Working from home taking the strain on your network?

- April, 2020

The one thing we are seeing a LOT of during these pandemic days is the home networks being put under a lot of strain. Obviously our existing networking customers with service plans and remote support are sitting back laughing to themselves and patting themselves on the back that they were prepared for this! But for everyone else, without visiting your homes what can we to help you remotely if your broadband just isn’t broad enough? Well quite a bit actually

DIY tips for working from home and getting your wi-fi up to speed

The biggest cause of strain on a home network is always wireless capacity. If you don’t have a network of wireless access points properly setup and distributed around your home then the odds are your video call drops out whenever the kids start up another 4K movie on Netflix. Your broadband connection might be all the megabytes, but your wi-fi could be strangling it. First to do the best with what you’ve got:

  • Make sure your router isn’t somewhere stupid. If you are relying on only the wireless signal from your router, then it wants to be in the middle of where all the things are that will use it.
  • Don’t have your router inside a metal box or close to the microwave or fridges or other electronic devices that can severely limit the wireless performance.
  • Hard wire as many things as you can to relieve the pressure on the wireless. We can help you with cables if you need!
    Change your wifi channel. We use a spectrum analyser when trying to diagnose wireless issues on our sites, but the same guys who manufacture that and the software we use have a great little free bit of software called inSSIDer . Download this, and just take a look at how many neighbouring networks you have using the same wireless channels as you. Then change your wireless channel to fit into a cleaner spectrum.

Beefing up your wi-fi the Progressive way!

Now we would rather not come out to site to fit a new wireless backbone if it’s just to stop young Archie stealing all the Internet watching Paw Patrol on his iPad. But we are essential network engineers and if you have a genuine issue with your connection and are getting nowhere with your ISP, we can make a visit and try do a repair.

If you have a working Internet connection but the range around the home is suffering, then contact us because we have plenty we can help with remotely. We have spent the last few weeks perfecting the art of pre-configuring wireless mesh hardware here at Progressive HQ. These systems only need one or two components actually plugged into your router. From there they wirelessly mesh with one another to provide their own data backbone, and you oodles and oodles of lovely wi-fi.

No, it is not as good as a proper hardwired access point solution, but it gets you boosted in a matter of days. We can arrange a follow up visit later to run in some cabling and provide a more permanent solution for you. In the meantime we can also then set you up on our own cloud management console where we can provide remote support and monitoring to make sure you aren’t going to suffer any downtime. Use our system to limit the kids wifi use, provide a guest network, or integrate into existing control system hardware for a full smart ecosystem in your home.

Please contact us and let us know what your dealing with and we can arrange a telephone call or a virtual meeting to discuss your requirements

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