Networking secrets revealed
How to supercharge your Wi-Fi and get the complete Apple-connected home
Whether you’re streaming music from Spotify, listening to the radio, or watching movies on Netflix, you rely on having a speedy and stable connection to the internet. Most of the time we don’t even think about it – online content has become as easily accessible as that stored locally. Until, that is, things go wrong. Whether your ISP suffers an outage or, as BT customers experienced at the end of last year, DNS problems, or your own Wi-Fi network stumbles and fails, it’s a frustrating and, if you rely on it for work, potentially costly experience.
The good news is that there’s a great deal you can do to improve the performance of your Wi-Fi network, and even mitigate the risk associated with a failure beyond your control, thanks to significant improvements in mobile internet connections in recent years.
One step you can take which could significantly improve your network is to upgrade your router, particularly if it’s a few years old. Recent developments, such as dual bands and 802.11ac, as well as the use of the 5GHz spectrum, mean that modern routers have a number of weapons at their disposal when it comes to squeezing as much data as possible as fast as possible between your internet connection and the device you’re using.
Over the next nine pages we’ll explain exactly how you can make the biggest improvements to your Wi-Fi network, and we’ll show you exactly what to look for if you decide to upgrade your router. We’ll cover all those new technologies in detail and explain which ones matter and which you don’t need to worry too much about. And, of course, we’ll help you troubleshoot the network problems we all encounter from time to time.
Away from Wi-Fi, we’ll show you how to extend your network, or help it reach the parts Wi-Fi can’t, using the cables that carry mains power around your home or office.
Accessing the internet on the go is now second nature for most of us, but many of us are also using our mobile connection as a backup or even replacement for a wired broadband connection. The advent of 4G has made that possible, so we explain all and take you step by step through the process of setting up Personal Hotspot in Yosemite and iOS 8 so you can use your iPhone’s internet connection on your Mac or iPad.