Whether your business is working remotely or fully back to “in office” meetings, having a reliable Wi-Fi is an absolute necessity. A loss of connection or an excessively slow connection can be disruptive to running a successful business. Thankfully, many issues have fairly quick fixes that can cut your downtime considerably. Let’s take a closer look at some of the troubleshooting you can do on your own to solve a Wi-Fi problem before you lose more precious time or potentially clients.
What Are Common Wi-Fi Problems?
In recent months, when companies around our region moved to work-from-home models, home Wi-Fi connections became a major issue in connecting with employees. In fact, Wi-Fi in workplaces has also been an ongoing issue for some time. Some of the most common problems surrounding Wi-Fi involve issues such as: slow internet, spotty connections in some areas of the home/office, devices not connecting, connection drops, network disappearing, router crashes, forgotten passwords, unknown devices on the network, and nothing connecting properly. Do these issues sound familiar?
Potential Wi-Fi Solutions
Understanding how Wi-Fi works is one step in comprehending how you can solve the issue on your own. Wi-Fi works via radio waves that are broadcast from a central hub, usually from a piece of hardware known as a router. In order to avoid a weak or spotty signal in your office, make sure that your router is in a central location or consider a Wi-Fi signal booster. If Wi-Fi is being dropped or spotty in areas you may need to purchase a booster or move the router to a more centralized location so that the signal can reach every corner of your workplace or home. If your business has multiple routers, you may need to rethink that as devices may get confused as to which one to connect to. Connection issues can be super frustrating especially when the network shows up on the list but will not allow the connection to occur. First you will want to determine whether your Wi-Fi connection is the problem or if your internet is down. To determine this, try plugging in your laptop directly into the router via an Ethernet cable. If you get a connection, then your Wi-Fi is the culprit. To solve this problem, we suggest restarting your router or rebooting your device, or both. Slow speed can happen for a number of reasons. There are several steps you can take to confirm where the problem lies. If your Wi-Fi speed is slow no matter where you are in the building, try plugging a laptop into your modem directly and test your internet speed using a site like speedtest.net. If it is still slow after checking the router it may end up being your internet provider. Call your ISP and check if there are regional or local outages or slowdowns. To attempt to speed things up on your own, try limiting the use of bandwidth-intensive applications such as Skype, Dropbox, YouTube, and Facebook.Interference can be a common problem as well that causes a connection to be dropped. Try to determine if there is a pattern, like when the microwave is running or another network cutting in to cause the interference. If yours overlaps with nearby networks switching to a less congested channel in your router settings can help.What Wi-Fi problems are common in your office? Spectra Networks can evaluate the issue and come up with a solution that will keep you and your employees connected throughout your busy workday.
Connection issues can be super frustrating especially when the network shows up on the list but will not allow the connection to occur. First you will want to determine whether your Wi-Fi connection is the problem or if your internet is down. To determine this, try plugging in your laptop directly into the router via an Ethernet cable. If you get a connection, then your Wi-Fi is the culprit. To solve this problem, we suggest restarting your router or rebooting your device, or both.
Slow speed can happen for a number of reasons. There are several steps you can take to confirm where the problem lies. If your Wi-Fi speed is slow no matter where you are in the building, try plugging a laptop into your modem directly and test your internet speed using a site like speedtest.net. If it is still slow after checking the router it may end up being your internet provider. Call your ISP and check if there are regional or local outages or slowdowns. To attempt to speed things up on your own, try limiting the use of bandwidth-intensive applications such as Skype, Dropbox, YouTube, and Facebook.
Interference can be a common problem as well that causes a connection to be dropped. Try to determine if there is a pattern, like when the microwave is running or another network cutting in to cause the interference. If yours overlaps with nearby networks switching to a less congested channel in your router settings can help.
What Wi-Fi problems are common in your office? Spectra Networks can evaluate the issue and come up with a solution that will keep you and your employees connected throughout your busy workday.