like having a second wireless gateway. You can simply place the extender midway between your office and the wireless gateway, and presto, you’ve got a faster, more reliable internet connection in your home office.

Extenders are generally cheaper and easier to set up than wireless gateways, so what are you waiting for? Get your wireless internet off the ground and speed up your internet connection!