Getting a fast WiFi speed in your home can sometimes feel like you’re trying to accomplish magic.
Finally after hours of moving every piece of furniture in your house you find that actually the best place for your router is having it precariously balanced on top of the bannister.
While it might feel like the world is just doing this to you for fun there are in fact a whole range of strange and unexpected obstacles that could be stopping your WiFi from working.
In a survey of 2,000 people, Post Office Telecoms it found that over half of us are placing our routers right next to a object that could be causing interference and in turn slowing down our WiFi.
Here are just some of the objects that could be affecting your WiFi:
TVs, or any electrical appliance
That’s right. While many of us set up our routers right alongside our TVs for convenience, it’s actually one of the worst places to put one.
Your TV, games console, set-top box are all giving off electrical signals and it’s these that can drastically interfere with a routers ability to send out a strong WiFi signal.
Fish tanks
Your heard us. A fish tank is actually a double-whammy of bad WiFi because not only do you have the electrical circuits powering the tank but then the enormous body of water that’s absorbing the signal being given out by the router.
Walls
This sounds like a no-brainer but looking at the layout of your house and working out where walls could block your router’s signal could make all the difference. Almost a quarter of those asked in the survey have admitted to putting their router by a window (bad), shared wall (worse) or even at the top of their house (just no).
Instead if you can, make sure the router is given space on all sides, is centrally located within the house and isn’t just kept in a corner whee no-one can see it.
Christmas lights
You can probably see where we’re going with this. Christmas lights, although pretty, are a giant flashing nightmare for your WiFi. They’re one big wrapped up electric interference device and so if you’re going to get festive, try and keep your router as far away as possible.