8 Tips to improve Your Wireless Internet Connection

Nothing puts a damper on a streaming session like a poor wireless connection, so we’re here to offer our best tips to get you streaming happily on your Wireless player or Wireless TV. Before you call your ISP or pull your hair out, try these steps to improve your wireless internet connection.

1. Check your wireless signal strength

Let’s start off with a common tip. If you’re seeing a loading screen or video buffering checking your internet speed is a good place to start. Your Wireless device provides information on the strength of the wireless signal it’s receiving.

On your Wireless device, go to Settings > Network

When connected, the signal strength will be shown on screen as Excellent, Good, Fair, or Poor

If you find that your internet speed is slower than expected, we recommend trying the tips outlined in this blog post. If issues persist after you’ve tried all of these steps, we recommend contacting your Internet Service Provider (ISP) to troubleshoot.

2. Change the location of your router

The location of the router in your home is crucial to having a strong connection throughout your home. Having the router as close to the middle of your home allows for an equal distribution of your wireless signal. If your router is in the corner of your home, half of your signal may be outside!

optimal-router-placement

You’ll also want to keep your router away from household devices like cordless phones or microwaves that may emit interference and reduce the wireless signal. If your router has an antenna, try adjusting it. Sometimes even a slight change in its angle can help.

Some of the same tips for your router location can be applied to your Wireless player or Wireless TV. You’ll want to make sure your Wireless device is within range of your router and not on top of any other electronic devices like a cable box or DVD player. It’s also important that the front of your player is clear of obstructions, that it’s not enclosed in a cabinet or an enclosed area, and that it’s not sitting in direct sunlight.

If you have a Wireless Express, you’ll want to make sure that you test the location of your player and make sure it will be within a line of sight with your remote before applying your adhesive strip.

3. Reduce traffic on your wireless network

When possible, limit the use of other internet-connected devices on your network. Removing some other devices like phones, laptops, or game systems from your network could greatly increase your available bandwidth. If you must have multiple devices connected and you have a dual-band router, you can try moving your Wireless player to a band all by itself. To do so, please refer to your router manufacturer’s website or manual.

4. Check your advanced router settings (firmware)

Manufacturers periodically make tweaks and optimizations to their software to boost performance and security, so it’s a good idea to make a habit of checking your router’s firmware on a regular basis. Most manufacturers make this a pretty simple process. For more information on how to update your firmware, please visit your router manufacturer’s website.

5. Change your wireless channel

If you have a dual-band router, you can move your Wireless player to the 5GHz band by referencing your router manufacturer’s website. If that doesn’t work, you can try changing the broadcast channel on your router. Channels 1, 6, and 11 are recommended as they have no overlapping frequencies.

6. Create a strong home network password

It’s crucial to have strong password protection on your router for security reasons but also to keep those pesky next-door neighbors from sucking up your bandwidth.

7. Get an HDMI extender (Wireless Streaming Stick only)

If you are having trouble with the connection on your Wireless Streaming Stick, you can order a free HDMI extender cable to help improve wireless reception.

8. Consider a new router

If you have tried everything above and still aren’t satisfied with your wireless connection, it may be time to upgrade your router. If you purchased your router years ago, you may be stuck on an older wireless standard.

Also Read “How to perform WiFi Speed Test“.

How Fast Is Sprint’s Network, Really?

Sprint’s LTE network is steadily improving. In any case, it’s not the best in the nation. So Sprint overreached today with a press release and blog entry touting some very selective Nielsen results demonstrating Sprint’s “LTE Plus Network” similar to the fastest nationwide.

I run a big drive-test project every year called Fastest Mobile Networks, and I’m in frequent touch with some of the big players in network measurement: OpenSignal, RootMetrics, Sensorly, Mosaik, and Ookla testmyinternetspeed.org (which shares a parent organization with PCMag.) After examining Sprint’s release and blog entry, I wanted to get out a few things.

Nielsen’s methodology is very different than everyone else’s. Most network testing firms simply siphon a ton of data down a carrier’s pipe to see how fat it is. As per Sprint, Nielsen uses an application running out of sight on Android phones, which records download speeds “in like manner applications, for example, Facebook, Google, YouTube, Netflix, Instagram, Snapchat, and others.” The organization says it surveys “tens of thousands” of users in 44 metro areas nationwide.

