While your little brother is playing Call of Duty: Mobile and screaming at his friends, you’re planning to watch a movie. Now, as soon as you open Netflix, buffering starts. You could hear your brother’s voice, guiding his friends to take down the enemy and realize the internet isn’t the problem, so, what is?
The reason your brother is enjoying fast-speed internet and you don’t is that your room is a “dead zone”. In simple words, the internet signals have a hard time reaching your room’s location. Hence, you’ve to go through such an ordeal.
Well, don’t worry because internet dead zones are fixable. In this article, I’m going to guide you on how to eliminate the dead zones in your house. But before I start, let’s understand in detail what an internet dead zone is.
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What is a Dead Zone?
A dead zone is a place in your house where the internet is supposed to provide top-notch speeds, but for some reason, it doesn’t. As you’ve already read in the example above, one room gets high-speed internet. While the same internet fails to stream anything on Netflix in the next room.
A place can have one or numerous dead zones and it depends on multiple factors that we are going to discuss next:
Major Causes of a Dead Zone:
WiFi uses radio waves to transmit data from routers to devices. Any obstruction in these radio waves can create dead zones. Some major causes of dead zones are:
- Other devices that rely on radio waves. For example, baby monitors, cameras, microwaves, etc.
- Thick walls and bulky furniture also hinder the path of radio waves from reaching their destination.
- Other nearby WiFi connections can create dead zones.
- Old homes often have thick plaster walls and metal wiring inside them. This can also obstruct the path of radio waves.
How to Find a Dead Zone?
People often know the weak internet spots in their houses. However, they can manually find the dead zones by connecting their device to the internet and walking around the house. The spot where the WiFi signal drops or disconnects may very well be a dead zone.
That said, you can get help from online apps and tools that locate dead zones in your house. For example, inSIDDer is a network-based software that can identify dead zones and it is available for Mac and Windows users.
How to Eliminate the Dead Zones:
Upgrade Your Router:
A new router can help you to eliminate the dead zones. Most old devices may not work to their maximum capacity. Just like that WiFi routers may become outdated and need to be replaced.
Note that if your current internet plan does not meet your household data demands, then slow speeds and signal drops may become a norm. For this reason, I would suggest switching to an ISP, for instance, Xfinity that offers quality internet along with free WiFi equipment. You can check out Xfinity internet deals and see which of them meets your data consumption demands.
Reposition Your Router:
If you think your router is working perfectly fine, then repositioning it may resolve the dead zones issue. Dead zones appear when you place the router in a corner, or if it is surrounded by furniture or electronic devices. Placing it in a corner makes it hard for signals to reach every nook and corner of your house. Moreover, electronic devices or large furniture obstruct the radio waves emitting out of your router.
Ideally, your router should be placed at a central point in your house. Note that the router should be placed at a high position, for example on the top of a book shelf. Do not put it over your refrigerator or mount it on a wall because in both cases, signals would drop.
Update the Router’s Firmware:
We update our smartphones whenever there is a system update. Just like that, we need to do the same with our routers. Updating the router’s software (firmware) installs important security patches along with updates to maximize its efficiency. You may face a lot of dead zones if your router is not up-to-date.
To update your router, you can head to your router’s manufacturing website. Some routers have apps where you can find available updates. Also, some routers can automatically install updates, and if your router can do the same, make sure to turn the updates on.
No More Dead Zones:
Just like we change our direction whenever there’s an obstacle in our way, WiFi signals do the same. While this gives birth to one or multiple dead zones at our place, fixing dead zones is not difficult at all. Follow these tips to get rid of dead zones and one more thing; WiFi repeaters/extenders can be of great help. This equipment catches the WiFi signals with the help of mounted antennas and extends it over dead zones
