Where is the best place to put your router?

I think we can all agree that there is nothing worse than finding the season finale of your favourite show and then have it stop because it has to buffer. Seriously, that sort of thing can make you go absolutely mad.

So, what is the problem? It’s your WiFi connection; it isn't as strong as it should be! Some of us know the exact sweet spot in our house where we can access the WiFi without any delay at all, but a lot of us have to get into weird positions, like standing on a chair or sitting near a window.

The thing is it’s all about your router placement. When you move in and set up your WiFi, you’re just so excited to have it back in your life that you don’t take the time and effort to carefully think about where you should place your router. As you will soon learn, this is one of the most crucial steps and it will determine how happy your life will be in your home!

For the sake of all humanity, someone has actually taken it upon himself to find out where in your home is actually the best place to put your router! No, he is not a magical wizard sent from the Gods, his name is Jason Cole and he is studying to get his PhD in physics at the Imperial College in London. Cole wrote that he once tried to figure out how to get the most out of his WiFi in his flat in a post on his blog, using what is known as the Helmholtz Equation.

There’s a lot of confusing math-speak on the blog post if that’s something you can understand, but for those of us who are a bit on the slow side, here’s what Cole found…

What a surprise, the best place to put your router is right in the very middle, which allows more equally distributed access to the WiFi signal.

BUT, Cole realised that this is probably not a realistic option, so he wrote: “with the help of a commenter, I allowed for absorption in the concrete and stopped the perfect reflections forming a standing wave which almost perfectly cancels everything out.”

If you are keen to try this out for yourself, Cole has developed an Android App where users can simulate how the electromagnetic waves will flow out from a WiFi router on a floor plan of their house, just like he did in his experiment.

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Written By: Christine Romans
CopyWriter at The Computer Guyz Cape Town