Why your Wi-Fi is slower than your plan
The most common speed problem is not your provider — it is the last ten meters. Here is why Wi-Fi eats your bandwidth and what actually fixes it.
Wi-Fi is a shared, fragile medium
A cable delivers the same speed every time. Radio does not: every wall, floor, mirror and metal surface between you and the router weakens the signal, and weaker signal means the connection automatically drops to slower, more robust encodings.
You also share the air with everyone nearby. In an apartment block, dozens of networks compete for the same channels, and your neighbor's video night genuinely slows your Wi-Fi even though your plans are separate.
The two-band (and three-band) trade-off
2.4 GHz travels far and penetrates walls, but it is slow and crowded — often 20–60 Mbps in practice. 5 GHz is much faster (hundreds of Mbps) but fades quickly with distance and obstacles. 6 GHz (Wi-Fi 6E/7) is faster still and nearly empty, but it barely crosses a single wall.
The practical rule: near the router, force 5 GHz or 6 GHz; far away, accept that 2.4 GHz reaches further but caps your speed. If your router broadcasts one combined network name, it decides for you — and sometimes decides badly. Splitting band names gives you control.
Placement beats gadgets
Routers radiate outward and slightly downward. The classic mistakes — on the floor, in a cabinet, next to the TV, in the far corner of the home — each cost real throughput.
Put the router high, central and in the open, away from metal, aquariums and microwave ovens (which blast the 2.4 GHz band when running). If one router cannot cover the home, wired access points or a mesh system beat any signal-booster gimmick.
Old hardware quietly caps you
A Wi-Fi 4 or early Wi-Fi 5 router physically cannot deliver a modern plan, whatever the ISP sells you. Wi-Fi 6 and 7 also handle many devices at once far better — often the bigger win in a busy household.
The same applies to devices: an old laptop's radio may top out at 100–200 Mbps regardless of the network. Always identify which side of the link is the bottleneck before spending money.
Diagnose it in five minutes
Run a test wired (or standing next to the router on 5 GHz) — that is your baseline, close to what the ISP delivers. Then test from the spot where things feel slow. The gap between the two numbers is your Wi-Fi problem, and everything in this guide is about closing it.