I think it's safe to say that everyone has internet and Wi-Fi at home. And if you're reading this, I would say it was guaranteed. Even though it's really easy to sign up with an Internet Service Provider (ISP) like Aussie Broadband or TPG, organise a home internet service and be provided with a modem router, just plugging it in may not have the reliability and speed you were expecting. Depending on your use case of the internet at your home, you may need a more robust and reliable setup to handle your demands. It's a good idea to review how many people use it, what they use it for, is it business or pleasure, and how critical it is to be reliable and fast.

In our home, there are 5 of us and we all use the internet everyday. My partner and I study and work from home as well as enjoying streaming services for entertainment and our 3 kids use it for homework, socialising with friends and entertainment. For us, having a reliable connection is critical, and can lead to a bad reputation at work if our internet wasn't up to par. It could affect my partner's performance at university, if she couldn't make lectures for online classes, or not be able to perform research to write up her assignments. The same goes for the older kids who are provided school devices to perform homework as all their studies are kept online in school controlled portals and are expected to be able to perform their tasks by their due date. Not to mention the family's downtime in the evenings, when we want to have a movie night and we need the home network to perform perfectly so we're not troubleshooting issues when we should be relaxing.

Having the right equipment for your circumstances and home is not based on how technical you are which shouldn't play a part at all. Regardless of your technical skill levels, having good, reliable network equipment is important for everyone. Relying on your Internet Service Provider to ensure you have the right equipment will rarely be sufficient. They ensure they have an average modem router that may help most people in most situations, but they won't have multiple options with multiple devices that can be chosen based on how many people are in your home or how big your home is.

Why One Router Often Isn't Enough

Homes in Australia are getting bigger or more complex as our demand for space and luxuries increase. No longer is a typical home 13 squares in size and everyone is content with where they live. Now we have 30 or 40 square single storey homes, or 40+ double storey homes, with more rooms than you can count on 2 hands. All these extra walls, and doorways and staircases are an interference source for your Wi-Fi and your home network will struggle. If you have a large property, and want to get reliable Wi-Fi out to the backyard or to an external shed, there are specific solutions you will need to achieve good results.

In the worst case scenario, if you placed your ISP provided modem router in the garage, which is where the NBN usually exists if you have Fibre to the Premise (FTTP) and have built recently, your Wi-Fi would look something like this on a typical 32 SQ home, where dark green highlights excellent quality, yellow is average, red is weak and white is non existent:

Maybe you were lucky enough to ask the builders to run a cable from the garage into the dining room, or you have your internet connection already located there, and that gave you the possibility of placing the modem router in that location. Then it might look something like this:

You can see in both these scenarios that a strong signal is highly concentrated around where the modem is located and gets weaker the further you are from it. The more walls, the more interference, and it is dependent on the material those walls are made. In both these scenarios, all the bedrooms would suffer with weak Wi-Fi, and would be non existent in the backyard which in this example is to the south, and to me, that's just not acceptable.

Now if you were to get multiple Wi-Fi access points, say one in the front theatre room, one in the retreat and an outdoor rated one for just outside the laundry, it could look something like this:

This example would be an acceptable solution as Wi-Fi would be available in all critical areas. Hopefully this shows that the placement and the type of devices matters a lot, and sometimes all you need to do is think about where these devices can be placed to improve your own Wi-Fi!

Internet Plan Speed vs. Wi-Fi Speed

The other source of confusion we come across is that people assume that the internet plan they pay for with their ISP determines how strong their Wi-Fi is. That the faster your plan, the more reliable the internet will be, but this can't be further from the truth. When we talk about the speeds included with an internet plan, we are talking about the maximum speeds the plan allows for download and upload connections. If you look at your internet bill you will see the speed that was purchased when you started your plan with your chosen ISP. Numbers such as 25/10, or 50/20 are the most common speeds and is measured in Mbps or Megabits per second. The first number designates the maximum theoretical download speed possible, and the second number designates the maximum theoretical upload speed.

