Can I "steal" the household WIFI?

[thismousebites]

I am fed up with my WIFI being so slow. Have had it checked by Sky & they say it's all fine.
However, I am up against others in the house using the WIFI at the same time as me. Can I drag the signal to my laptop, so that I get the fastest strongest signal?
If that makes any sense please help as I am getting fed up of lagging.

Not sure but i know that if you go non-wireless you will get the fastest signal.

You don't mean dial up do you?
Have even considered a dongle as I can't wait whilst it churns along.

No she doesn't mean dial up! Just plug your laptop or pc in ti the router wirh a network cable

Change the password on the router, then the others can't log in until you tell them the new password.

It doesn't make any difference here - one pc is plugged in so to speak and the other isn't and they both are fine speed wise - -dd is upstairs on a lap top and that is same speed

Ethernet cable between laptop and router, if the laptop has an ethernet port.

actually we sometimes borrow next doors and that is just as fast - we did ask when ours went down and dd had homework and they borrow ours when theres went down.

You can buy boosters - that may help

That's it! I need a booster. Thankyou, will google them now, if I can stop that lagging.

Really does depend what other people in the house are doing.

If someone used (say) BBC iPlayer to watch a TV show and someone else used TVCatchup or YouTube then you might find loading pages takes longer because the constant stream of data for video streaming may get a bit of priority.

Remember that only one device can transmit on the wireless channel so if video streaming needs 200 packets of data a minute and you web browsin needs only 10, there's a good chance that some of those 10 will 'collide' with the 200 being sent at constant rate.

What's worse is that many times, it's not just 200 going one way, but 200 the other as well (confirming receipt and requesting more video data). Frankly there are times when I wonder how many devices can be run at full pelt in a house (since so many mobile phones can be used to watch YouTube etc, as well as laptops and desktops).

If you run some speed tests (www.speedtest.net) at times when there are others in the house and just you using the internet, it might give a clearer picture of what your connection is achieving. Good luck.

How do I change the password on the router as has been suggested?

What is your download speed?

We had this issue with sky. The speeds were rubbish.

Changed to virgin and have 60mb fibre optic. We always have loads of things running at once and dont have any issues.

Today for example we have a gaming pc, normal pc, ps3, 2 tablets and 3 smart phones all on wifi. No issues.

The price and customer service are shit but cant fault the supply.

DS plays xbox online so ours was always slow- and we are not near a city so not good here anyway
we got a dual band router which has solved all our problems

How do I change the password on the router as has been suggested?

Everyone should do this anyway if they never have. It's just good security.

You'll need to log on to the router itself. In your browser address bar, try 192.168.0.1 - if that doesn't work, try .0 or .2 at the end, instead of .1. This may work, but it may not, depending on the IP addresses used. You will then be asked for the password. If you've never set it before then it may be on a sticker on the back of the router, or underneath, and the password listed there will work. If not, try "admin", "password" or "changeme". The username will probably be admin.

If you've got this far, then you will probably have some sort of webpage menu, and somewhere will be an option to change the password, which could be under a heading like Security or something.

If you change your password, make sure it's something you remember.

This may not work anyway, but it's worth a try.

Also, check whether your ISP has support pages which explain how to configure your router (assuming it's an ISP-provided one.) That would probably have pictures and a clearer explanation of what I'm trying to say.

If you've got a teenager who does online gaming, or someone's watching TV online or something, the network performance will probably go back to being bad once you've given them the new password so they can connect.

we have 3 going at once with gaming watching browsing etc never a problem

Totally agree about Sky being rubbish.
Contacted them and they said they would up the speed to do a test period.
I asked why they couldn't just leave it at that perms angle but they said they would have to turn it back down after a few days. Crap.

we had major problems with sky and our broadband speed, moaned many times finally sent a bt guy out and he changed the cable from the pole to the house and our speed doubled
I suggest keep nagging sky and run a speed checker to see what speed you are getting and what you should be getting

In our house we can have the mac downloading a film, xbox on with online game play, playstation upstairs using netflix and its never been a problem with our Sky broadband. We do use cables though rather than rely on wifi.

Look into home plugs which are like a network that using your electricity cables.

Have you got any speedtest.net results yet ?

It's difficult to know just how good/average/poor your internet speed could / should be without knowing anything about the speeds you are getting.

If you look on www.ThinkBroadband.com and see their link to Broadband Maps