Why Is Your Internet So Bad?

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Speaker 11 Hook up an Ethernet cord to your laptop. Everything will be great.
And I promise you that.

Speaker 12 That feels so 1990s. Like, yeah, get in the wayback machine.

Speaker 12 I'm Christine Sear Clissette. I'm Kyra Blackwell.

Speaker 13 I'm Rosie Guerin. And you're listening to The Wirecutter Show.

Speaker 12 This episode is called, Why is Your Internet So Bad?

Speaker 13 Christine and Kyra, my friends, this episode really is a public service. I'm thinking of it that way.
We've secured an interview with the man who can answer the question I and so many of us have.

Speaker 13 Why is my internet so bad?

Speaker 13 What are your setups at home? What's your business?

Speaker 12 You know that my setup is terrible.

Speaker 12 You regularly are on video calls with me where I'm glitching out. And it's

Speaker 13 a Christine Roboto.

Speaker 12 It's impossible to hear you sometimes. It's really, it's embarrassing.

Speaker 12 Don't be embarrassed. It's not your fault, maybe.
Well, I'm hoping this episode I'll learn how to fix it, though. I'm proud to say that this is my first episode where I don't have this problem.

Speaker 12 Oh, so you just are, you have no problem with your internet. I have great internet.
It's the worst.

Speaker 13 Yeah, but she doesn't have oven mitts or

Speaker 13 fire extinguishers.

Speaker 12 So I also live in a basement, but I have good internet, you guys. Well, that's great.
I love that. You know, internet, it's so central to everything most of us do every day.

Speaker 12 It's basically a utility at this point. And I think a lot of people have this problem or this complaint that their internet is terrible.
And they don't necessarily know why.

Speaker 12 They just know it isn't good. If you're like me, you usually blame your internet provider.
But honestly, that's not always the problem.

Speaker 12 There can be lots of things that cause your internet to not be optimal.

Speaker 12 You know, it could be the hardware in your home, how you are connected in your home, and it can also be kind of like the way you're getting your internet.

Speaker 12 So, today on the show, we're going to tap into the mind of our colleague, Joel Santo Domingo.

Speaker 12 Joel is a writer at Wirecutter who covers Wi-Fi and home networks, basically, all of the tools that keep us connected to our digital life.

Speaker 12 Yeah, Joel is full of hacks and tips and tricks about how to better understand and improve your internet at home. And we're going to get into all of it right after the break.
Be right back.

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Speaker 12 Welcome back. Our guest today is Joel Santo Domingo, and Joel is a senior staff writer at Wirecutter who covers consumer tech, which includes things like Wi-Fi routers and hard drives.

Speaker 12 Joel's fun fact, which I love, is that he kind of technically shares stage with Aretha Franklin, but she was on stage and he was downstage left working the computer. Joel, I love that.

Speaker 12 Welcome to the Wirecutter Show.

Speaker 11 Thanks for having me.

Speaker 12 It's really nice to have you here. Before we get started, we need to start this episode with just a little disclosure.

Speaker 12 I have an in-law, my sister-in-law, who works for Spectrum, the internet company, and Joel, your wife, works for Verizon.

Speaker 12 We are not going to be giving any preferential treatment to any internet service providers, but we did want to get that out of the way. So our listeners know that.

Speaker 12 We're going to talk today about how to improve the internet in your home, regardless of where you get your internet. That's right.

Speaker 13 So, Joel, simple question.

Speaker 13 I need and want to know if you have an incredibly high threshold for pain or the patience of a patron saint because I don't know how you test internet connectivity every day and not want to pull all of your hair out.

Speaker 13 Truly, what's your secret?

Speaker 12 What's your process?

Speaker 11 It's a fun process. Essentially, taking my home, which is a regular two and a half story home with wood framing, and adding another Wi-Fi network to it.

Speaker 11 Basically, every Wi-Fi router we get in, I set it up as per the instructions and using the app or website, as the case may be, just like a normal user would,

Speaker 11 setting it up, hooking up a desktop computer to it to act as a web server, simulating streaming 4K videos or surfing the web or taking Zoom calls, that sort of thing.

Speaker 13 So it's like the Sandra Bullock movie, The Net?

Speaker 11 Pretty much, pretty much, but it's all self-contained.

