Are You Ready for Unlimited High-Speed Internet?
1. Strengthen your wiring.
You’re always going to get the very best Internet speed — whether you have fiber Internet, cable Internet or DSL Internet — with a wired connection, or with an ethernet cord. If you’re going this route, you’ll need at least a Cat5e ethernet cable to support gigabit Internet, but it wouldn’t hurt to get a Cat6 or Cat6a ethernet cable to jump ahead of the digital curve.
2. Dig into the details of your router.
But, let’s be honest. The likelihood of using a wire to connect your portable devices — laptops, tablets, cell phones, etc. — to the Internet is slim to none. And that means you’ll have to check another device to see if they are capable of giving you One-Gig speeds: your router.
Routers made in the last few years have ports that are already configured to allow for ethernet cables that support gigabit Internet. If you have an older router, though, you may need to upgrade to a gigabit-compatible router.
If you aren’t sure what kind of ports your router has, do a quick search online using its product number.
3. Check your devices’ Wi-Fi standards.
The Wi-Fi Alliance has set an official standard of 802.11ac to be gigabit compatible. Your devices, from your router to your computer, should support that same gigabit Wi-Fi capability. If your router doesn’t, you’ll need to upgrade. If your computer doesn’t, you could buy a Wi-Fi adapter for it. (Note that the alliance comes out with new standards as technology improves.)
4. Update your router’s firmware.
Hopefully, you enabled automatic updates of your router when you first installed it. But if you haven’t, you’ll have to go into your router’s settings and do so manually.
