We all want to enjoy a stable, fast and secure Internet connection. To achieve this you must first hire a good provider, secondly, you have to change your router if it is not up to the task and finally you must know how to take advantage of it.
Knowing your router and knowing what you have to do in order to take advantage of it is fundamental to enjoy a good experience of use. That’s why we wanted to dedicate an article to collect eleven simple but essential tips for you to get the most out of your router.
Remember that to these eleven tips you must add basic care of the security of your router, a topic about which we had occasion to speak in this article.
Table of Contents
Tips To Get Most Out of Your Router
1. Prioritize devices and use wired connections:
Be clear about which devices you want to have the highest performance, lowest latency, and highest possible stability, and connect them via 1 Gbps Ethernet cable. Make sure they support that speed, otherwise, you may experience poor performance even if you use map network drive windows 10
2. Watch Distances:
If you are going to use wireless connections you must be very careful with the placement of the devices you are going to use, because if they are very far or behind many obstacles it is possible that the signal from the router does not arrive properly, and therefore you can not enjoy an optimal experience.
3. Active QoS (Quality of Service)
It is one of the most useful and important features we can find in current routers. It allows you to set a traffic prioritization and guarantee a minimum bandwidth to certain services, such as online gaming or streaming content in high resolution.
It is very useful when we have many devices connected to the router but we want that some of them always have guaranteed a good performance. You can change this in the router setting by visiting 192.168.1.1 login page as it is the most used IP address for the router admin login. If this is different for you then check with your router instructions.
4. Open Ports Only When Necessary
Generally, in current systems, there are no problems when playing online and therefore it is not necessary to open additional ports because of only those that are open by default.
However, if you have performance problems you can contact technical support for each particular game and ask if you need to open any additional ports, but we recommend that you do not do so crazy as they can pose a risk to the security of your router and your own computer.
5. Change the Default Channels
Usually, a wireless router transmits data using one of the thirteen channels that are available. If we use the default channel we may find a strong saturation because it is possible that many of the users in our vicinity are in the same condition as us.
The most advanced routers usually look for the least saturated channels themselves, but in any case, if we are not sure and want to do it manually the easiest thing is to use applications such as WiFiInfoView (compatible with Windows), which will analyze and show us which channels are less loaded.
6. Use the 5 GHz Band
Any solution that prides itself on being a good router to play and for demanding tasks, such as streaming video in HD, must have WiFi support AC.
This wireless connection can be an excellent option if we need to maintain several devices with the maximum possible speed, such as a PC to play, a console and two laptops gaming. The first two could be wired and the second could work without problem under WiFi AC.
7. Avoid the Use of Old Protocols
As we said all last-generation routers must support the 802.11ac standard (WiFi), although for compatibility reasons many of them maintain the support of other older and slower, such as 802.11n which remains one of the most used today, and 802.11g and 80211.b, which we must avoid, since the use of devices that use them will slow down our entire network.
8. It Changes the Width of the Channel
It is an option that can help to improve the performance when we are to greater distances. In the most current routers, it is normal to find widths ranging from 20 MHz to 40 MHz, but we can raise it for example to 80 MHz without a problem. With that increase in WiFi AC connections, we would improve the performance in the most remote devices.
9. Periodic Router Restarts
Keeping the router always on is not bad, has no serious side effects, but sometimes we may encounter a specific error that affects performance or leaves us without the Internet. Before calling our ISP we must try to restart the router (we disconnect for a minute of the electrical network) because in most cases manages to solve this type of problem.
10. The Orientation of the Antennas
It is very simple but at the same time, it is important. The most modern routers come with Beamforming technology that concentrates the signal in the direction of the devices and their antennas are usually of quality, but we must orient them properly in the direction in which the equipment and terminals are connected.
11. Keep Your Router Updated
This has effects on both security and performance, as with the release of new firmware revisions manufacturers often correct possible errors or security flaws and also implement functional and performance improvements.