Speaker 11 It doesn't actually go out to the internet because the Internet adds extra problems with traffic and you know your neighbor down the street he's streaming something so I isolate it from the internet and I'm just testing the the radio signal going back and forth between the router and these laptops Joel how long have you been doing this how long have you been testing I've been testing for wire cutter for about six years now but Before that, I tested PCs and other technology, including Wi-Fi, for almost 25 years.

Speaker 11 And prior to that, I was an IT tech and tech manager. So I've been doing this for a while.

Speaker 12 Can I ask a really basic, stupid question? Do you want to know the plot of the net?

Speaker 12 I love that. Go on.
This is what I'm embarrassed to ask, but I honestly, I'm going to be a proxy for, I think, many listeners.

Speaker 12 You know, a router is what gives you Wi-Fi, right? And then remotem is what's actually connecting you to the internet, right?

Speaker 11 Right. Yeah.
They're both magical little boxes, basically.

Speaker 11 Modem connects you to your internet provider, whatever that company is. And the router is the box box that tells all your devices to connect wirelessly to that internet.

Speaker 11 Sometimes they're combined in one box called a gateway.

Speaker 12 Joel, if people walk away with one thing after listening to this episode, what is the one trick to improve the Wi-Fi in their home?

Speaker 11 Probably the easiest thing to do would be to stay close to your router. Sitting next to your router, if you're not connected to it with a cord, is probably the best thing.

Speaker 11 The Wi-Fi signal from your router is best in the same room the router is in, strangely enough.

Speaker 12 Is the router the thing that usually has the Wi-Fi passcode on it?

Speaker 11 It's usually the thing that has the Wi-Fi passcode on it. Sometimes it'll have antennas sticking out of it.
Okay. But that's your router.

Speaker 11 It's usually a black plastic box sitting next to your cable modem.

Speaker 12 I'm realizing my router might be in the worst possible place. It's in the middle of my apartment, not in a room that I work in, not in a room I watch TV.

Speaker 12 But it's like positioned to try to access equally the places in my home where I am using internet.

Speaker 11 Middle of your living space is actually the best place for it. That way the signal will spread out.
It comes out in a sphere, basically, or a circle.

Speaker 11 You want to be somewhere within the circle of coverage.

Speaker 12 And if your router is basically beyond your line of sight, that's going to be interfering with your Wi-Fi. How?

Speaker 11 It's kind of like trying to talk to someone. If you're in the same room, things are going to be great.

Speaker 11 But if you're trying to talk to them and there's a wall in between you, you're not going to be able to hear them or not hear them as well.

Speaker 11 And if there's more than two walls or three walls or a brick wall, for example, it's going to block that signal.

Speaker 11 And just like if you're trying to talk to someone, Wi-Fi doesn't like going through more than a couple of walls or a brick wall.

Speaker 13 Joel, I want to be greedy and ask for one more juicy hack, please.

Speaker 11 Turning on and off your router and modem actually will cover a multitude of sins what do you mean by sins

Speaker 11 let's let's use the uh the talking analogy again if you are in a living space that is surrounded by other living spaces like an apartment building or a condo complex you're gonna have anywhere from a half dozen to a dozen to three dozen other Wi-Fi routers in the area.

Speaker 11 And all those routers talking at the same time will basically stomp on each other, even if you are not connected to their network. Their network is affecting you.

Speaker 11 It's kind of like when you're in a quiet bar versus a jazz bar that is really, really hopping.

Speaker 11 You're going to have a lot of noise around you, and that's going to interfere with your conversation, which is the Wi-Fi signal between you and your router.

Speaker 12 And so turning your router off and on again does what exactly?

Speaker 11 When you turn your router off and then on again, it actually looks around and sees what other signals are in the area and finds the signal that works best in that room at that time.

Speaker 11 So it can get a strong connection between your laptop and your router or your phone and your router.

Speaker 12 So it's kind of, to take it back to that restaurant analogy, it's like if you had moved to a private room that's quiet again.

Speaker 11 Pretty much.

Speaker 11 If you'd moved to a private room and it's quiet again, or another way I like to describe it is if you're thinking about the Wi-Fi network as you're speaking English to your router and the other routers on another channel, on another network name are speaking French, for example, you don't speak French.

Speaker 11 So you're kind of ignoring it. But if that other router is strong enough or is close enough to you, even though they're speaking French and you don't understand it,

Speaker 11 their conversation will still impinge upon yours. So clearing the router, turning it off, turning it on again will get you to a place where you're speaking again.

