Router questions – home internet diabolical !!

[seadragon]

I will be honest, I don’t really understand what a router actually does, can someone please explain to me their purpose? (in plain speak).

I am starting to do some research as I believe you can use them for travel and always be online, but I don’t get how that would work.

1) I wouldn’t mind something that would pretty much guarantee me access when I am on the train or tube.
2) Most importantly however we only have basic broadband in my village. There is no high speed or fibre. It generally hovers around 1-2mb download speed at night, if you are lucky.


Can I please have suggestions how my internet speed could be improved, if at all?

I have tried ringing BT, but the internet is an issue throughout the village.

Any help to alleviate some pain at home and also for a travel purpose, would be amazing. Any tips gratefully received

Thanks

[seadragon]

Thanks, the MIFi is I guess what was being referred to. It was called a travel router when I googled, as I saw that Belkin and others do one. They look like little boxes and some even double as chargers, with little usb plug-in points I will look at the dongle/mifi route.

I kinda had a feeling that if the connection speed coming it was already bad, that nothing really would improve things. I guess I have heard of changing channels on my BT modem, but I have no idea how to do that.

Thanks for the help

[seadragon]

Hi thanks eps and Emeye for all the info

We only have ADSL. We hear we might get fibre, but not for another year or 2.

We have the latest BT homehub and apparently we are pretty close to the local exchange. I don’t understand how a phone could be a mobile hotspot, so I will look it up. I have 4g on Vodafone, as apparently it’s the best in our village. I was on a BT sim but it was awful.

I will look up gigaclear too.

Thank you all for the suggestions, much appreciated.