I get it, you’re the Queen of England and you live in an enormous castle and you have recently installed a WiFi router conveniently sold to you by your internet service provider and it barely reaches you in your throne room and you need answers! Well, I’m here for you.

How do you TRULY get the most out of your WiFi signal? If you live in a normal castle like the rest of us, you are probably fairly confined to just one room as far as your choices of where to put your router. Usually, it is the room that has that random cable just poking its weird snaky head out of the wall. Not much of a choice there, whether that was going to be your nursery or your bedroom, that’s where your router is going to be, I guess. Let’s hope whoever did the wiring had any heart and gave you some good placement.

You do have a few options, other than location. Although I will say that location is obviously the most important. A signal can travel more easily through drywall than stone or metal, it’s better if space is more open and more central to your whole house. Floors are thicker than walls, so it will lose a significant amount of strength just going through levels. So pay attention to placement.

Another thing I jokingly alluded to earlier but is actually worth mentioning is that the first mistake you made (outside of still living in a castle in 2020) is that you let your internet service provider convince you that their wireless router is the one you want. Wireless routers are not that expensive, and you could most likely find something much more effective, and probably better looking literally anywhere else.

Another, seemingly novel idea in an age where EVERYTHING is wireless is to potentially keep your router in the office and plug your computers into it directly using an ethernet. I KNOW! It feels like blasphemy, but connecting to your router directly takes a whole device off of your network, and the more devices sucking your wireless juice at the same time, the slower your wireless network will be. Of course, it sucks to plug a wire into your laptop every time you want the internet, but there are some pretty sleek docks you can buy that have an ethernet port. You can just plug your computer into the dock and… BOOM, you’ve got the internet.

Also, plugging in directly by ethernet is faster too… but you know… we’re not downloading torrents anymore, so who cares.

Go try those and report back. Check all of the rooms too… the Throne Room, the Banquet Hall, The Armory, and of course your Stable… although if the stable is far away, you might not have much luck. In that case, I suggest a wireless hotspot to provide you with reliable WiFi as you groom your prized mare.