Speaker 11 You're just checking with your friend. Hey, can you hear me now? That's really what the router is doing.
It's turning it off, turning it on again.

Speaker 11 And then your laptops and your smart cameras and your phone will check with your router again and say, hey, can you hear me now? Oh, I can hear you now. Let's keep going.

Speaker 12 I'm seeing like a little Pixar animated show about this situation.

Speaker 12 But, you know, Joel, from what you're saying, it sounds like if you're in an apartment building, say, like I live in, this might be a bigger issue, right?

Speaker 12 You've got a lot of people around you at different apartments that have their own routers that are trying to speak to their owners' devices, and that can get really crowded, right?

Speaker 12 If you're in a house like out in the country where you're not picking up anybody else's Wi-Fi signal, that's going to be less of an issue.

Speaker 11 That is absolutely true. It's kind of like moving to a quieter room.
When you're in a quiet room, You don't have to yell at each other. You can just speak in a normal voice.

Speaker 11 The person can be sitting across the room from you or the person can be sitting next to you. And you'll probably be able to hear them quite equally there.

Speaker 12 So if you have a more expensive router, will it work better?

Speaker 11 Yes and no. An expensive router may have newer features like Wi-Fi 7.
And Wi-Fi 7 has some features in it that will work better with crowded Wi-Fi.

Speaker 11 But if there's two brick walls, For example, between your family room and your home office, and if your router is in your family room, there's still going to be a good chance you're going to drop Wi-Fi connections.

Speaker 11 You could install a mesh networking system, which is basically multiple routers connected together either by wires or wirelessly to improve your Wi-Fi in a larger home.

Speaker 11 But that, as they say, is a topic for another show. We do have a guide for that if you're interested.

Speaker 12 Always interested, Joel. Always.
But I do have a follow-up to that. I've never actually bought my own router.
I've always just rented it from whatever company services my area.

Speaker 12 But would you recommend that people go ahead and buy their own router so they're not doing that?

Speaker 11 I get that question a lot. If you have a router that your cable company or fiber company provides you and it works great, use it.

Speaker 11 If they are charging you 10, 15 bucks a month for using that router, or if the router isn't quite good enough for what you need in your home, then I would suggest purchasing a router.

Speaker 11 Over time, it'll take, you know, maybe 10 to 12 months for that to pay off.

Speaker 13 In summary, though, if I'm in my panic room, let's just say, and my $600,000 router is outside of it, it doesn't matter that it costs $600,000. It's not going to really necessarily be.

Speaker 11 No, if you're in a steel cage, essentially,

Speaker 11 you're not probably not going to get good Wi-Fi signal from outside that room.

Speaker 13 I think that's going to be really meaningful to a lot of people.

Speaker 12 Yeah, I think that that is the one takeaway you take away from this episode.

Speaker 12 Joel, you have written a lot about different ways to improve Wi-Fi. We've covered like kind of the real basic ones here.
And people can go read these pieces you've written.

Speaker 12 We're going to put them in the show notes, but I find a lot of these steps that you've written about like a little bit advanced for me personally. They're kind of like 2.0, 3.0.

Speaker 12 So I'm wondering if there is one more tip that you think would offer outsized rewards for doing, like one action somebody can take to significantly improve the internet in their home.

Speaker 11 This really applies mainly to desktops, laptops, and things like gaming consoles, but wired is always better than wireless.

Speaker 11 If you take your laptop and hook it up to your router directly, there's going to be an Ethernet port in the back. There should be a free one in the back of your router.

Speaker 11 Hook up an Ethernet cord to your laptop everything will be great and i promise you that that feels so 1990s like yeah get in the wave machine

Speaker 11 yeah i mean i feel like i haven't used an ethernet cord in more than a decade it's the one tip that i give all of my coworkers if they're having problems with zoom calls if you clip in a ethernet cord onto your laptop Boom, you're on Zoom calls.

Speaker 11 It's going to be steady. It's going to be great.
You're not going to look like a slideshow.

Speaker 13 I am

Speaker 13 sexy.

Speaker 12 Well, you're on Zoom, so nobody can see Rosie. I mean, I have terrible video quality.
You all know this on my calls from home. So this is beatborp, Christine.

Speaker 12 I actually have gotten an annual review where the only negative part of the annual review is my Wi-Fi is body.

Speaker 12 They're like, get an Ethernet core. Get a better internet connection.
You work at Wirecutter. What is your problem?