Those results disadvantage T-Mobile because of its Binge On plan, which can be detected as choking video to 1.5Mbps. So Nielsen’s T-Mobile numbers are dragged somewhere around the entirety of the video streams that it has decided are 1.5Mbps each, which say nothing regarding the quality of the network.

Sprint CTO John Saw’s post about the network win likewise cites RootMetrics, saying that Sprint came out very close to Verizon in Houston, Austin, Boise, and Denver. Houston and Denver were two of the three cities where Sprint won or tied for the lead position in Root’s latest round of speed tests. Root tests 125 cities.

Sprint’s LTE Plus cases likewise seem to be based on download numbers as it were. In our Fastest Mobile Networks tests, we’ve been giving upload speeds some weight because social media has made uploads more significant with time. As per Ookla’s Speed test Intelligence data, Sprint has the slowest mean LTE upload speed of the four significant carriers over the previous 30 days, with an upload speed of 4.79Mbps.

What’s more, notice it says nothing regarding coverage, which is Sprint’s big LTE bogeyman.

Sprint’s super-quick network relies on 2.5GHz spectrum, which has very short range. As indicated by OpenSignal’s Q3 2015 “State of LTE” report, Sprint had the least LTE coverage of any US network, with its customers receiving LTE 64 percent of the time, as compared to T-Mobile at 77 percent, AT&T at 81 percent, and Verizon at 84 percent. When we drove around the nation last May, we discovered Sprint’s LTE network had nowhere near the reach of Verizon’s or AT&T’s. In any case, that was last May.

That’s the Bad News

The overreaching here is a little terrible because Sprint is in actuality doing a heck of much better than it used to.

Nationwide, during 2015, Sprint’s mean LTE download speeds increased from 9.76Mbps to 15.28Mbps, as per Speed Test Intelligence. That’s still in fourth place, yet it’s an a lot bigger bounce than anyone else experienced, and it vaults Sprint from uncompetitive to competitive.

There’s comparable improvement in a great deal of significant cities, and unlike with Nielsen, different measurements agree here. In Chicago, for instance, RootMetrics says that Sprint’s media download speed increased from 13.1Mbps to 22Mbps between May and November. That’s “LTE Plus” in that spot. Speed test Intelligence agrees: in Chicago, Sprint averaged 10.41Mbps down on LTE in May, and 16.95Mbps in November, a better download speed than T-Mobile (in spite of the fact that everyone else crushed it on uploads.)

Sprint’s customer experience will improve further as more people get off old phones, which don’t bolster its new carrier aggregation technology, and onto phones like the iPhone 6s, which do. When we reviewed the iPhone 6s, we discovered Sprint download speeds were 50 percent faster than on the iPhone 6, all because the new phone supported the new network technologies.

So no, Sprint’s LTE network isn’t the fastest nationwide, especially in the event that you take upload speeds into account. Be that as it may, it’s a whole lot faster than it used to be. Over the previous year, it’s become genuinely competitive just because since 2009. What’s more, coupled with newer devices, its super-cheap plans merit investigating, in spite of the fact that we’re despite everything looking out for more data about coverage. Our yearly drive testing, done this May, will help with that piece of the story.

Sprint Speed Test

Sprint Speed Test by testmyinternetspeed.org is the best online tool helps you to determine Sprint Speed Test as well as identify other issues with your network. testmyinternetspeed.org requires only your web browser, has trusted test results and is always free.

Jitter Speed Test with TMIS

Jitter, or network jitter, is the variance in time delay in milliseconds (ms) between data packets over a network. It is a disturbance in the typical sequence of sending data packets.

The technical term for jitter is “packet delay variance”. Jitter is negative, and in latency sensitive applications, can be detrimental to the user experience.

Network Jitter Example

In the event that you have “computer A” speaking with “computer B”, the two will transfer data packets. Over a healthy network, the packets travel in equal intervals. This will permit the receiving computer to process the data. When there is a circumstance with jitter, these intervals become disrupted.

On the off chance that over a typical connection there is a 10 ms latency delay between packets, this could become 50 ms with jitter. This makes it hard for the receiving computer to process the data.

How You Transfer Data

To understand jitter, we need to examine how to transfer data. When visiting a website, the website is a collection of data packets. The packets get sent from a server, over a network to your computer, and loaded by your web browser.

The data travels in manageable size packets. The packets travel with the greatest number of that can fit inside the available bandwidth of the network, and that a web browser can simultaneously process. Latency is the measurement for the speed of the packets.

