The social distancing steps that are put in place among the COVID-19 pandemic has made wifi and home internet even more vital with people working from home and children learning from home.

Silver Star Communications has some tips to try and get the best internet experience you can with everyone in quarantine. Eric Gewiss, Director of Marketing and Public Relations with the company, reminds everyone that generally in an internet plan your download speed is faster than your upload speed.

“As your engaging with a teacher in the classroom you’re going to be uploading your school work to the classroom,” Gewiss said. “Certainly that’s going to affect your wifi experience. The good news is our network capacity is in great shape.”

Heath Jensen, Research & Development Engineer with Silver Star, says the hardware used even a few years ago was not meant to carry the load streaming puts on it.

“The wireless routers of just a few years ago were designed to download a web page or an email and then take a rest,” Jensen said. “So if you’re on a conference call and your child is doing online learning, there’s no rest for that router at all.”

He says that if you are using old technology you can have a poor experience and that is where you will see buffering. So if you are seeing that it may be time to upgrade your hardware.

He also offered a couple of other tips such as completely powering down old devices you may have handed down if you’re not using them. So if you have an old iPhone or iPad that device will slow down your entire network.

Another suggestion is to consider where you store the router. Jensen says he understands most people do not like to see it in well seen location like “on top of the piano kind of a thing”.

“But that is probably one of the best places for it in your house,” Jensen said. “Get that thing dead center in your house and by doing so you will get the best wifi experience in every room of your home.”

He also points out that the same 2.4 GHz you bought with your cordless phone is the same frequency your wifi uses. This means if you are using the cordless phone you are interfering with your wifi. He says the microwave also operates on the same 2.4 GHz signal.

“So if you’re running your microwave and all of a sudden you see that your wifi drops,” Jensen said. “Believe it or not your microwave can have an effect on your wifi signal.”

He does point out that some newer routers now offer a 5.0 GHz frequency and the 2.4. He says the stronger signal was to help get around those things such as the microwave.

“The problem with 5.0 GHz is it doesn’t go quite as far,” Jensen said. “But it is faster.”

He says one reason routers kept the 2.4 GHz is so it can connect to older devices and to go through your house better. However, he does remind the public that old school ways are still the best. Wifi may be convenient, but if you can plug in an ethernet cable it makes the device faster and it takes noise off of the wifi channels.

Gewiss says that if you have any questions Silver Star is happy to help out and to call their support line.