The need for speed: simple ways to re-up your wifi speed

30 October 2017

The need for speed: simple ways to re-up your wifi speed

With all of the kerfuffle surrounding Australia’s NBN rollout, many Australians have become accustomed to substandard internet speeds – at work, running their own businesses and at home. At its best, the NBN will deliver speeds of up to 100mbps, but in reality, 84 per cent of Australians are using the NBN at speeds comparable to those available on the current copper wire network.  

At The Mac Mechanic, we respond to a bunch of IT support enquiries from businesses about their internet speed and connectivity. While the issue of wifi speed depends on many factors, you’ll be happy to know that there are simple things you can do easily yourself to incrementally uplift your internet and wifi speeds.

First up: test your wifi speed

You can independently test your wifi and internet speed using Speedtest.net – this will give you a pretty good reading on what you’re paying for with your ISP versus what speeds you’re getting. Remember to use the speed test is a snapshot of a point in time, so it’s worth doing the test when things are good versus when you feel it’s lagging in speed. This could be at different:

  • Times of day
  • Days of week
  • Times when people are connecting to the internet in the home/office

Next: reboot your router


Nine times out of ten, a router will be the answer to poor internet and wifi speeds. Without wanting to get all IT Crowd on you, the 101 of troubleshooting is to turn your router off at the powerpoint and reset it.  This will give it a nice little holiday and time to collect its thoughts – and hopefully improve some wifin performance.

Blame your interior designer…and your gadgets


Wifi signals are at their grumpiest when they get blocked by your office or home’s natural habitat. Doors, internal walls, Sonos speakers, Google Homes, brick walls and drawers/cabinets can all break your connectivity and mess up your internet speeds. Take a look around your office or home and find an open, central space to store your router. Put it there. Try not to put it next to any other wifi sucking devices (I’m looking at you, doggy cam).  Netflix and chill.

Put your router on the bench

When all else fails, it may be time to cut ties with your router and bring in your sub off the interchange bench. Buy a new router. If you’ve grown your business from a small team to a large one, moved from home to office, or if you’re in a period of growth right now, chances are you have an older router that is not business grade and not fit for purpose. We seem not to have any problem with buying the latest phone, tablet or gadget, but when it comes to routers, we tend to keep them longer when we need to. Given that that internet and cloud services are the lifeblood of any small business, maybe that little router is something to invest more in.

Give us a call

Need a little more help to get it right? We help Melbourne’s creative businesses wrangle their IT. Let us come out to audit, test and recommend ways to improve your wifi speeds.

Ready to make contact?

Let's go