The packets travel exclusively based upon these metrics. In a perfect world, all data packets will travel at even circulations of time. In our example above, a 10 ms delay between each packet.

With jitter this becomes varied, and the results are terrible.

With high jitter you could have 3 packets not sent when requested. Then when the time lapse completes, each of the 3 can arrive at once. This will cause an overload for the requesting computer. This circumstance leads to congestion and packet misfortune.

The Effects of Jitter

Jitter causes network congestion and packet misfortune.

Congestion is like an automobile overload on the highway. In an automobile overload, vehicles can’t move forward at a reasonable speed. Like the road turned parking lot, in congestion all the packets come to an intersection at the same time. Nothing can get loaded.

The second negative effect is packet misfortune. In the event that packets arrive at unexpected intervals, the receiving computer can’t process the data. The result is missing data, or better called packet misfortune.

This has negative effects for video viewing. In the event that a video becomes pixelated and is skipping, the network is experiencing jitter. The result of the jitter is packet misfortune.

In the event that you are playing an online game, the effect of packet misfortune can be a player begins skipping around on the screen. Even worse, the game goes starting with one scene then onto the next, skirting some portion of the game play.

In voice over IP (VoIP), the conversation will be hard to hear. The reason isn’t all the voice data arrives.

How Systems Compensate

Realizing jitter is an inherent blemish in networks, there are systems in place to compensate for this. The primary system is buffering. This provides a literal “buffer” time for covering jitter. This will ensure there is no noticeable difference in the quality of streaming, loading, or downloading.

Network jitter is hard to solve due to unpredictability. This is what makes its effects so visible. Ensuring a quality network connection, enough bandwidth, and predictable latency can help reduce network jitter.

Jitter Speed Test

Jitter is any deviation in, or displacement of, the signal pulses in a high-frequency digital signal. The deviation can be in terms of amplitude, phase timing or the width of the signal pulse. If you need to determine Jitter Speed Test, Test My Internet speed(TMIS) helps you to test the Jitter Speed.

How To Do An Internet Speed Test

Test My Internet Speed (TMIS) teaches you how to view the upload speed and download speed of your Internet connection, as well as the connection speed between your computer and your router. Knowing your internet speed can help you find out what you can do with your internet connection.

What is Internet Speed?

You should know where and how to check your internet speed, this can give you an idea whether your internet connection is as fast as claimed by the provider. However, you should be careful about what is being measured, and whether a slow speed is connected to an Internet service.

What is Broadband Speed?

We will look at your internet or broadband speed here. Internet or broadband speed is the speed with which your Internet service provider is able to pass data through the line, whether it is copper or fiber optic. Internet or broadband speed is measured in bandwidth, which is related to the ability of your network connection to pass data.

Let’s understand it better, think of a pipeline that supplies water to your home. In this, there are two factors including the rate at which the pipeline can supply water: water pressure and pipe diameter. It is a fact that at similar pressures, a wider diameter pipe can pass more water than a lower diameter pipe.

Now consider that this pressure may be related to the number of users – the more people draw water, the lower the water pressure. Similarly, the more people online, the more data is passing through the lines and the slower it will travel.

What is the bandwidth?

In the above example, the bandwidth expansion may be related to the pipe width for clarification purposes, the term has nothing to do with physical dimensions. It is simply a convenient way in which a measurement is expressed for the general public. There may be an older modem that can pass data at a rate of 28.8 KB (kilobytes / second). But now a broadband connection is measured in MB or megabits of data transferred per second. It is very fast!

Here when we are discussing home computers, laptops or mobile devices, you will have two different connection speeds. It is related to the download speed (the speed with which data can be received) and the upload speed (the speed with which data can be received by your computer).

Another aspect you need to be aware of is that you are sharing bandwidth with many other users and devices in your area, so you will never get the bandwidth speed claimed by your provider. There is a line that passes through a rural area in which some users will pass data faster than the same line passing through a big city where there are corporations, large and small businesses, and many people uploading and downloading data at the same time are trying.

This Internet Speed Test can be used to help you determine your true bandwidth on any connection, such as Broadband, Cable, Satellite and DSL Modems. For best results, use Test My Internet Speed (TMIS) which is the best online tool to do Internet Speed Test.

Visit: https://testmyinternetspeed.org/