Your home Wi-Fi is now part of your work-from-home setup. A few quick checks make video calls smoother and reduce "why does my Wi-Fi suck during meetings" frustration.
1. Where you sit matters
The single biggest factor in home Wi-Fi quality is distance from the router. Practical guidance:
- 1-5m, line of sight: great
- 5-15m, one wall: usually fine for 5 GHz
- 15m+ or multiple walls: 2.4 GHz only, expect slow speeds
- Through brick/concrete walls or floors: signal drops dramatically
Move the router toward where you actually work, not where the cable comes in. Or use a long Ethernet cable from the router to a switch in your work area.
2. Wired is always better
If you can run an Ethernet cable from your router to your desk, do it. Even a $5 Cat6 cable beats the best Wi-Fi for:
- Video meeting stability
- Large uploads
- Consistent latency
USB-C laptops without an Ethernet port: a $15 USB-C-to-Ethernet adapter solves this.
3. Restart your router monthly
Home routers accumulate cruft. Power-cycle yours once a month:
- Unplug from wall
- Wait 30 seconds
- Plug back in
This clears memory leaks and forces a fresh DHCP assignment.
4. Check the firmware
Routers have firmware updates that fix security and speed bugs. Most routers expose admin at 192.168.0.1 or 192.168.1.1 — check the sticker on the bottom of the router for the actual URL and the admin password.
Look for a Firmware or System section and click "Check for updates".
5. ISP speed sanity check
What you pay for vs. what you get:
- Visit speedtest.net from a wired laptop or one close to the router
- Compare to your plan
- If you're getting under 60% of plan, call the ISP
Wi-Fi at the far end of your house will be slower than wired, but should still be a meaningful fraction.
6. Mesh systems
If your house is big or has poor signal in some rooms, a mesh Wi-Fi system (Eero, Google Nest, TP-Link Deco) places multiple units around the house for consistent coverage. Worth the $200 if you've struggled with dead spots.
7. Optimize for video meetings
In your router admin:
- Enable QoS if available — prioritizes video and VoIP traffic
- Disable old WPA/WEP encryption — use WPA2 or WPA3 only; old encryption can cap speeds
8. Pause family bandwidth hogs during meetings
Streaming Netflix in 4K to two TVs while you have a Teams call ties up the upload pipe for everyone:
- Pause downloads on game consoles
- Lower streaming quality during your meetings
- Ask family to skip large uploads (cloud backups, large attachments) while you're in calls
9. Use your phone hotspot as a backup
When the home Wi-Fi dies mid-meeting, your phone hotspot can keep you on the call. See [mobile hotspot tethering](/kb/mobile-hotspot-tethering).
10. ISP-supplied router vs. your own
If you're using the router your ISP provided, it's almost certainly mediocre. A better consumer router from ASUS, TP-Link, or Netgear (around $80-$150) makes a real difference. Set the ISP one to "bridge mode" so it just passes traffic to your better router.
When to ticket
Raise a ticket if:
- Your work tasks fail repeatedly despite good home network speed
- You need a corporate router or extender for work-from-home (some employers provide)
- VPN issues specific to your home network — IT may add an exception