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Routers range from affordable to outrageously expensive, with some flashy gaming routers priced at well above $600. But the best way you can truly improve your connection doesn’t cost any money, although it does cost some amount of compromise. For some, that compromise can be a lot more significant than for others.
Here’s the one thing I did that massively improved my connections on some devices, and it didn’t cost me a penny.
When your connection starts acting up, the router and the ISP are often the two things you might think of first. In my case, I usually blame the ISP, but that’s just because my old ISPs have been super unreliable, so it’s an easy guess to make.
If your TV is constantly buffering, your games lag or disconnect, or your calls freeze for a few seconds at a time, I get it—blaming the router is not at all a stretch. But often, the router is not the main thing to blame.
In a lot of homes, it’s not that the router is too weak, but rather that it’s badly placed or the Wi-Fi is doing too much heavy lifting at once. I don’t have a robust net of smart home devices, but even my home has several devices connected via Wi-Fi at any given time. A lower-quality router, especially one rented from an ISP, may not be able to juggle this many connections over wireless.
Think you know your routers from your repeaters — put your home networking know-how to the ultimate test.
What does the ‘5 GHz’ band in Wi-Fi offer compared to the ‘2.4 GHz’ band?
Which Wi-Fi standard, introduced in 2021, is also known as Wi-Fi 6E and extends into a new frequency band?
What is the default IP address most commonly used to access a home router’s admin interface?
Which Wi-Fi security protocol is considered most secure for home networks as of 2024?
What is the primary difference between a mesh Wi-Fi system and a traditional Wi-Fi range extender?
What does DHCP stand for, and what is its main function on a home network?
What is ‘QoS’ (Quality of Service) used for in a home router?
Figuring this out can be a major shift, and this brings us to the compromise part of this article: you can actually fix a lot of connection problems by simply switching to a wired connection on some devices. This will improve the connection both on the devices that will now use wired (because, obviously, wired still is better than Wi-Fi), and the ones that get the remaining wireless bandwidth, as they’ll no longer have to fight quite as many connections for it.
The truth is that I used Wi-Fi on many less-important (to me) devices out of sheer laziness. It is a lot easier to type in the Wi-Fi password on your TV than it is to run an Ethernet cable all the way from your router to the TV set. The main issue with extra cabling is obviously convenience and aesthetics, because you don’t want a cable running the entire length of your living room. It’s a pain, I agree.
But it can be such a game-changer, and yes, a TV is the perfect target for your first Wi-Fi to Ethernet swap. In general, any devices that sit in one place should be upgraded to Ethernet, both for the sake of limiting network congestion and just to improve their connection, too.
Your desktop PC, game console, smart TV, or streaming box can easily switch to Wi-Fi without really harming the convenience factor. It’s not like you move your TV around on a daily basis. Besides, those devices often do a lot of downloading in the background. Your console may be updating games; your TV is streaming 4K video; your desktop deserves Ethernet simply because it’s way better, period.
The only limitation is the distance from your router. Doing this can be mildly annoying or completely impractical, but if it fits your home, it’s a huge upgrade that won’t cost you anything if you already have an Ethernet cable at home.
I always keep a few of these cables at home, which is why I can ditch Wi-Fi at a moment’s notice if I need to. They’re affordable and reliable.
The biggest benefit here is not just that Ethernet is faster on paper. It’s that every device you move off Wi-Fi gives the rest of your wireless network a little more room to breathe.
Sometimes, your connection may be bogged down by network congestion, and it might have little to do with what’s going on at your home and more to do with the ISP. But more often than not, the ISP should (hopefully) be ready for peak-hour network traffic, but your router might not be. Sharing airtime with phones, tablets, PCs, smart devices, TVs, and so on can be a lot to ask for.
Move one or two of them to Ethernet, and that just might fix any stability issues over Wi-Fi for the rest of them. It certainly helped me, and it fixed annoying buffering problems on my TV, too.
Fixing connection problems often comes down to troubleshooting. Before you ever consider replacing your router, look for hidden bottlenecks across your network first. Even upgrading to fiber may not fix a connection that has issues somewhere else, be it bad router settings, poor Wi-Fi coverage, or an aging Ethernet cable.
I’m not a fan of using Wi-Fi on my PC. In fact, whenever I do use it for any reason, I spend most of my time complaining about how bad it is by comparison. But the convenience of Wi-Fi makes it impossible to ditch on some devices, which is fair. Just make sure you don’t stack up too many all on the same connection, because that’s just a hop and a skip away from poor performance across your entire network.
If you’ve tried everything and your old router just doesn’t cut it anymore, this Wi-Fi 7 gaming router is a solid replacement. It offers two 2.5GbE ports and excellent wired and wireless performance.