Many of us move around the house with our laptops, tablets and other mobile devices knowing some areas around the house have weak wireless reception. Trying to avoid the troublesome areas, we find ourselves confined to specific areas of the house or sitting in weird positions in order to have optimal reception. Here are 10 tips to try and improve the wireless signal around the house or office.

1. Position your wireless router or access point in a central location – When ever possible, make sure your wireless router or wireless access point (WAP) is at a central location in your home or office. If you place your wireless equipment against an external wall, the signal will be weaker on the other side of your home (assuming the space you are trying to cover is larger than a small flat). If the wireless router is on the first floor of the house and your endpoint (PC, laptop, game console, etc.) is on the second floor, place the router high on a shelf in the room where it is located. In general try to place it in the most central location in the house.

2. Move your wireless router position – Metal objects (steel doors, file cabinets, etc.), walls, and floors will interfere with the router’s wireless signal. The closer your router is to these obstructions, the more severe the interference and the weaker the wireless signal will be.

3. Replace your wireless router antenna – The common antennas supplied with wireless routers are designed to be omnidirectional, meaning that they broadcast in all directions around the router. If your router is at the edge of the house or office, half of the wireless signals will be sent outside, while the coverage inside the house might be limited, this is a waste of the router’s power. Most routers have removable antenna’s that you can unscrew and replace, in that case you can upgrade to a high-gain antenna that focuses the wireless signals in one direction and then aim the signal in the direction you need it most. In case your router is in a central location but the signal is still too weak to cover the entire house you can purchase a more powerful antenna and increase the coverage.

4. Change your wireless channel – Wireless routers have the option to broadcast on several different channels. In the United States and Canada, these channels are 1, 6, and 11, other places may use different channels. Try changing your wireless router’s channel through your router’s configuration page to see if the signal improves. You don’t need to change your computer wifi configuration, it will automatically pick up the new channel. You may use any of the available channels in the router configuration and not limited to the one’s mentions above.

5. Reduce wireless interference – The most common wireless technology, 802.11g (wireless-G), operates at a frequency of 2.4 gigahertz (GHz). Many other wireless devices, such as cordless phones, microwave ovens, baby monitors, various remotes, and other wireless electronics also use this frequency. Some of these wireless devices may create so much “noise”, it could interfere with the on going wireless connection. If your network uses wireless-G, you can quiet the noise by avoiding wireless electronics that use the 2.4 GHz frequency. The more advanced cordless phones use the 5.8 GHz or 900 megahertz (MHz) frequencies. Moving your wireless network to the 802.11n (wireless-N) standard (this may require replace the router and wireless network adapters) operates at both 2.4 GHz and the less frequently used 5.0 GHz frequency, you may experience less interference on your network.

6. Update the firmware – Router manufacturers regularly make improvements to their routers. These improvements fix errors or bug, increase performance and/or add new features. Those improvements come in the form of firmware – A software upgrade to the router’s system. To get the latest firmware updates for your router, visit your router manufacturer’s website. Similarly, network adapter vendors occasionally update the device driver. These updates typically improve performance and reliability. Getting those drivers depend on the manufacturer and the operating system you are using.

7. Replace your endpoint wireless network adapter – Laptops with built-in wireless networking capability typically have excellent antennas and don’t need to have their network adapters upgraded. In case you feel the wireless adapter in your laptop is not strong enough, some measures should be taken, but this should be done only after you verified at several locations that the issue is with the laptop wireless network adapter. Wireless network signals are sent both to and from the router. In some cases, your router can broadcast strong signals that are enough to reach the computer, but on the computer can’t send signals back to the router. One of the measures that can be taken is to the laptop’s internal wireless network adapter with a USB wireless network adapter that uses an external antenna. These add an external, high-gain antenna to your computer and can significantly extend it’s wireless range.

8. Add a wireless repeater – Wireless repeaters extend the wireless network range without the need to end wiring, it’s a wireless network after all. Repeater extend the coverage of your wireless network in any give space. Just place the wireless repeater at any location in the space you are trying to cover to boost the wireless signal strength. Please keep in mind that you need to use the same type of network as your original router.

9. Pick equipment from a single vendor – Considering today’s wireless network standards, all equipment form most recognized vendors should work with each other efficiently. However, some vendor add improvements to their equipment that will work best with their own equipment. So, while working according to the defined standard should 100% compatible with all equipment vendors, special enhancements might be available only if you are using equipment from the same vendor. When it comes to built in wireless network in laptop, this is of course not an option.

10. Upgrade older networks 802.11a/b/g devices to 802.11n – While wireless-G (802.11g) is still the most common wireless network around, wireless-N (802.11n) is at least twice as fast and has better range and stability. Wireless-N is backward-compatible with 802.11a, 802.11b, and 802.11g, so you can still use any existing wireless equipment with the new network – though you won’t see much improvement in performance until you upgrade both ends – The router and the end point device. If you’re using wireless-B or wireless-G and you’re unhappy with your network’s speed and performance, consider replacing your router and network adapters with wireless-N equipment.