Your Wi-Fi has too many devices—this $15 switch can fix that

Published Sep 9, 2026, 3:00 PM EDT Ismar is a Senior Author at How-To Geek. He previously worked as a writer, editor, and general manager at a content agency before joining the team in 2023. He began his writing career in 2021 after completing a BA in English Language and Literature. Beyond How-To Geek, Ismar has contributed to Red Stag Fulfillment and Authority Hacker. He has also worked on various SEO projects to help clients improve their search visibility. Ismar has been around Windows PCs since the age of three, so friends and family naturally chose him as the resident tech support. His projects often involve tinkering, such as disassembling mechanical keyboards and gaming mice to mod his beloved gear. He also enjoys pushing hardware to the max through overclocking while staying on a reasonable budget. An avid gamer, Ismar has logged thousands of hours across various genres, including first-person shooters, RPGs, racing games, and roguelites. When he is not at his desk, he is probably exploring other people’s phones to discover their quirks and features or experimenting with the latest AI tools. In his free time, Ismar enjoys spending time with his wife, working out at the gym, playing guitar and bass, cooking gourmet meals, and traveling. Above all else, he’s a proud cat owner. If you're not happy with your internet connection around the house, your ISP and Wi-Fi router are probably the first things you'll blame. But before you pay for a faster internet plan or a new router, there's a much cheaper solution you should try first: a simple unmanaged switch. Allow me to explain. A cheap switch solves your router's Ethernet port problem Turn one Ethernet port into many The vast majority of budget Wi-Fi routers only have three or four LAN ports and an additional WAN port that connects to the modem for internet access. Ten years ago, this might have been enough for most households. You'd connect your desktop, laptop, and perhaps a gaming console to the router, and that's about it. Everything else could connect to Wi-Fi, and it was good enough. However, with the advent of all kinds of smart devices like smart TVs, cameras, hubs, speakers, and displays, as well as other devices with Ethernet ports, such as NAS enclosures, it's surprisingly easy to run out of ports. This often makes Wi-Fi the option most people default to, and while there's nothing wrong with that, it doesn't come without its compromises. For starters, a wired connection is far more stable and often quite a bit faster. But if you don't have any more ports on the back of your router, it's easy to just dismiss the option of going wired. Thankfully, that can be easily remedied, and the solution is far cheaper and simpler than you might think—just get an unmanaged switch. A 5-port Gigabit Ethernet switch like the TP-Link TL-SG105 only costs around $15, and setting it up couldn't be easier. TP-Link TL-SG105 5-Port Gigabit Ethernet Switch $15 $20 Save $5 Connect four devices to a single Ethernet port with TP-Link's simple five-port powered Ethernet switch. Simply connect one Ethernet cable from your router to any of the ports on the switch, and just like that, you've effectively added four extra Ethernet ports to your router. You can now finally add a fast, stable wired connection to every device in your household that supports it. Aside from adding more ports, there's another practical benefit: you can move the switch to the spot where you need it most. The ideal place for a Wi-Fi router isn't necessarily the same as the ideal place for your switch. This way, you can place the Wi-Fi router somewhere in the middle of your house for optimal coverage and run a single Ethernet cable to the switch in your office, where you have all your other devices set up. Your Wi-Fi works better when fewer devices use it Save your wireless bandwidth for the devices that need it Credit: Justin Duino / How-To Geek Aside from providing the benefit of a wired connection to all the devices you hook up to the switch, there's another massive, yet often overlooked benefit of going all-in on wired: you'll greatly reduce congestion on your Wi-Fi network. Wi-Fi is a finite resource, especially if you live in a crowded building where multiple households are operating their own networks. Every active device you move off Wi-Fi means less contention for airtime for the devices that have no choice but to rely on a wireless connection. Note that this won't magically increase your Wi-Fi's signal strength or maximum speed, especially if you already have a decent Wi-Fi 6E or Wi-Fi 7 router, but it can improve things like latency and real-world throughput when your wireless network is busy. This is especially useful if you've got a large number of devices regularly transferring data over Wi-Fi. If you move bandwidth-hungry devices like your PC, NAS, TV, or game console to Ethernet, you'll remove their traffic from the Wi-Fi, leaving more airtime available for your phones, laptops, and smart devices that can only use Wi-Fi. Think of it like a busy highway. For every vehicle you can take off the road, it results in less traffic for everyone else. The highway itself hasn't gotten wider, and the speed limit (your internet speed) hasn't changed—you've simply got fewer vehicles saturating the highway. This same basic principle applies to Wi-Fi. The wireless signal doesn't get any faster or stronger, but you're reducing the amount of traffic competing for airtime. Upgrade your local traffic with the wired network Stop sending huge files over Wi-Fi when wired is an option Credit: Patrick Campanale / How-To Geek If you've got a NAS like me and frequently move files between it and your other devices, Wi-Fi can easily limit how much speed you get. While 5GHz Wi-Fi can get close to gigabit speeds, and 6GHz Wi-Fi can potentially go even faster, you'll rarely have the ideal conditions to get that kind of bandwidth. A wired Gigabit Ethernet connection can generally get you a gigabit in real-world use (well, a bit less due to protocol overhead), which makes for reasonably fast and consistent local file transfers between your devices. Perhaps the best part about adding a switch to your network is that it gives you the opportunity to upgrade to 2.5GbE or even potentially faster Ethernet, allowing for even faster transfers, particularly when the drives on both ends of the connection are using an SSD. If you made the mistake of buying a Wi-Fi router with Gigabit Ethernet, as I did, thinking it would be enough, switching to a 2.5GbE switch allows you to remedy that. Of course, this is assuming your devices support 2.5GbE as well. You probably don't have an internet plan above a gigabit anyway, so this networking upgrade only makes sense for your local transfers—and an unmanaged switch is perfect for that. A cheap unmanaged switch isn't going to perform miracles While an unmanaged switch gives you a super easy way to move more devices on your network to a wired connection and free up space on your Wi-Fi, it's not a magic pill. Your internet connection is still limited to whatever you're paying your ISP for; your signal won't get stronger, you'll still have dead zones if your router's signal can't physically reach parts of your house, and Wi-Fi interference from other people's networks won't disappear. That being said, making the move to wired can significantly improve the overall networking experience on all your devices, as both the devices you move to wired and the ones that stay wireless benefit from less wireless traffic. The best part? Switches are shockingly cheap.