What It Costs to Run a Router 24 Hours a Day
A router runs 8,760 hours a year. The hourly figure is tiny, but it only starts to make sense once calculated, and the result often contradicts expectations.
Hardware
All guides
Guides
Wi-Fi, internet security, connection troubleshooting, and networking for small businesses. All written in-house.
Security
How to Safely Sell or Dispose of an Old Phone
An old phone being sold carries more than photos: your home Wi-Fi password, live app sessions, and access to the CCTV cameras set up through its apps.
Troubleshooting
Slow Wi-Fi in Crowded Apartment Buildings
In a house, your Wi-Fi competes with two or three neighbours. In an apartment, one phone can see fifty networks at once, all fighting over the same air.
Hardware
Outdoor Access Points
Exterior walls are twice as thick as interior ones, and often reinforced concrete. Wi-Fi that's strong in the living room is down to one bar in the gazebo, not because of distance, but because of the wall.
Security
How to Check for Hidden Cameras in Hotels and Rentals
Modern hidden cameras are tiny, cheap, and send their footage over Wi-Fi. That's exactly their weakness: they have to be on the network, and the network can be inspected.
Troubleshooting
Phone Won't Connect to Wi-Fi After a System Update
The router hasn't changed, the password hasn't changed, other devices work, only the freshly updated phone refuses. It's almost always the phone introducing itself to an old router in a new way.
Networking
Beamforming, MU-MIMO, and OFDMA
Two routers at double the price difference often differ in just these three terms. Some genuinely matter, but only if your devices support them too.
Troubleshooting
Internet Slower After Replacing the Router
The Rp300k provider router is replaced by a Rp1.5m Wi-Fi 6 router, and the speed test goes down. The router isn't at fault, a new router ships with defaults that may not suit your home.
For Business
Networking for Internet Cafés and Game Centres
One visitor downloading an 80 GB game on PC number 7 can make ten other players lose to lag. A café network has to be designed to prevent that, not hope it doesn't happen.
Hardware
External Wi-Fi Antennas
A 9 dBi antenna doesn't make the signal "stronger". It changes its shape: further sideways, thinner up and down. That's good for some homes, and actively bad for multi-storey ones.
Security
Setting Up Safe Wi-Fi and Internet for Elderly Parents
You set up Wi-Fi at your parents' house, then went home. Since then, every "your parcel is held" message and every call "from the bank" reaches them with nothing in between. Most of that risk can be reduced in one afternoon.
For Business
Wi-Fi for Food Stalls, Street Cafés, and Angkringan
Street café customers have long asked "is there Wi-Fi?". Answering "yes" doesn't have to be expensive, but a few things separate Wi-Fi that brings customers from Wi-Fi that just brings people who sit.
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