Improve the home Wi-Fi of your employees

In this time of Covid-19, the government urges you to work from home, as much as possible. What do you need to work at home? A laptop obviously, and a separate room for your home office would be nice, with an ergonomic desk and chair. But most importantly, you need fast and stable Wi-Fi! As an employer, you want your employees to have a fast and secure internet connection, so they can work reliable and safe, without worrying about connection problems, speed and security.

Here are some tips to improve the home Wi-Fi of your employees.

Check to see if they have their own internet connection. Sometimes people use the Wi-Fi from the neighbor. For a lot of reasons, this is not good, but most of all from a security standpoint, because your employee does not control the network. 

Check the speed of their internet connection. Doing multiple Zoom-meetings on a ADSL-connection is not going to work. You need about 5 Mbps for both download and upload per device for a video conference.

Try to limit non-essential network traffic. If other members of the family are using the internet connection at the same time for gaming, YouTube or Netflix, this can use a lot of bandwidth.

Check the position of the modem/router. Often times the modem/router of the internet provider is placed somewhere low, in a corner, behind a couch or cupboard. Try putting the modem/router in a higher place, so that the Wi-Fi signal isn’t blocked. Also note that brick walls have a big influence on the signal strength of the Wi-Fi. Place the modem/router in a way that the signal can radiate in any direction and is not blocked by a wall, door or other obstacle.

If the modem/router has antennas on it, make sure they are properly aligned. Not both straight up, but in a 60-degree angle, pointed to the left and the right.

Use an ethernet cable if possible. A wired connection is much faster and more stable than a Wi-Fi connection. Or run an ethernet cable to an extra access point for better coverage.

If your employee feels confident, they can tweak the settings on the modem/router. Check for content filtering, QoS or other limiting factors.

Call an expert. There is a lot more you can do to improve the Wi-Fi signal, but this all rather technical. So, if you or your employee don’t feel comfortable changing the Wi-Fi settings in the modem/router, you can always call the Wi-Fi specialists at Pink Coral iT and let them make the changes. We can connect remotely to your hardware to assess your network and tweak the settings, supply you with pre-made ethernet cables or advise and sell enterprise-grade wireless access points.