Many of us have come across the scenario of a painfully slow internet connection; emails are taking forever to download, YouTube videos just won't seem to load and online gaming is too slow to even consider! If this ever happens to you then make sure you follow these tips to get your internet connection back up to speed.
Common Causes - A slow internet connection can happy for many reasons, sometimes it might even be out of your control, here are a list of the common causes for a connection to be slow:
Poor wireless signal or interference
Faulty hardware including poor cabling or router
Spyware or Malware infected machine
Poor ISP performance or over subscription
Bandwidth Theft
Identifying which of these is affecting you is the hardest part. Firstly you need to look at how you get the internet, wired or wireless? If you're on wireless then straight away you should plug a network cable directly from your computer into your switch or router and check your internet speeds then. If everything seems fine then chances are you are suffering from a poor wireless signal or some kind of interference.
If you do have a wireless problem then first check your signal, is it weak? If so you need to get within better range of your router or your internet speeds are always going to be poor. You might also consider changing your wireless channel if you suspect you are experiencing wireless interference (Try changing to channel one, six or eleven as these are non overlapping channels that are less prone to interference).
If you are happy that both wired and wireless is giving you poor speeds then next you should run a full scan on your system for malware and spyware. If you are infected then you can experience slow internet speeds for many reasons. Firstly some types of malware can 'steal' your bandwidth or use your internet connection as an unauthorised proxy server. Other reasons could include search engine hijacking or even your computer being forced through a proxy server in a remote location. Sometimes these can have high latency response times and can grind your connection speeds down to a halt.
If you have ran a full scan and are happy your computer is clean then you should probably consider checking your hardware, this includes your router, cabling and network cards. Consider using another computer to test the internet connection with and check the speeds. Sometimes it could be as simple as restarting your router and computer.
If all these above steps fail then there is a strong chance the ISP is at fault, this is a very common scenario. Sometimes ISP's have bottlenecks in their infrastructure or other times they simply 'oversubscribe' and their hardware cannot support their huge user base. You might want to try talking to them about your issues but don't expect miracles from their customer support! (Depending on the ISP). If all else fails many people find switching ISP's can give them a massive improvement on their speeds.
