Boosting Your Wireless Network Connection

With wireless networking technology advancing faster than we can read about it, it’s always good to know that your Mac is accessing and transmitting data with your wireless network as best as it possibly can. To obtain this requires a little maintenance work on your part.

Firstly, open up System Preferences, and navigate to “Network.” The side bar of the Network preferences pane will display all configured connections available on your Mac. Most of the time, especially with laptops, the user strictly connects via Wi-Fi. If this is the case, you can select any other connection types in that sidebar and remove them via the minus symbol directly below. Removing this network connection “clutter” tells your Mac what it should specifically be looking for as far as incoming connections.

Second, located next to the plus and minus symbol is a little gear. Click on this gear, and select “Set Service Order.” A small window will pop up. Beginning from the top, this list tells your Mac in what order to search for these connections. You will want to click and drag “AirPort” or “Wi-Fi” (if using Lion) to the top of this list. Click “OK” to set this order.

Lastly, and probably most effective in speeding up your Mac’s internet connection, is to configure your DNS servers. With “AirPort” or “Wi-Fi” selected in the sidebar, click on the “Advanced” button towards the lower right corner. Click on the tab labeled “DNS.” Now you’re going to add a few DNS server addresses into the box labeled “DNS Servers.” I, personally, have used Google’s public DNS servers for a while now with no complaints. Website addresses are resolved quickly and effectively in my experience using these servers, which are: 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4. You can also do some available DNS server research on your own, if you’d like, but I would highly recommend these DNS servers, as they have never let me down.

Upon completion of this network maintenance, click “Apply” at the bottom right of the Network preference pane, and give your new configuration a test run!