How to Speed Up Internet Browsing

If your looking to speed up internet browsing there are 3 areas which need to be looked into

• The speed of the internet from the exchange to your house

• The speed at which it arrives at your computer

• The speed at which your computer can utilise it

The speed of the internet from the exchange to your house

To speed up internet browsing firstly you need to ascertain the speed of the internet connection that’s arriving at your house, many packages advertise speeds of 2mb, 4mb, 8mb or even 20mb, but this is advertised as an up to or maximum speed, up to 8mb or up to 20mb;  In 99% of connections it will never reach this speed, if your internet speed reaches 50% of advertised maximum speed that’s a pretty good.

To find out the speed of the connection visit www.speedtest.net this will then advise on your download and upload speeds.

Once you’ve done this you’ll have a clearer picture of the speed so you can calculate the percentage of your maximum advertised speed, then you’ll have a clearer picture of where the issue is.

If the speed is far less than the package your paying for contact your service provider, they should be able to increase internet speed

If the internet speed is reported as being ok then read on..

The speed at which it arrives at your computer

Now we can try several more things to speed up internet browsing , and have a bench mark to go back to, to see if things have been speeded up at all.

Line filters

Every phone line or extension in your home must have a line filter installed ( a line filter is a small box that cuts down on line interference ) it fits into a phone socket and the phone or fax runs from this, ( the more interference on a phone line = slower internet speeds.

Phone line cables, having phone line cables which have excessive cable and are too long can result in a drop of line power, giving the same effect as above, ensure the distance between the router or modem is as close as possible and the cable is also as short as the distance will allow

Poor connections, if your phone line was installed more than 10 years ago it’s worth either getting the box replaced or the cables re-seated to ensure that the connection is as efficient as possible, as these are copper based they do tarnish.

The speed at which your computer can utilise the connection speed

One of the biggest culprits of slow internet speeds are wireless networks, make sure the laptop is within distance to make sure your getting a good signal ( to check the wireless strength hover your cursor over the wifi icon at the bottom right of the screen)

The further away you are the weaker the signal and the slow the data transfer. A good test to see where the issue lies is to either see if another computer also runs slow when connected to your internet, or by plugging your computer in via a cabled connection and see if the speed changes.

Other reasons for slow internet connections

Do you share the internet connection with other people/computers, are they big on downloading movies, songs or other large files, this can have a big negative impact on your internet speed, even to the point of your ISP throttling your internet connection as they might consider your abusing there fair usable policy, even if you are on an unlimited download package.

If you have a wireless internet connection is it protected? If not you could have a leecher ( someone who connects to other peoples unprotected wireless networks for nothing ) and basically steals the connection bandwidth, read more on protecting your wireless network here ..

Something else is running on your computer, check for spyware, also run Services.Msc from the Start > Run Menu and you’ll be able to see all processes currently running, read more here about processes.

If you network card configured incorrectly? Or is the type causing an issue, make sure your not using 802.11b which is the older slower type of wireless networking.

If you want to speed up internet browsing by a larger degree, then a cable connection could be just what your looking for, most cabled connections are Optical and there is no data drop to your home so if they advertise 20mb that’s what you’ll get, but remember the internet connection can only be as fast as the slowest computer/website that your connecting to.

If the issue turns out to be your Wireless connection checkout our speed up internet article which concentrates on slow WiFi problems

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