In a fast paced world we want everything right here, right now and a slow Internet connection can be incredibly frustrating. If you feel like your Internet connection is slower than it should be, try these tips to help speed things along.
First find out what speed your Internet is supposed to deliver. Once you’ve done this you can contact your Internet Service Provider (ISP) and let them know about the slow connection. It could be that the problem is at their end, not yours. If this is the case then it is something they can resolve fairly easily. If it turns out the problem is not to do with your ISP then you will need to continue looking into what is going wrong at your end. One useful thing to do is to conduct a
speed test, which can be done online. By doing a speed test you can establish if the problem is with just one computer, or all the computers connected to your network. A speed test should present a result quite close to what your ISP is supposed to be providing. If one computer gets a low result and the others are fine, then you know that your slow Internet connection is caused by a problem with your computer.
If you have established that your slow Internet connection is due to your computer, there are a few things you can do to help speed things up. An Internet connection requires memory to be able to deal with the speed you have paid for from your ISP. If you have lots of unnecessary programs open this could be slowing things down. Close any programs you are not using and delete the ones you never use. Another thing to try is to carry out a virus and spyware scan. If you are infected you can loose lots of memory and so can contribute to a slow Internet speed. You can get virus-scanning programs for free so it won’t cost you anything.
A simple thing to help speed up your Internet speed is to give your hard drive a spring clean. If it is nearly full then delete any files you do not use or move some things over to CD or an external hard drive. Computers use spare hard drive space as a kind of virtual memory, so if your hard drive is full it will slow down your computer, and your Internet speed.
Something that a lot of people wont consider is that your choice of Internet browser can affect your Internet speed. Most people will use Internet Explorer, as it is usually set as default on many machines. Whilst being a good browser, it does use lots of resources and doesn’t block things like JavaScript ad Flash, all of which use up memory, hence slowing down connection speed.
Lastly, if all else fails you may have to consider an upgrade. Older computers simply do not have the memory and capability to run as fast as newer machines.