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Are you interested to find out if there is a way to improve WiFi speeds at your office? Does your wireless network seem to have more activity than it did just a few years ago? If so, you’re not alone. Many companies in Brisbane and throughout Australia are noticing that their internet use has increased in recent years, putting a bigger burden on available bandwidth.



There are a few different reasons for this:


  1. The increased use of mobile devices at work
  2. IoT devices at the office have increased
  3. Many businesses have transitioned completely to cloud workflows


70% of Australians use a mobile phone for work.


The constant connection needed for cloud application use and the fact that more devices are using the limited bandwidth available through small business Wi-Fi, has led to problems.


These include inconsistent signal strength and speed, and problems maintaining connections for long download processes.


Do you feel limited by your amount of available bandwidth compared to your office’s online activity needs? We’ve got several tips below for improving how you prioritise bandwidth among your devices and activities.

How to Improve WiFi Speeds and Office Internet Reliability

Run Backups Overnight

One process that can take up a lot of bandwidth and cause other office internet activities to stall are backups.


If you have several individual computer backups and a server backup all running at different times of day, it can negatively impact things like video calls or cloud application use.


If you do daily backups, you can improve WiFi speeds and bandwidth during the day and reduce a lot of the bandwidth congestion by organising all your backups to run overnight when your office is empty.

Use Quality of Service Rules on Your Router

Did you know that your router can be made to direct your internet traffic? You can set up rules that tell your router which applications or devices should get the highest priority when it comes to bandwidth and which should be put at a lower priority.


Using Quality of Service (QoS) stops a low priority process from taking bandwidth away from a high priority process, so your most important business processes run smoothly. QoS is designed to increase the reliability of a wireless network.

Upgrade to Wi-Fi 6 for Better Device Handling

Wi-Fi 6 came out about a year ago, but many businesses have not yet updated to this new wireless router technology. Not only is Wi-Fi 6 faster and more secure than Wi-Fi 5, it has two distinct features that improve the handling of multiple devices one the same network.


Improved MU-MIMO:

Multi-user, multiple input, multiple output (MU-MIMO) has had the capacity doubled. In Wi-Fi 5, MU-MIMO allows routers to communicate with four devices simultaneously. In Wi-Fi 6, that number is upgraded to eight devices at a time.


This would be like doubling your fleet of delivery vehicles, allowing you to make twice as many simultaneous deliveries.


OFDMA (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access):

A new technology, OFDMA, is used in Wi-Fi 6 that allows it to deliver data to multiple devices at once. This would be like increasing the size of each delivery vehicle so a single van could handle more deliveries.


Both of these technologies in Wi-Fi 6 mean that instead of devices needing to “wait in line” to get attention, more of them can be served data at the same time, which improves network speed and reliability.

Use a Hybrid Workflow for Office Apps

If all employees in your office are using cloud software at the same time, that’s a lot of data traffic that has to be accommodated by your wireless connection.


You can help alleviate some of this by using cloud apps that allow hybrid workflows. For example, with Microsoft 365 you can use Word, PowerPoint, and Excel online or you can use them offline and then connect to upload a copy of a document to the cloud.


Review your team’s workflow to see if there are any activities that can be done offline as opposed to online. Incorporating offline workflows with online can help alleviate the strain on your bandwidth, so everyone has a better online experience.


Limit Access to Non-Business Websites

Certain activities, such as video streaming, can take up a good deal of bandwidth. You may not even realise that employees are streaming entertainment on their breaks or visiting sites like YouTube.


You can use QoS rules or a DNS filtering application to limit the bandwidth of certain activities (gaming, etc.) and even block websites entirely that have no business use but are taking up your valuable bandwidth when employees use them.

Looking for Ways to Improve Your Wi-Fi?

Wireless technology can be frustrating when it’s not optimised. Connected Platforms can help you with advanced routing, operational task management, and more to keep your internet connection fast and running smoothly.


Would you like to learn more about how to improve WiFi speeds? Contact our managed IT services Brisbane team for a free small business WiFi consultation today. Call 1300 866 096 or book a coffee meeting online.