However, these are maximums and generally, real world usage is slower than these numbers. Speeds are also different depending on the time of day, because Internet Providers share the infrastructure with many households, and during typical times of use, such as Friday or Saturday night, you may find your speeds are slower than usual. This is why Internet Providers market their typical evening speeds on their promotions and websites, so you have more information and choose them. Here's a basic example to help explain this:

Imagine the internet as a highway. During the day, most people are at work or school. So, the "internet highway" has relatively few "cars" (data) on it. Things flow smoothly, and your internet is fast.

In the Evenings, everyone comes home and wants to use the internet at the same time. They're streaming movies, playing games, scrolling through social media, etc. Now, the "internet highway" is packed with "cars."

Because there's so much traffic, it takes longer for your data to get where it needs to go.

But your Wi-Fi speeds have to do with the speed within your home. It is the connection between your Wi-Fi capable device and your nearest router or access point. If you have an amazing Wi-Fi connection from your tablet in your bedroom, and you try to watch an Ultra High Definition 4k video on youtube, but your internet plan is weak, then it is going to struggle, because your internet connection is the bottleneck and this particular video needs more bandwidth. The same is also true in reverse. If you have a 1000/50 internet plan capable of 800Mbps downloads, it will have no problem streaming a 4K video from youtube, but if your Wi-Fi infrastructure is poor and located in the garage and you are in your bedroom and the signal is weak, it doesn't matter how fast your internet is, your experience will be poor, the video will be buffering and you won't be happy.

How Much Bandwidth Does Your Household Need?

To take the internet speed explanation a little further, let's play with an example. Let's also assume that you have perfect Wi-Fi and it is not a factor in this scenario. Suppose you have a 25/10 internet plan with your chosen Internet Service Provider. 25 Mbps download, and 10 Mbps upload. You have 5 people in your home, you and your partner, both working day time jobs, and 3 kids, 1 in primary and 2 in secondary school.

The kids come home from school around 4pm and have their snack and downtime and all of them jump on their devices maybe to do some gaming, or watch youtube or scroll through their social media. Your partner arrives home with the kids and decides to jump on the computer to check and send emails, maybe pay some bills, and look through facebook or watch a show on Netflix.

I've provided this table to show an estimate of how much bandwidth or speed is needed for common tasks:

This next table shows common bandwidth speeds for video streaming depending on the quality:

Ok, so based on our users and what they're doing let's do some analysis:

As you can see above, the 4 users are attempting to consume 32Mbps of bandwidth with their combined activities. But you only have 25Mbps maximum speeds allowed for by your internet plan, and that's if you get the whole 25Mbps of speed, it's probably more like 23Mbps. Now some of the users would be experiencing difficulties, and this hasn't accounted for you getting home yet. And as the evening progresses, and more households in your area are in the exact same situation, the typical evening speeds available to everyone reduce also. The only way to avoid this situation and keep everyone happy would be to increase your internet plan to 50/20.

In this example, we made the assumption that Wi-Fi hardware was perfect, with devices adequately placed and no signal degradation or loss. But if it wasn't perfect, and instead Wi-Fi was weak, then that would tack onto the complications above and no one would be having any fun at a time when people want to relax and enjoy themselves. I don't know about you, but I have enough things to worry about when I'm working, and when it comes to downtime, I want to use that to relax, not to yell at the kids from across the house to stop using Youtube or to get off their Xbox to free up some bandwidth just so I can watch a TV show.

It Doesn't Have to Be This Way

Ok, so now that the doom and gloom is out of the way, I have hopefully demonstrated the common pain points that a lot of families have. But the good news is, it doesn't have to be this way. There is technology out there designed to specifically alleviate these problems. All you need is someone to guide you to that solution, tailored to your specific needs. Imagine a world of seamless streaming, lag-free gaming, and uninterrupted video calls. No more complaints from your family members when the internet is slow. Everyone will be able to get what they need during their time of work, homework or relaxing.

This topic can go on for quite a while, and we haven't even mentioned wired connections within the home to take advantage of direct connections from your ethernet connected device right back to the modem router for guaranteed fast home internal speeds and not even worrying about Wi-Fi. Perhaps a blog post for another day.

Let us take the stress out of your home network. Schedule a consultation today.

I would love to hear your thoughts and comments on my story. Thank you for reading.