Speaker 12 But I don't have an Ethernet port on my computer.

Speaker 7 So how do I connect?

Speaker 11 Type this into Amazon Search or any search engine in

Speaker 11 USB to Ethernet adapter. And that will get you a probably $10 to $20 dongle, for lack of a better word, that will let you hook up Ethernet to any laptop.
Also have another easy solution.

Speaker 11 You can purchase something called a power line adapter, which basically allows you to plug your router into

Speaker 11 your power lines in your house and then connect those power lines to your computer with an Ethernet cable. Power line adapters are pretty simple to use and we have a guide about them on the site.

Speaker 12 My mind is exploding right now. That's a thing.
You can just use the electrical wires in your home essentially as what the Ethernet cord would have otherwise been doing.

Speaker 11 Absolutely. You can do it.

Speaker 12 Does it work well?

Speaker 11 It works reasonably well. It's not going to to be as fast as actually taking a physical Ethernet cable and stringing that through your house, but it will get the job done.

Speaker 11 It's going to be good enough for a Zoom call. It's going to be good enough even for playing games.

Speaker 11 Strangely enough, my son uses a PowerLine adapter in our home because it's faster than the Wi-Fi in playing games.

Speaker 12 Okay, so just to summarize, if you're having trouble with your internet connection in your home, it might be your Wi-Fi.

Speaker 12 And the first thing you should try is get close to your router because you'll be closer to a stronger signal. If that doesn't work, the next thing you should do is turn it off and on.

Speaker 12 We're never going to. Oh my gosh.
Yeah, okay, so it's old school advice, but it's classic for a reason. Now, if...

Speaker 12 You are still, like me, having lots of issues with your internet, the best next thing you can do is probably go wired.

Speaker 12 You should just go get yourself an Ethernet cord and an adapter and plug it into your computer. Or you can try this fancier technique that Joel has explained: this power line extender, which uses the

Speaker 12 electrical wires in your home to connect you to your modem. Yeah, that's pretty cool, actually.
I think I want to try that. So, now we're going to take a quick break.

Speaker 12 And then, when we come back, Joel will give us some insight on how to decide on an internet package that's right for you. Be right back.

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Speaker 1 The Wirecutter Show is supported by Rocket Mortgage.

Speaker 3 Your home is an active investment, not a passive one.

Speaker 5 And with Rocket Mortgage, you can put your home equity to work right away. When you unlock your home equity, you unlock new doors for your family.

Speaker 7 Renovations, extensions, even buying your next property.

Speaker 8 Get started today with smarter tools and guidance from real mortgage experts.

Speaker 2 Find out how at rocketmortgage.com.

Speaker 10 RocketMortgage LLC, licensed in 50 states, NMLSconsumerAccess.org, 3030.

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Speaker 12 Welcome back. This episode is all about how to improve your at-home internet.
And our guest is Joel Santo Domingo. So we just talked about the hardware.

Speaker 12 Now let's talk about how you actually get the internet into your home. Joel, I want you to run us through the options of internet services in order of best to worst.

Speaker 12 What is the absolute best way to get connected to the internet at home?

Speaker 11 Probably the best way right now is Fiverr, because it's actually a wired service that gets the fastest internet from whatever company you're using, whether it's Verizon, AT ⁇ T,

Speaker 11 Optimum, Spectrum, whomever, to your home.

Speaker 12 What are you really looking for when you're looking for a good, fast internet service to get internet into your home?

Speaker 11 Well, Fiverr is wonderful because its upload speeds are as high as its download speeds.

Speaker 11 Download speeds are great for streaming videos and downloading updates to games on your PlayStation, for example. And they're a really easy way to sell internet plans because faster is better, right?

Speaker 11 But upload speeds are important for things like sending photos and videos to ShareDrive or Google Photos and Zoom meetings.

Speaker 11 The most basic internet plans come with 20 to 30 megabits per second download speeds, but only about three or five megabits per second upload speeds. That's barely enough for one Zoom call.

Speaker 11 And if you have an upload speed of three to five megabits, that would come to a screeching halt if you have two work calls.

Speaker 12 So it sounds like the average person doesn't really need to be looking at the download speeds. What you really want to be paying attention to is upload speeds, right?

Speaker 12 So per person in a household, how fast do you want those upload speeds to be?

Speaker 11 The average upload speed you want per person probably is somewhere between five and 10 megabits per second. 10 to 20 would be actually better.

