Where's the fastest wifi in Portland?

January 30, 2014 5:40 PM

I need to be able to watch live streaming video for a couple hours so that I can do a live transcription. My house wifi isn't good enough even with the router sitting in my lap. The video cuts out sometimes.

Bonus points for North Portland or between North Portland and downtown.

I know I can just ask the internet-friendly Portlanders I know IRL but then I realized that there's lots of Portlanders already on metafilter, so maybe I can get a wider range of answers more quickly here.

I am assuming it's a wifi problem and not a my-computer problem because my computer does most everything just fine. I've never had to care about speedy internet before. Where do I find it!?

posted by aniola to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

Best answer: Why not just run an ethernet cord from your router to your laptop? That would be more reliable and faster than any wi-fi connection. If there's still a problem, it's probably not the speed of your internet connection but the connection of the site hosting the video. There are many steps between your internet connection at home -- even if was the fastest possible connection -- and that other site, and there could be congestion at any of those steps. There's simply no way to control that completely.

Also, make sure that all the installed software relevant to the streaming video is the latest version: e.g. Flash, Silverlight, Java, etc. That can affect speed as well. If you don't know what software the live video will use, now would be a good time to find out.
posted by shivohum at 6:05 PM on January 30, 2014 [4 favorites]

Google is implementing much faster wifi at many Starbucks stores. The one I've tried in Eugene is faster than any wifi I've ever tried.
posted by tarvuz at 8:36 AM on January 31, 2014

The ethernet cord is a good suggestion. I live in SE Portland near 205 and Foster and had terrible, terrible speeds when I used Clear Wireless. Now I have Comcast and the wi-fi speeds are fantastic.
posted by tacodave at 3:08 PM on January 31, 2014