Collectively, Australians caught very few breaks over the course of 2020. With many of us now spending more time at home than ever, whether you’re running a business or socialising with your friends online, maximising your home network might be worth looking into.

With a few savvy and simple tips, living large doesn’t have to come with an oversized price-tag. Here’s how to turn your house into a bona fide tech hub.

Leave slow internet speeds for dead

Nothing ruins a vibe or takes the air out of an important Zoom call like a lagging internet connection.

In a Monday morning meeting, it can be downright momentum killing. On a Friday night on the couch, it can hijack the narrative of your blockbuster movie. With cutting-edge home internet speed, you can make these interruptions a thing of the past and approach all data-reliant interactions with the utmost confidence.

It’s worth doing some research to determine what kind of plan will be suit your needs – prices will vary between providers.

Doubling down on an extra router

While you might not want to make your router a design feature of any room, to optimise its effectiveness it is recommended that you keep it away from the walls and make it more central to your layout.

This helps the signal travel without interruption, increasing the strength of your router’s range. At some point, you may also want to consider adding a second router to double-up on your Wi-Fi signal. This can be done either wirelessly or with an ethernet cable.

You can connect a local area network (LAN) router to a wide area network (WAN) to create a secondary network that allows you to limit how many devices are on the primary signal, creating extra bandwidth for what you deem the more crucial internet activities. On the other hand, a LAN to LAN connection could achieve a different goal, which may be to increase the range and strength of your original network.

Big tech squeezes into your home

One of most popular add-on routers of the past 12 months or so is undoubtedly the Google Nest Wi-Fi which offers a mesh Wi-Fi set-up. Generally, one Google Nest Wi-Fi comes with a singular mesh Wi-Fi port that can be placed in another room in your house to “blanket” the coverage. There’s also the recently released Amazon eero 6, which retails for a similar price.

Both can accommodate up to 200 devices and multiple 4K and HD streaming channels at a single time.

For one Google Nest Wi-Fi and three ports – covering four separate points in your home, all of which can act like a smart Google Hub and provide music, weather reports and new bites – the price is around double the single unit.

While it may seem excessive to double or triple that coverage with the three-port set-up, there are advantages of having a wealth of Google devices at the ready. They give you the ability to easily direct your smart lighting, smart TVs, and smart kitchen devices.

With great data comes greater responsibility

If you’re thinking of upgrading your internet services, it’s highly recommended that you accompany your new tech with iron-clad security. Wi-fi protected access 2 (WPA2) is superior to WPA (wi-fi protected access) and wired equivalent privacy (WEP).

With a stronger encryption algorithm than its predecessors, known as advanced encryption standard (AES), it’s not impossible to hack, but it would take a near certified master criminal to do so.