Now that we are somewhat settled into this “new normal,” many organizations offered employees flexible work-from-home options. Especially with E-Learning keeping kids at home during the day, many employees choose to stay remote or split time between the office and home. As with any significant change, it has been challenging to adjust to these new schedules and expectations.
One unforeseen challenge- weak network connections.
Particularly for employees in environments experiencing higher-than-normal network usages, such as a home supporting a remote workstation and E-Learning simultaneously.
There are two main culprits for this experienced decrease in network strength:
- Poor WiFi Signal Strength
The closer you are to the access point, the stronger your connection will be. In homes or offices, walls, furniture, and other obstacles can lower your signal’s strength.
Our Advice:
• Move closer to the access point. If you’ve set up your desk far away from your access point, we would suggest rearranging to be closer. Removing any obstacles between you and the access point can help your signal strength.
• Set up a wired connection. Of course, a foolproof way to solve this problem would be to connect directly to your access point via an ethernet cable to secure the strongest and most consistent connection.
• Upgrade your access point or add mesh devices. Most ISPs (Internet Service Providers) supply basic access points. You can look into getting a more powerful access point or adding a mesh device to your network to boost the signal strength.
- Lowered Network Capacity
If you have multiple connected devices simultaneously holding video calls, your network might be reaching its bandwidth limits. Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data your network can transmit in a given amount of time. Think of bandwidth like a pipe; the larger the pipe, the higher the capacity. Low bandwidth means data is moving slowly and backing up the pipe, requiring a lot of time and energy to get pushed through to your device.
Our Advice:
• Unplug or turn off any unnecessary devices. One of the quickest ways to improve your network capacity is to disconnect any unnecessary devices from your network. Even if you aren’t actively using them, devices like Amazon Alexa, gaming consoles, tablets, smart TVs, and video doorbells take up your network’s bandwidth.
• Find any unknown users or draws. Unbeknownst to you, malware could be eating up your bandwidth by communicating with an external server. Home networks are rarely protected. You may likely find something worth removing. Additionally, if your WiFi is not private, other devices than your own could be connecting to it—Lockdown your network by removing any unknown users and downloads that could be monopolizing your bandwidth.
• Coordinate your network usage. Work with your family members to minimize the concurrent use of devices, applications, or websites that require high amounts of bandwidth. If possible, divide up the day and plan to schedule video calls when others aren’t on them and refrain from high bandwidth activities like streaming TV shows or online gaming while they are.
• Upgrade your internet plan. At some point, your internet plan might just need to be upgraded to give you higher speeds and higher network capacity to accommodate your increased usage.
If your business’s location or your remote workforce are experiencing network connectivity issues, we can help. A poor connection can hinder your employee’s productivity and prove frustrating. Here at Weber Technology Consultants, we are devoted to helping you find solutions- big or small, to problems that are holding your business back. You can book an introductory call with us here.
