‘You’re hindering your Wi-Fi’ say experts as Amazon Fire TV owners told to follow ’50 feet’ rule for best internet

YOU could unlock much faster internet on your Amazon Fire TV device by following a simple rule.

It’s linked to your Wi-Fi settings – and where your Fire TV Stick or device lives physically in your home.

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Your Wi-Fi connection affects how well your Amazon Fire TV Stick performs.

If you’ve got bad Wi-Fi, you might find that videos load slowly or not at all, downloads take an age, and the visual quality of content drops dramatically.

So improving your Wi-Fi can make your TV-watching experience much better.

One way is to take a look at the type of Wi-Fi network you’re connecting to.

It’s increasingly common for your home Wi-Fi to actually offer two networks: 2.4GHz and 5GHz.

In fact, these will typically display 2.4GHz and 5GHz in the network names by default.

But you can go into your Wi-Fi router’s settings to tinker with exactly how these networks appear.

One easy way to check your Wi-Fi settings is to type your router’s IP address (found on the back of the device) into a web browser and press enter.

A 5GHz network will typically deliver much faster internet speeds to your devices – including an Amazon Fire TV.

But 5GHz networks are intended for short distances, while 2.4GHz are better are delivering internet more widely across a home.

“5GHz is a faster band but doesn’t have the ability to penetrate walls as good as the 2.4 GHz band does,” Amazon explained in a support note.

“Device will connect to the 2.4GHz band by default as it has more signal strength.”

FEET FIRST

So making sure you’re using the right network for how close your Amazon Fire TV device is to your router.

It might not be simple to move your router or your Amazon Fire TV – but you do have control over the network you’re connecting to.

And if your router is close enough to your Fire TV to support a good 5GHz connection, you’ll want to use that.

“Many people are hindering their access to Wi-Fi in their homes solely due to the location of their router,” notes networking firm EPB in a memo.

“Wi-Fi signals will usually reach about 150 feet or over 45 meters for a 2.4Ghz frequency.

“Using a 5Ghz frequency, you will get about 50 feet or about 15 meters of reach.”

So if your Amazon Fire TV Stick is closer than 50 feet to your router, you might be better off connecting to the 5GHz network.

If it’s much closer – say 20 feet – or you live in a small apartment, then a 5GHz network will almost certainly be better.

However, 2.4GHz can be a much better choice if you live in a large home where your gadgets are far spread out from the router.

This post first appeared on Thesun.co.uk