Few parts of a work-at-home web worker’s life are as essential to staying productive and comfortable as a home network. If you’ve put some thought into setting up and optimizing a Wi-Fi network, you’re probably getting a lot of out it, but you might be able to get significantly more. It’s important to test your setup regularly and make any modifications that may be needed. In this post, I’ll cover free applications you can use to do this properly.

Your router is the heartbeat of your home Wi-Fi network, and you can test if you’re running an optimized router in an optimized way very easily. For Windows users, Microsoft’s Internet Connectivity Evaluation Tool is the way to go.
The Internet Connectivity Evaluation Tool checks your Internet router to see if it supports all proper technologies, and is capable of things like fast download speeds. The tests take about 10 minutes to complete, and, sorry Firefox users, but you need Internet Explorer 6 or later for them. If the application does determine that your router isn’t up to snuff, you may want to consider a new router, given its importance to how your whole network functions.
While Microsoft’s tool focuses mainly on Internet connectivity measurements, QCheck, from IXIA, provides very detailed metrics and troubleshooting for your actual Wi-Fi performance. It’s a free tool, and it can help explain why your performance may suffer in certain scenarios at home.
QCheck measures network response time, throughput and streaming performance. The measurements include minimum, maximum and average thresholds. You get the exact amount of data sent per second during transactions, and you can experiment with things like moving your router and access points in between consecutive tests.
What if you’re a Mac user with an AirPort router and want to optimize your home networking performance? The whole process is much easier for you–nothing to download. The AirPort Utility, found right in Mac OS X, will help you optimize your home network performance.
Do you know of any good tools for optimizing a home network?
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