I have just moved into an apartment complex and it has terrible wifi speed.
If I'm using a wired connection it is pretty solid (2 ping with high 180's Mbps up/down) but the wireless is awful, I can barely even scroll through twitter without interruption.
Is there anything I can do to make my wireless faster?
2 Answers
It's probably not worth sleuthing out how old or bad or badly-positioned the complex-owned APs are, unless your rental contract forbids you from running your own AP.
Just take matters into your own hands by buying your own high quality 802.11ac Wi-Fi AP (wireless router) and plug it into the Ethernet in your apartment. Try to locate it centrally so you have fast Wi-Fi with strong signal throughout your apartment. Put its 5GHz radio on a clean 80MHz channel, and its 2.4GHz radio on a clean 20MHz channel. Use WPA2-PSK (WPA2 only / AES-CCMP only) security. Use high quality 802.11ac Wi-Fi client devices.
2I would say there are two main points of optimization in an apartment wifi setup: the strength of the router and the channel you're broadcasting on. Getting a decent wireless router will give you a good start with an already strong signal. It's a little unorthodox, but I also use an alumin(i)um foil dish to boost the signal towards my apartment's living room, apparently using a cut up alumin(i)um can works well too.
For the channel optimization you'll want a wifi analysis app that shows you what channels nearby routers are broadcasting on. Find the channel with the least amount of activity over it and use that. This will assist in giving you the strongest clearest signal possible.
