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Follow these steps to make sure your home network is ready to go if you are working from home.
Poor Internet Provider or Weak Wireless Signal Affects Your Ability to Work from Home
Test your internet service by going to speedtest.net (it’s free) and select Purdue (West Lafayette or Terre Haute, IN – Joink, LLC) when running the speed test.
If your results are not at 15 Mb/s download and 5 Mb/s upload speeds or higher it could be difficult if not impossible to work remotely.
Hardwire Connection (best option)
- If possible, directly connecting to the internet router or access point via a wired (Ethernet) cable will provide the best quality, especially for audio/video applications like Skype for Business, Microsoft Teams, WebX or Zoom.
- If you connected via Ethernet, you don’t have to worry about wi-fi quality.
Wireless Connection (most likely option)
- Stay in close proximity to your wireless access point
- Avoid having two or more walls or one floor between your computer and your home’s internet router/access point.
- Houses larger than 1,500 square feet or so (depending on layout and building materials) will usually need multiple wireless access points for good house-wide coverage.
- If you’re using the wireless access point that came with your internet connection, note that these often have average to poor coverage.
- For best wi-fi coverage consider installing a newer wi-fi access point, or wi-fi mesh networks that cover your home with multiple access points.
- For best results, make sure your computer is using 5 GHz wi-fi; then, disable 2.4 GHz on your router and update other devices on your network to use only 5 GHz.
Other Factors
Your internet connection is a shared resource in your home. Other devices or if you have multiple people in your home, can cause slowdowns in the connection speed when under heavy usage. If you have periods of slowness check what and who else is on your network.