Wi-Fi 101

Working in a technology firm would give the impression that you’re talking to a geek and I am as far away from it as Sachin Tendulkar is to football or Cristiano Ronaldo to cricket whichever gets your fancy. As a result, I want to share what Wi-Fi entails in strictly layman lingo.

Image courtesy Pinterest

Daily data generation is of the order of 2.5 quintillion(1 quintillion= 1,000,000,000,000,000,000) bytes of data approximately and a majority of it is over Wi-Fi. Even more so during these days of the pandemic.

Image courtesy Pinterest

Learn to connect to the Wi-Fi efficiently:-

1. Wi-Fi is a radio signal and has a limited range.
2. It broadcasts on two different frequencies- 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz
3. Switch to 5 GHz when in close proximity to the router
4. Switch to 2.4 GHz frequency when at a distance from the router as walls and building materials can block the Wi-Fi signals

Boost Wi-Fi

Pointers for better Wi-Fi:-

1. Switch off and reboot the router at least once a day
2. Don’t place the router on soft surfaces such as pillows, sofas etc.
3. Disconnect from VPN(Virtual Private Network). More on VPN can be found on How to enable VPN for free and download torrents
4. Signal interference can be limited by removing objects in the router’s path.
5. When in doubt then connect the LAN(Local Area Network) cable with the router and the device in question
6. Do not keep your system in hibernate.
7. Restart video calling app in case there is congestion
8. Stay in close proximity of the router for best results

Maintain to gain from the Wi-Fi network:-

1. Clear history from the browser irrespective of the one that you’re using by clearing all temporary files, browser and DNS cache
2. The speed is inversely proportional to the number of users using the network. In other words, for optimum speed, limit the number of users in a given session.
3. Run system security checks through McAfee, Norton, Kaspersky, etc. to check on Malware that might be inadvertently downloading data. Malware can be viruses, worms, Trojan viruses, spyware, adware, and ransomware.
4. Run regular speed-tests on the website speedtest.net for checking on the speed that you are on and while running the tests stop high-bandwidth consumption applications such as Torrents.

This brings me to the end of the Wi-Fi 101 tutorial. Let me know what you think in terms of use or if you would like to add some of your own that I might have missed out inadvertently.

Thanks for stopping by.