So you’ve got or you’re thinking of getting fiber installed. The delights of super-fast internet access await. Fun for the whole family or increased speed and productivity in the workplace.
Inconsistent Speeds The above is true; however, a fiber connection only brings fast internet to your door. What about past that point? Is the data communication through your house or business as fast? We often get calls from people who, having excitedly had their connection upgraded to fiber, now find, to their dismay, that they don’t have super-fast broadband throughout the house or workplace or the speed is spotty in some areas. Why is this?
Inconsistent Speeds Explained Most people have a wireless connection that comes with the fiber and while wireless is getting faster and faster it’s still not as fast as a hardwired connection. The speeds advertised by your wireless device aren’t the true speeds you receive, as much of the to-and-fro data being sent by your wireless device is, to put it simply, traffic control. All those little bits of data going from multiple phones, TV and tablets have to be coordinated. In addition, wireless is vulnerable to interference and physical barriers such as walls and glass or just plain old distance. All this has to be allowed for and if those little bits of data are lost or missed they need to be resent. So much of that communication is spent in communications like this:
Wireless Router – “Hey Mike’s ipad, this is the wireless router, did you get that last bit of information?” Mikes ipad – “Oh hi wireless router this is Mike’s ipad, nope, didn’t get that. Can you send it again?”
All of this means wireless communication uses more data for traffic control than is required for a hard-wired connection. That, combined with the fact that electrical impulses travel better along a wire than they do through the air, means that – for speed – you can’t go past a hardwired connection.
How to Improve the Performance So, how do we get the best for you and your new fiber connection? We suggest a hardwired connection to your smart TV. The quality of audio visual media is getting better and better all the time, so the demands for faster data from your TV when watching online media, is becoming higher and higher. This provides a faster connection to your TV and eases the traffic flow through your wireless router.
One Individual Slowing it Down for Others? If you have a gamer or two in the house or if one or two people in the office have greater data demands, there is a solution. Your can run a cable to the PC’s that have the higher traffic flows so they get a better experience and it frees up the wireless traffic for everyone else.
I Still Want the Flexibility of Wireless If your wireless router is located in a spot that doesn’t give great coverage elsewhere in the house or office, we suggest running a cable to another spot and having a 2nd wireless point. In this way you’ll find you make the most out of your high speed fiber connection instead of working with a bottle-neck at your one wireless point. It’s a bit like having a one lane on-ramp onto a four lane motorway. Your wireless point is the on-ramp and the fiber is the motorway. We’re saying build a few more on-ramps and make them three lanes wide, then you’ll really make the best use of your fiber.