Does Wi-Fi get worse at night?
It is a common complaint that the home Wi-Fi appears to lose its speed and connectivity at night. So, you may find Buffering wheels spinning continuously if you attempt to stream some shows after dinner. Or web pages that take ages to load while you are surfing the internet before going to bed.
Do they ever actually resolve to the fact that Wi-Fi degrades in the evening hours or is it just in the mind? Several possible reasons can be the cause of the reduced Wi-Fi signal quality and speed during the night.
Higher Use Brings About Slower Rates
In many homes, internet service usage increases during evenings after school and work when family members are present and spending time browsing the internet, watching movies, gaming, making calls through applications, and other activities. This can weigh your home network overall and leave the Wi-Fi feeling slower even where your plan speed has not been altered.
Imagine your home Wi-Fi as a pizza for everyone to share. It was quiet during the day—maybe one or two people would pick a slice here or there. However, when they are all home in the evening, everyone scrambles to take some of the cheesy delight before it is all taken. While the pizza itself may be the same, because of the growing number of people who want it, no one can simply satisfy their hunger with a good slice of pizza.
Similarly, your wireless router has a limited bandwidth that it can provide at any one time. The more devices that are trying to connect to your Wi-Fi, download, stream, and play, the slower it gets as more congestion happens.
Disturbance by Other Wireless Signals
Other wireless signals that exist in the environment of your home can also reduce wifi performance, especially if you live in an apartment or a very populated area.
Sources of interference include:
- Neighbors' Wi-Fi networks
- Bluetooth devices
- Some of the products include baby monitors, cameras, and security systems.
- Cordless phones
- Microwave ovens
when people return home from work and school in the evening they turn on multiple devices including their phones, laptops, smart home devices, and other wireless devices that are near their homes. Increased numbers of signals in the wireless spectrum mean increased interference possible which might show up as slower and more erratic connections even though your router is still outputting the full signal range constant through the day and night.
Low Light Obstructing Signals
This one may sound a bit silly but some networking gurus recommend that low light and darkness during the night times can even alter the physical characteristics and quality of Wi-Fi transmission and lead to poor coverage.
How is this possible? Well, visible light and radio signals for Wi-Fi connectivity are from a similar part of the electromagnetic spectrum. During the day, the amount of light that comes through windows can amplify the wireless signals in your house and help them travel longer distances without obstruction.
While during the day, we may be able to see and distinguish objects due to the presence of visible light, as soon as it gets dark at night, this helpful light is gone. Without this optical enhancement, any obstacles to radio wave transmission such as walls could much more easily degrade and attenuate Wi-Fi signals as they traverse through your home and result in slowed-down connection speeds and a higher likelihood of disconnectivity especially in the farthest corners of the room from the router.
Although there is much more to learn, the “light can boost Wi-Fi” theory is promising, and making changes to the placement of low-wattage bulbs around your router and devices could reap benefits when the sun goes down.
Strategies for Improving Wi-Fi Speed at Night
If you routinely deal with lagging video calls or endlessly buffering Netflix after sundown, here are some useful ways to perk up your home Wi-Fi's performance during peak nighttime usage times: If you routinely deal with lagging video calls or endlessly buffering Netflix after sundown, here are some useful ways to perk up your home Wi-Fi's performance during peak nighttime usage times:
Upgrade Your Router – A router that is over three years old should be replaced with a more modern router that is compatible with the newer standards, such as 802.11ac/WiFi 5 or WiFi 6, thus increasing the maximum bandwidth that can be provided to devices. Some routers have smart Wi-Fi capabilities to automatically allocate bandwidth.
Reboot the Router – This is a simple step but has a very good effect in most cases. Reset your wireless router and modems to eliminate memory problems or any firmware goblins that can slow down the connection. In most routers, you simply pull out the plug for 60 seconds and then plug it back in to reset it. If the slowdowns are recurring at the same time, it may be wise to set daily 1 AM reboots.
Change the Channel – Perhaps, you should change your wireless broadcast channel to minimize the conflict with other Wi-Fi networks nearby. Install a WiFi analyzer application and observe the plethora of signals in the vicinity and the most vacant channel.
Increase Your Speed – If you experience latency issues due to reaching your allocated bandwidth, especially during evening video streaming or gaming, then it may be high time for you to get a higher-tier internet plan. Call your Internet Service Provider and enquire about the available packages for upgrading your connection.
Use Ethernet – Whenever it is possible, connect the devices that are not mobile to the router via an Ethernet cable and avoid Wi-Fi connections because they slow down the devices. Save the scarce Wi-Fi resources for only those devices that are portable such as phones and tablets.
Move Router to High Traffic Area – If it is possible to move the router nearer to such devices, this would improve the speeds. Ensure that the router and extending antennas are not confined behind a media center or enclosed within a cabinet that hampers signal transmission.
Thus, your Wi-Fi connection can slow down in the evening when people return home and go online, but the actual cause is the increased load on the available channel – not the decrease in signal strength at night. But with a few changes targeting bandwidth increase, plus better timing of when to download large files, you should be streaming, gaming, and surfing as you normally would with no slowing down the entire night.
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