The number of people working from home continues to rise every day. This was fueled even further by the COVID-19 pandemic that brought lockdowns making it difficult for people to move around. It, therefore, means that home internet connections are growing more important every day.
With so many things for people to be worried about today, the last thing that anyone wants to deal with is poor internet connection when working from home. If you were to ask most people working from home about the challenges facing them, you would find that a larger percentage of them have problems with their internet connections.
However, people do not have to worry about this today because of the options that they have. Even though every person might not know about the technicalities when dealing with poor internet connections, there are several things they can do on their own for better connections.
If you are working from home, here are some things you can do to ensure that you have better internet speeds;
Understand Your Internet Needs
Different people have different needs when it comes to their internet connections. Some have different devices at home that need the internet for them to operate while others engage in different kinds of tasks, some that require high internet speeds.
The most important thing for people working from home is to understand their internet needs. This can be dictated by what they do and the number of devices that they will need to connect to the internet.
Fortunately, using iSelect internet plans, you can specify the amount of data that you need, the speed, and the type of contract you need among other details, and get the internet provider and plan that best meets your requirements. This is important in making sure that you get the internet speed that works for you. You can use Geonode’s proxies for faster internet speeds by Data caching web pages and files that are accessed many times by multiple users, compressing traffic, and even blocking ads from websites.
Shift Time for Video Calls
If you want to have good internet speeds when working from home, you need to find a balance between the time you are consuming heavy data and the data itself. For instance, you might want to start a video call at 8 a.m., but this might not work out well because you might find more people in your area engaging in tasks that consume high bandwidth at that particular time.
However, shifting the time for video calls or other high bandwidth activities is one way through which you can make sure that you have better internet speeds for your tasks. For instance, if you have a video call scheduled for 8 o’clock, consider having it a few minutes before or even after.
Scheduling of Updates and Big Downloads
Just like shifting time for video calls, you can schedule software updates and any big downloads to take place when the usage of the internet is low. For instance, if you want to check for software updates to update your PC if there are any, you can schedule this to take place at night when you are not handling other tasks.
Almost everyone downloads something or the other from internet. For example, some people download e-books, while others go for movies from platforms like RARBG. Make sure that whenever you are scheduling major downloads, you are doing it when the system and connection is relatively free.
Those using the Windows operating system can pause their software downloads for a day or even a week. They can also schedule these downloads to take place on any day of their choice. This is important in making sure that you have the maximum internet speeds for your tasks during the day.
Turn Off Idle Devices
You might think that since you live alone or you do not have other people working from home in your house apart from yourself, you should automatically have fast internet speeds. However, even when working alone, you might have different devices connected to your internet.
You might think that devices such as smartphones and PlayStations do not use the internet when in rest or idle mode. On the contrary, these devices still use the internet when downloading software updates and updating applications in the background. You, therefore, need to disconnect these devices from the internet to have better speeds at home.
Understand the Features of Your Router
Different routers come with different features and it is important to make sure that you follow the best practices when buying a router. The features allow one to customize the routers and dictate how they divide traffic among different devices. With this, you can give priority to the devices that you use when working from home.
If you are using routers that support the dual-band feature – these are routers supporting both the 5GHz and 2.4GHz frequencies – then you should make sure that the devices you use for your tasks are on the 5GHz band. This is because it offers faster speeds compared to the 2.4GHz band.
In conclusion, you should make sure that your internet connection does not interfere with your work especially when working from home. You can increase your internet speeds following the tips discussed above.
