Three-Step Tips: How to keep your WiFi fast – even with a house full of devices

Your home is full of devices – phones, tablets, consoles, that one speaker that keeps playing Taylor Swift no matter what you ask it to play, smart bulbs and maybe even a smart fridge that judges your snack choices (although if it was so smart, it would keep its sassy opinions about our “midnight cheese” to itself).

But having a connected household in 2025 doesn’t mean your internet has to crawl. More devices shouldn’t mean slower speeds.

We also know your time is precious. You don’t have time to sit for hours learning about GHz (they’re the hair straighteners, right?) or brushing up on your LANs (wasn’t he the dude in the Star Wars?). That’s where we come in.

Our Three-Step Tips cut through the noise. Let’s get into it:

Take it from the cats, finding the right place to sit is important. Your Hub agrees. Sure, telling you to pick the perfect spot for it seems like such #basic advice, it’s up there with “Have you tried turning it on and off again?”, but there are a lot of big wins hiding in that one small move, no matter how many devices you have connected. Here’s what you need to do:

Place our Hub in the centre of your space, not tucked in a corner or behind your sofa (hide-and-seek is for your kids and some adult friends, not your WiFi). 

Avoid obstructions and give it as much open space as possible. 

Keep it off the floor and use a bookshelf, cabinet top or wall mount for better coverage. Like the “looking for a guy in finance” girl, your WiFi likes height. And blue eyes…

Steer clear of metal or electronics. Yep, even your microwave.

Think open, elevated, and central – kinda like a WiFi throne.

Key takeaway: We don’t want to tell you how to decorate, but ensuring your Hub is out in the open will benefit all your devices.

Remember as a kid in your summer hols when your dad would insist on “beating the traffic” by putting you in the car in the middle of the night or very early in the morning? What he didn’t factor in was that he had no sense of direction, so you’d be late regardless. But it was sound advice. The more traffic at once, the slower everyone moves. 

Here’s how you can get in the fast lane:

Schedule big downloads like a mammoth game update or a system backup for late at night. If you can’t schedule them, just set it going before you go to bed or at a time when you don’t need to be online.

Set cloud syncs to happen outside of your peak use hours.

Batch updates on phones, tablets and your computer once a week, not constantly in the background. Just make sure you do it, though, as those updates are often vital for online security.

Key takeaway: Many apps and devices let you set update times – so use it like your personal traffic controller (or dad from your childhood trying to “beat the traffic”).

Like that colleague who thinks your lunch is their lunch in the staff fridge, some devices and apps quietly gobble up bandwidth without even asking. Passive aggressive post-it notes might work in the office (be warned, it will set off a WhatsApp or Teams group solely about your fridge rage), but here’s how to stop the snack attack on your WiFi:

Remove old or unknown devices clogging up your network. Bye, Felicia.

Turn off auto updates during work hours or movie nights.

Pause cloud backups if you’re streaming or gaming. It’s probably not vital the photos you took of a great dog you saw that morning are synced in the middle of a Battle Royale.

Close unused apps and tabs as they’ll continue working in the background.

Disable Background App Refresh on devices to restrict apps running behind the scenes (iPhone: Settings > General > Background App Refresh and Android: Settings > Network > Data Saver).

Install tools like WiFi Analyzer or Fing to track down heavy-use devices. 

Key takeaway: Marie Kondo your devices – if they don’t spark joy, lose them. Or at least limit them when you’re trying to do stuff or relax.

Whether you want to solve an irritating WiFi problem or you want to keep up to date with the latest news and trends, visit our Tech and Connectivity hub for broadband and WiFi tips, tricks and user guides.

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