Like millions of people in Europe and around the world, you are brought into this predicament of working from home. You might be having issues with slowness. It disrupts your work and it is difficult to concentrate on your tasks. Here we explain what the causes are and how to fix them.

Boost your wifi

In businesses, thanks to the intervention of your IT department, the quality of the wifi is excellent. Indeed, they regularly placed cells that allow a uniform signal to be obtained.

At home, despite the quality of the equipment that your telecom operator provides you today, the quality of Wi-Fi at home is often still very variable. There are several factors to consider.

• Check that your computer and your wifi modem are not too far apart (ideally maximum 10m).
• As much as possible, avoid any wall or slab (especially reinforced concrete) as this greatly degrades the signal.
• For aesthetic reasons, you have placed your wifi modem in the TV cabinet. Such a modem generally broadcasts its signal downward. It is preferable to place your wifi modem as high as possible.
• If these measures have no effect, use a signal repeater.

Your company's internet connection, a bottleneck

While working in the office, access to your files is done internally. Sometimes you only see slowdowns when browsing the Internet.

Your business is, like your home, connected to the Internet by an xDSL, cable or fiber connection. Normally, if your company does not use cloud tools, the connection to the Internet is relatively lightly used. But in times of telecommuting, the situation changes.

Indeed, when all the workers are at home, document management is done through the company's Internet connection (using a VPN, see below). It therefore becomes a bottleneck. As soon as you open a document, add it to an email, copy it, move it, ... it is distributed across the Internet and you use an important part of this link.

To avoid this problem, it is best to use tools that work directly on your document server. Thus all operations are carried out on your company's server with very little use of the company's Internet connection. You save bandwidth for other applications that really need it.

Cooperlink allows you to work this way. Do not hesitate to contact us for more information.

The VPN can also be misconfigured

VPN (virtual private network) is a software component that creates a real tunnel between your computer and your company network. This way, it is as if it were connected directly to the internal company network. But with an important nuance: the Internet network in between and the bottleneck discussed above.

When the worker has direct access to the company's file server, they use the VPN. However, when accessing web applications, they should use their local internet connection. But often VPNs are misconfigured and all traffic goes through the VPN. Concretely, it is as if everyone passes through Paris to get to any destination in the world!

Ask your IT professional for help to make sure that your Internet traffic goes through your own Internet connection.

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