Students and Staff who study and work from home can refer to the following advice to optimise and improve their home broadband and wifi networks.
With more people studying and working from home, home broadband and wifi networks are going to come under increasing strain.
If you're living in private accomodation and think your wifi isn't as quick as it should be, follow the guidance below. For students, if, after following the advice, your wifi still isn't good enough for your studies, the University maybe able to provide an O2 4G dongle. Contact your school of find out more. O2 provide a coverage checker to see the level of signal in your area.
If you're living in University accomodation, your residence can give you an Ethernet cable and adaptor so you can connect directly to the wired network. If you're wifi isn't working at call, contact the IT Service Desk.
If you're living in private accommodation and internet is included in your rent contact your landlord and find out what they can do to resolve the problem. Can they improve the internet speed into your residence? Put extra wifi points in? Or provide you with a wired connection?
If you're living in private accomodation and internet access isn't included in your rent, talk to your Internet Service Provider (BT, Virgin etc.). Money Saving Expert has some tips on negotiating with your Broadband supplier. Make sure you've got your broadband contract details, any usage limits, etc., to hand.
Remember - domestic broadband connections are sold as a shared service which are designed to have contention (capacity shared between lots of households). At times of peak usage you should not always expect to get the advertised speeds.
Consider using a 4G Dongle, though be sure to check network coverage in your area first (this information is usually available via provider websites). If it's cheap, it may be because they only have limited coverage.
Important: The University is not responsible for the safety or security of any external services.
In some situations, it might be necessary to use your phone/4G signal configured as a personal hotspot, if performance on your wired broadband is poor. However, there are some things you should check:
There are some excellent 4G, and emerging 5G, home broadband services provided via a number major service providers. The speed you can expect to achieve with these services will depend upon the providers capabilities in your geographic location and the number of other users accessing their services concurrently. In some cases, using an externally mounted 4G/5G antenna can greatly enhance speed and reliability.
Which? has provided a guide to Broadband Speeds which can help you understand more about your Broadband and what other options there are on the market.
"Speed is a crucial consideration when you're deciding which broadband package is right for you. Too slow and you'll struggle to do the things you need to do; too fast, and you may be paying for a service you don't really need. The best speed for you depends on a couple of things: how you use the internet and where you live."
The table below gives some indicative download speeds for different media types over broadband connections of different speeds.
Music Album (10 songs) | 200 Digital Photos | A TV Show | A Movie | |
5Mbps (Standard - Slow) | 1m20s | 5m20s | 10m50s | 23m9s |
8Mbps (Standard - Med) | 50s | 3m20s | 6m46s | 14m28s |
16Mbps (Standard - Fast) | 25s | 1m40s | 3m23s | 7m14s |
38Mbps (Superfast) | 11s | 42s | 1m25s | 3m3s |
76Mbps (Superfast Extra) | 5s | 21s | 43s | 1m31s |
Based on a an MP3 song of 5MB; Photo size of 1MB; TV Show of 406MB; Film of 858MB
Sometime ISPs (Internet Service Providers) and other web services encounter problems and cannot be accessed for a period of time, this can be very inconvenient and worrying.
Downdetector shows the service status of most ISPs and web services. If a service you would normally use is not connecting or responding or your wifi connection is not working, it is worth checking this site to see if that service is not currently working.
Important: The University is not responsible for the safety or security of any external services.