Speaker 11 But five to 10 would be enough per person because each Zoom call takes about three to five megabits upload speed.

Speaker 11 And if you have two Zoom work calls and your kids are remote learning at the same time, three to five total is not going to cut it. And the most basic

Speaker 11 fiber plans that I've seen out there are somewhere between 150 to 300 megabits per second.

Speaker 12 Whoa, so that would be enough for like 15 people to be on a video call at home, right?

Speaker 11 Absolutely. You could have your entire family on their phones on a FaceTime call all at the same time talking to another dozen people online.

Speaker 12 Sounds like kind of a personal nightmare, but yeah.

Speaker 12 We did it during the pandemic, which is why it sounds like a personal nightmare.

Speaker 13 So, Joel, you said that not everyone is set up to access fiber. So, how do I figure out if I can based on where I live?

Speaker 11 There are like a dozen tools out there to find what you can get at your home.

Speaker 11 You could go to each individual site, Verizon.com, ATT.com, T-Mobile.com, for example, plug your address in, and they'll tell you what they can give you.

Speaker 11 But there's one tool that I like to use, which is broadbandmap.fcc.gov.

Speaker 11 Enter your address, and it'll tell you all of the internet providers that are registered with the FCC that can give you service at your home.

Speaker 12 If, like me, you cannot access fiber, what's the next best option?

Speaker 11 The next best option is cable. This is the cable internet that most people are used to.

Speaker 11 Back in the day, it was an add-on to cable TV, but for the past 10 years or so, we've been seeing many cord cutters switch to internet-only plans and leaving cable TV behind.

Speaker 11 Cord cutters are those folks that instead of having a cable box hooked up to their TV, they're just doing it through streaming boxes like an Apple TV or a Fire Stick.

Speaker 12 Walk through the pros and cons of cable.

Speaker 11 Yeah, the pros of cable is it's really easy to find. A large portion of the country has been wired for cable because cable TV really was where we got TV.

Speaker 11 And if those cables are in your walls, you can get cable internet service.

Speaker 12 And what are some of the cons?

Speaker 11 Some of the cons are it can be slower, particularly on uploads. For the basic plans of cable, upload speeds are usually around 15 to 20 megabits per second.

Speaker 11 And while those are good enough for a smaller family, if you have an extended family living near your house, for example, that may not be enough.

Speaker 12 Okay, Joel, so what is the last option that you might be presented with from an internet service or provider if you don't want or don't have access to fiber or cable?

Speaker 11 If you don't have access to fiber or cable, there are two wireless internet services available. Those are satellite or 5G home internet.
Let's talk about 5G home internet because that's easier.

Speaker 11 5G home internet uses wireless cell phone towers, similar to the ones that connect your internet to your cell phone.

Speaker 11 Basically, 5G home can access the internet where your phone has service, though a 5G home router will get better reception because it's plugged in all the time and it's in a stationary place.

Speaker 11 T-Mobile, ATT, and Verizon all have stakes in 5G home service, and they are pushing it right now.

Speaker 11 Satellite, on the other hand, uses clusters of satellites orbiting the Earth to beam internet back and forth from the surface. So satellite's big benefit, it works.

Speaker 11 most anywhere in the country and around the world even at sea and it's available in rural spots where 5g and fiber are hard to find.

Speaker 11 Starlink is the flashiest of the satellite providers, but there's others like Viasat and HughesNet. Those are the other big names in satellite.

Speaker 11 And they'll basically come and install a satellite dish on the side of your house, just like satellite TV, and drill a hole in your wall and hook that up to a router.

Speaker 11 And then you'll be able to get Wi-Fi in your home that way.

Speaker 11 The benefits are it reaches everywhere, but it's less responsive than fiber or cable for things like gaming, but they are fast enough for streaming services.

Speaker 11 So, Netflix will be fine, Zoom will be fine, Teams will be fine.

Speaker 12 So, when you have a Wi-Fi name and it automatically has, like, I don't know if this happens to you guys, but you get like two Wi-Fi names when you hook up to a new provider.

Speaker 12 It's like the regular name, and then there's one that's a duplicate, but it says 5G next to it.

Speaker 12 What is that?

Speaker 11 Yeah, that's one of the fun things, or not so fun things actually, about using Wi-Fi is that older routers and sometimes the routers that you get from a cable company or a fiber company will have your network name, usually like ATT 5363.

