You check into your hotel after a hard day of travelling. All you want to do is kick off your shoes, set the temperature to whatever hot or cold extreme you wouldn't be able to get away with at home, and say hello to your Netflix queue before some much-earned rest. And then you realise the terrible truth: Your Wi-Fi connection is horrible or, worse, non-existent.

The first thing I do when my internet goes down is panic. I panic thinking about all the things in the world that I'll be missing out on. The viral tweets, the breaches of my privacy by Facebook and god, all those images of delicious donuts on Instagram. I imagine that's what Julian Assange thought when they cut off his internet earlier this week.

What should you do when your internet goes down to get yourself back online as quickly as possible?

Qantas has released their half yearly results yesterday and, for the most part, the information was not that interesting. But if you're a frequent traveller with Qantas, a single line in their earnings report might bring a smile to your face. The company says they currently have 22 Wi-Fi enabled Boeing 737s with another plane being upgraded each week.

There are literally thousands of Wi-Fi routers on the market. Look through the catalog of an office supply or local computer store, and you'll be faced with a plethora of choices. And some vendors make it hard to compare models by giving marketing-based names to features that are really the same as competitors. This is our guide to the must-have features in a home Wi-Fi router today and five of the best to choose from.

Google Home and Chromecast devices are reportedly killing peoples' Wi-Fi. The problem, first reported by Android Police, originally seemed localised to users of the Google Home Max speaker (unavailable in Australia) and the cheap, but usually excellent, TP-Link Archer C7 router. However since Android Police first reported the problem, it seems to have spread to other Google devices and TP-Link routers.

You probably don't give it much thought, but your router is one of the most important gadgets in your home - without it there's no wi-fi for your laptops, your phones, and all the other web-connected devices you've got set up.

Free wi-fi is a windfall, especially if you're working from the library or airport, or if you just want to save data on your phone or laptop. Still, you do have to care about security when you're out and about. Here's how to surf safely, on any device.

iOS: Having an elaborate, secure password on your Wi-Fi network can be a great thing. A great thing until that weekend you have guests visiting from out of town and they have to try your 20-character Wi-Fi password a dozen different times because a zero looks like an O or they couldn't tell from your chicken scratch which letters are capitalised and which aren't.

According to Qantas' latest financial results, its domestic trial of free Wi-Fi has gone swimmingly -- so much so that from late next month, the airline plans to "accelerate" the service's rollout.

Wi-Fi is one of the most useful and important parts of using a computer and yet it's also one of the most frustrating. If you're plagued by slow speeds, bad reception, and other Wi-Fi issues, here are 10 ways you can power up the Wi-Fi in your home.

You might pay top-dollar for your Wi-Fi connection, but it probably doesn't feel that way when your connection cuts out around the house. That's why NetSpot Home is a essential for keeping tabs on your network's performance.

If you've ever had a Mac with a Wi-Fi hardware problem, then you know that attempting to use a USB dongle to fix your Wi-Fi has long been a funky experience. That's especially been the case over the last couple versions of macOS. Thankfully, Edimax has released an adaptor that not only works on current and previous operating systems, it might even work in the future.

As a work-from-anywhere writer, I'm always on the hunt for cool new cafes and work-friendly spaces to haul my laptop to. If I head somewhere new, though, I'm always plagued by the same questions: Are there outlets? Is the Wi-Fi reliable and is it free? Is there food or just old, crusty bear claws?

If you've been thinking about trying out Tor to anonymise all your web browsing, you could just download a browser and give that a spin, but it's much more fun to make your own highly portable proxy that you can easily connect to on a whim. Enter the Raspberry Pi.

When you pay for in-flight Wi-Fi, you typically have a few options. You can pay for a day pass, just pay for the duration of the flight, or pay for 30 minutes at a time. If you have a connecting flight with the same airline, a day pass on your first leg might be a cheaper option.

Android's always given developers more elbow room when it comes to hacking into its mobile OS. Here's a case in point: putting a connection speed indicator in the Android status bar (and notification tray).

If you wish your old, non-network printer could be accessible from anywhere in the house, PiMyLifeUp has a guide for turning a Raspberry Pi into a print server, making that old dump printer accessible from anywhere.

iOS: If you want to get any information about the Wi-Fi network you're connected to on your iPhone, you'd usually have to jump into the Settings. Wi-Fi Widget puts that info on the widgets screen.

Planning a trip to the US and need to stay connected while you're abroad? Airport Wi-Fi is hit or miss. If you need to get stuff done while you wait at the gate or you just want to know what to expect before your next flight, the folks at Speedtest have ranked the US airports with the fastest Wi-Fi.