Make WiFi faster - the best tips

In this article we will show you how to make your WiFi faster. There are various, mostly simple, tips and tricks for this. For example, you can reposition the router, align the antennas differently, or change the GHz band.

Make WLAN faster by improving reception

If your WiFi is slow, poor reception is usually to blame. You can improve this with a few simple tricks. Whether with a self-made WiFi amplifier or by repositioning the router - there are many options:

• If your WiFi reception is already fundamentally poor, you should first change the location of the router. It is best to position it centrally in the apartment and as far up as possible. Also make sure that there is no thick metal or other sources of interference next to the router.
• You should also have your microwave as far as possible from the router. In this article we give a detailed overview of how to find the optimal router position in your home.
• However, it can also be the case that the position of the router is already good and you simply have too many sources of interference nearby. Then you have to try to remove all Bluetooth devices, microwaves, water containers (or pipes), and other metal objects from the vicinity of your router.
• You may also need to buy and install a repeater to increase the range of your router and amplify the signal. For the best tips on how to improve your reach, check out this article.
• To improve reception, you can also simply build a WLAN amplifier yourself. All you need is a piece of aluminum foil, a sheet of paper, glue and scissors. If you have blind spots, this can help. Blind spots are places where WLAN is particularly slow or not available at all.

Make WiFi faster with settings in the router

If the reception has been improved and the range has been optimized, you can also get some speed out of the settings of your router:

• If you live in a densely populated residential area, there may be many WiFi networks there. Most of them work with the 2.4 GHz standard and transmit on this frequency.
• However, this becomes critical from a certain number of WLAN networks, since they start to overlap. In this case it can be worthwhile to switch to the 5GHz band. In this article we show you exactly what the difference between 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz is.
• If you have connected many new devices to your WLAN, you can try to switch your encryption from WPA2 to WPA2-AES. Because WPA2 can slow down the WLAN standard 802.11n - with WPA2-AES this is no longer the case. However, the prerequisite is that all devices in your network support this encryption.

Make WiFi faster with two networks

If your router supports the 2.4 GHz standard and the 5 GHz standard, you should use the 5 GHz network as much as possible. But this only works properly if you give the 5 GHz network its own name.

• If your 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz network have the same name, the end device does not know which is the 5 GHz network. So you may get stuck in the 2.4 GHz network.
• Go to the settings of your router and look for the menu item "Radio network" or "WLAN". Then select your 5 GHz network and give it a new name.
• It is advisable to add "_5GHz" or similar to the name of the 5 GHz network. Then the full name would be, for example, "MeinNetzwerk_5GHz" for the 5 GHz network and only "MeinNetzwerk" for the 2.4 GHz network.
• Now you only have to delete the 2.4 GHz network from your end devices and connect them to the 5 GHz network. Then the devices will always log into the fast WLAN in the future.