Speaker 12 Or Free Brittany in my case.

Speaker 11 Free Brittany, and it'll see Free Brittany and then Free Brittany-5G. And what that is, is the 5 gigahertz channel or band on your router.
They separate that.

Speaker 11 If you have older devices like smart cameras or a ring doorbell, you can connect to the regular network on that. and that's slower.
It's got better range.

Speaker 11 Then you would connect your phones and your laptops up to the Free Brittany dash 5G, and that's a little bit faster, but it's also short range.

Speaker 11 So that is the network that might have problems if you're three, four, five rooms away from the router. That 5G is not the 5G home that we've been talking about.

Speaker 11 5G home is a totally different thing. It's 5G as it relates to cell phones.
Dash 5G on your router's Wi-Fi is the similarly named but also confusing thing that Wi-Fi routers do.

Speaker 13 They came up with a specific name for dongle,

Speaker 13 but they didn't come up with a different term, both called 5G, but it's two different things.

Speaker 11 They're both called 5G, but they are totally different names.

Speaker 12 I actually don't. Excuse me for getting the dongle.
I actually don't.

Speaker 12 So Joel, once you've looked up what's available in your area for an internet provider and you've decided whether to go with fiber, cable, or 5G, which sounds like that's never the first choice, the next step is to pick a company or service provider.

Speaker 12 As a customer, do you have any leverage to get a better deal than the internet providers are advertising?

Speaker 11 You can to a certain degree. If you're lucky enough to have fiber and cable in your area, you can switch between one or the other if one is significantly cheaper for a similar package.

Speaker 11 You know, that said, you really have to check on each provider's website if your specific home or apartment unit has services.

Speaker 11 I've seen neighborhoods where one apartment building has cable, but units in another tower next door have fiber.

Speaker 13 Can you explain how that could be the case?

Speaker 11 It's essentially what happens with your building management or your landlord. They have to pay to have service installed in your building.

Speaker 13 In a house, though, Joel. Like if I buy a house, can I call one of the companies and ask them to set up fiber in my home? How does that work?

Speaker 11 You can.

Speaker 11 They will do it if you pay. And sometimes it'll be as simple as, oh, you have to pay $150 for them to drill a hole in your wall.
But sometimes it could cost $10,000, $20,000.

Speaker 11 I've heard from some news stories that they will have to drill holes and run cable underground to get to people's houses.

Speaker 12 That's some expensive internet.

Speaker 13 Do you want it? If you want fiber, Christine, I'll come to your house.

Speaker 12 I'll drill it. I will just say one point on this price, you know, getting the best price on internet.
I have in the past called my internet provider and negotiated down.

Speaker 12 So there is, you know, there's even scripts on the internet how to talk down the price.

Speaker 11 You talk with what's called their customer retention department, and you mentioned scripts online. They actually have scripts.

Speaker 11 The customer service representatives have scripts that they go through to say, oh, Mr. Smith, you have internet service at one gig at $60 a month.

Speaker 11 What would you say if we gave you two gigs a month for $90

Speaker 11 or 500 meg for $30 a month?

Speaker 11 They have scripts all set up and figure out, okay, are you the type of person that will switch tomorrow if given a chance, or are you the type of person that would stay with that company because you're brand loyal, for example?

Speaker 12 Or too lazy.

Speaker 12 That too.

Speaker 13 Joel, I always find it rather demoralizing having to get on the phone. I always, always feel like I'm being sold things I don't need.

Speaker 13 So I want to know what should I actually pay attention to on a phone call like that?

Speaker 13 You know, you just threw out some words that, and my heart started to pound because I don't think I understood them. So what do I need to pay attention to and what can I filter out?

Speaker 11 Sure.

Speaker 11 You know, they always talk about things like high-speed internet and gig speed, and those are kind of marketing terms because the FCC defines broadband speed as being anything over 100 megabits per second, which these days covers the most basic first-tier internet plans.

Speaker 11 Download speeds are the first thing they throw out at you because it's easy to say, oh, we've got 500. We can offer you 500 megabits per second, and that's faster than 200.

Speaker 11 But if you drill down a little bit into the fine print, you'll find the upload speeds, which are actually going to be more important for you, particularly if you work from home.

Speaker 12 And how do you even figure out what your current speed is?

Speaker 11 Well, if you want to figure out what your current speed is, you can go to a couple of websites. The two that I like to use are speedtest.net and fast.com.
Fast.com is run by Netflix.

