Five easy tips to improve working from home networks

Restrictions to tackle the coronavirus pandemic means employees working from home will most likely be connecting a corporate laptop to their home broadband connection. This is not ideal. There is a single connection from the internet into the home. This is then shared and routed around the home to each and every device that requires internet connectivity via the internet router provided by the ISP.

One connection means that everything shares the same physical pipe. As the lockdown has shown, families are juggling homeschooling and lessons running on Zoom with business video conferences. At some point in the day, school finishes; the kids may be on social media, YouTube, on the games console or streaming online TV. This may be happening at the same time the network is being used for business video calls. Every connected device will use up some bandwidth. And depending on the application, some will consume far more than others. According to a YouGov poll conducted in June 2020, internet usage seems to have peaked throughout the lockdown period with three-quarters (73%) of Britons stating they’ve been using their household connection more than usual. However, over a third (35%) claim they’re experiencing worse performance than they did pre-lockdown, and four in ten (41%) people living with three or more people say their connection has decreased the most during the lockdown. All of this points to the challenges in obtaining decent internet speeds when working from home.