5 Reasons Why Your Wi-Fi Might Be Slow

Wi-Fi is how most of our electronic devices now connect to the internet, and, for the most part, Wi-Fi has been pretty good. Still, sometimes a Wi-Fi connection can feel slow, and it may not be obvious why that is. Wi-Fi relies on the use of shared spectrum with newer routers which use more spectrum than ever and offer blazing-fast speeds as a result. If you’re looking to find out why your Wi-Fi isn’t delivering the expected performance, here’s what you should check out first.

5 Where is your Wi-Fi router located?

One of the first things to check is also one of the easiest to fix. Putting your router in the wrong place can lead to not only slow speeds, but inconsistent performance and connection drops. The reason Wi-Fi is so susceptible to bad positioning comes down to how well wireless signals pass through objects. Wi-Fi, especially Wi-Fi 6 and newer, is pretty good at passing through walls, but every object between your connected device and the router means another small decrease in signal quality.

For the best results, your router should be placed up high, and not left on the floor. While wall-mounting isn’t an option for everyone, even placing your router up on a table or shelf can have a significant impact on signal quality.

Be sure to avoid sticking your router behind a TV or in a utility closet surrounded by electrical panels or metal sheets that can block the signal. The service installation tech will often bring the internet connection into the house at the most convenient spot, which is rarely the best for signal. Luckily, you’re not committed to that spot, and you can pick up some longer cables to put your router where it makes more sense.

4 Check your software settings

When you set up your router for the first time, you’ll be forgiven for rushing a bit to get your home back online. But if you weren’t paying close attention, you could have some settings that are working against your Wi-Fi performance goals. The first thing to double-check is the width of your 5GHz band which is commonly set to 80MHz by default. On Wi-Fi 6, an 80MHz connection can deliver a 1201Mbps link speed while 160MHz doubles that to 2402Mbps. Coverage can suffer a bit with 160MHz, but the extra headroom will be worth it for some.

You should also check your QoS settings if you’ve enabled it. QoS is designed to keep performance consistent, not necessarily to maximize speed. As such, enabling a QoS could lead to a measurable drop in overall speed. You could try switching your QoS off to make sure it’s not causing significant issues. Finally, if you’re in your settings, it’s a good time to check for a firmware update which may contain performance fixes.

3 It may be time to let that old router go

Change is gradual, but we’re all likely using more data than ever before thanks to video content on social media, large downloads in gaming, and 4K streaming reaching more people. We’re also adding a lot of devices to our networks, from internet-connected picture frames to Alexa smart speakers. Older routers struggle to keep up with all of these connections, which can lead to poor performance.

While smart home devices only need a small amount of data, if you have a lot of them, your network could still get bogged down. If you’ve got a lot of smart home tech or have numerous people in your home, getting one of the best Wi-Fi routers with an AX5400 connection or faster should give you the capacity to keep up.

2 Check your computer’s onboard internet hardware

Your Wi-Fi device’s connection speed could also be limited by older or cheap Wi-Fi technology in your computer. Whether you got an older model that’s gone on sale, or the manufacturer just cut some corners, some PCs and motherboards come with disappointingly mediocre Wi-Fi solutions. Most desktops can be upgraded with something like the Asus PCE-AXE59BT, with some laptops also still offering an upgrade path.

Another thing to note is that antenna design in cheap or compact Wi-Fi adapters isn’t ideal. For example, a compact USB Wi-Fi adapter simply doesn’t have the space for a large antenna, and since it’s stuck to the USB port, the PC itself could be blocking the signal. If you’re upgrading your desktop PC, external antennas are the way to go, even if they don’t look quite as clean.

Game consoles also often try to save a few bucks in this area. PS5 includes Wi-Fi 6 with a maximum speed of 1201Mbps, but Xbox Series X, on the other hand, went with a Wi-Fi 5 module instead. It’s not the end of the world to have to wait longer for a game to download, but it is objectively slower than the PS5 in this area. Luckily, you can wire up all modern consoles with Ethernet to give them the best speeds possible.

1 Your internet may just be slow

Even if you’re getting the speeds you pay for, they may not be keeping up anymore if your needs have increased. A faster connection is needed to keep up with multiple users as well, since that top speed will be split between all of the devices that are trying to get online. While a 100Mbps connection may be plenty for one person, you may start hitting the limits of your patience with two or more people sharing it, especially if you’re gamers who like to download large files.

There’s also the issue that some cable internet providers do their very best to hide their upload speeds, which can be quite a bit slower than the download speeds. While it makes sense why cable ISPs would choose to prioritize download speeds, if you’re trying to stream, you could be looking at a lot of dropped frames. Luckily, fiber connections are more often than not symmetrical, with identical upload and download speeds.

It might be time to upgrade

It’s always nice when better performance can be achieved with a few clicks, but the reality is that Wi-Fi technology has been moving very quickly to improve performance, and if you haven’t upgraded in a couple of years, your setup could be out of date. If you’ve still got a Wi-Fi 5 or older system, your router may simply be struggling to keep pace with your needs. While a mesh isn’t always required, there are some good reasons to use a mesh system if you’re having coverage issues. For the most part though, you can just choose a Wi-Fi 6 router with 160MHz support and a solid QoS to improve your network performance.

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