Speaker 11 So it's a way to check if you can get Netflix in your home and if it's fast enough. But that said, go to either these chief websites and click on go or run speed test.

Speaker 11 Speed test will automatically give you both the upload and download speed you can get from your device, from your phone or from your laptop at that moment.

Speaker 11 On fast.com, you'll still have to click show more info to see your upload speeds. You really want to see at least 10.
preferably 25 or higher on your upload speed.

Speaker 11 And, you know, Christine, actually, this would be a good tip. If you're your office, go to speedtest.net.
And if your upload speed is two

Speaker 11 or one megabits per second, move closer to the router.

Speaker 12 Oh my gosh, I'm just going to have my phone out like a compass all day in my apartment, like a radar.

Speaker 13 The old, can you hear me now? Yes,

Speaker 12 basically.

Speaker 12 Well, before we wrap, we usually ask our guests one final question. What's the last thing you bought that you've really loved?

Speaker 11 Actually, that would be the Breville Smart Oven Air Fryer Pro toaster oven. Whoa,

Speaker 12 fancy.

Speaker 11 Yeah, it went on sale during Black Friday. So I really jumped on it because our 20-year-old Black and Decker toaster oven finally died.
It works really, really well. Leftovers are great.

Speaker 11 My son cooks cooks frozen pizzas all the time because he is a teenager, and it's great. Love it.
Love it.

Speaker 13 Thanks, Joel. Thank you for demystifying this for us.
You are an absolute gem and a wizard, and we really appreciate it.

Speaker 12 Thank you. Thanks, Joel.
Thank you.

Speaker 13 Some real good tips in there.

Speaker 12 I never would have been able to understand it without him breaking it down to us like we're children. He was very patient.
What I need.

Speaker 13 What are you taking away from this?

Speaker 12 All right. My big takeaway here is upload speeds.
I hadn't really considered upload speeds before, and I kind of always just assumed my internet package was not good.

Speaker 12 And I think we were always looking at the download speeds. For me, I've just realized how important that is.

Speaker 12 And I am going to test my upload speeds in the room I usually take my video calls and see what that speed is. And I'm likely going to try to go wired.
I like that. Old school.
Yeah.

Speaker 13 For me, it's just his number one piece of advice from the top: get close to that router. Stay close to that router.

Speaker 13 That your router is good at filtering what you need, but the further you are from it, the more likely that your neighbor's waves, especially in an apartment building, can affect your signal.

Speaker 12 I had always assumed it was the walls that were the problem, but I mean, I think the walls don't help. They don't help, but this point about the neighbors was really interesting to me.

Speaker 13 That the worst thing for your signal is traffic,

Speaker 11 i.e., your neighbors.

Speaker 12 My takeaway is that I am moving again. Hooray.

Speaker 12 And I'm ready to negotiate this time for the right internet provider and also, you know, what kind of internet I'm getting because I've never even paid attention to that.

Speaker 12 So I'm ready to haggle a little bit over the phone. Good luck.
Thank you.

Speaker 13 If you want to find out more about Wirecutter's coverage or if you want to check out the guides Joel referenced today, go to nytimes.com/slash wirecutter or as ever, you can find a link in the show notes.

Speaker 13 That's it for us. Thanks so much for listening.
Peace.

Speaker 12 Bye.

Speaker 12 The Wirecutter Show is executive produced by Rosie Guerin and produced by Abigail Keel. Engineering support from Maddie Mazziello and Nick Pittman.
Today's episode was mixed by Katherine Anderson.

Speaker 12 Original music by Dan Powell, Marian Lozano, Alicia Baut YeTube, and Diane Wong. Wirecutter's deputy publisher and interim general manager is Cliff Levy.
Ben Fruman is Wirecutter's Editor-in-Chief.

Speaker 12 I'm Kyra Blackwell. I'm Christine Sierra Clissette.

Speaker 13 And I'm Rosie Guerin.

Speaker 12 Thanks for listening.

Speaker 12 I feel like this is the move if you've decided to become a homesteader or a back-to-the-land person. Like you, you're like, I'm moving to the country.

Speaker 12 I'm going to have a well and lots of land and goats.

Speaker 13 I'm basically describing my like retirement plan, but um, yeah, you want to go low-tech in every part of your life, except you want to connect to satellites orbiting the Earth. Yeah.

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