We’ve all been there. You fancy a night in front of Netflix, and then disaster strikes. Every five seconds the video stream starts “buffering” thereby ruining your experience. It’s enough to drive most people crazy.
Here’s are some hacks to speed up a slow connection.
Troubleshoot Your Hardware
If the internet is slow, it’s easy to blame the connection itself. After all, the media is always reporting on how millions of people have unacceptably slow internet connections. But don’t condemn your ISP until they have been found guilty. First of all, check your hardware. It could be that you’ve got a problem with your PC, rather than the connection itself. Have a look and see whether the internet runs slow on all your connected devices. If it’s slow on your PC, but fast on your phone, chances are you’ve found the problem.
Switch Off Apps That Hog Bandwidth
If you’re struggling to find problems with your hardware, take a look and see what your software is doing. First off, check that you’re not doing anything obvious, like downloading a movie or a game. Clearly, doing this is going to make web browsing slower. Even anti-virus software can have an impact.
If you’re not, try adding some extensions to help cut down on your internet traffic. FlashBlock and AdBlock are great additions which can help eliminate bandwidth-hogging adverts. They’re also good at stopping pop-up animations and videos which, again, can hurt connection speeds.
Switch To A New DNS Server
When you type in an address into your browser, your computer uses what’s called a DNS server to look up that address. For most people, DNS servers run fine and respond snappily to their requests. But for some, DNS servers can be slow, or worse still, not working at all. In these situations, internet speeds can appear intolerably slow. Lifehacker has some tips on how to find a faster DNS.
Find A New Provider
Some internet providers are notoriously bad at providing a fast and reliable service. If that’s your provider, then it’s time to look elsewhere.
Usually, it’s the smaller, local internet providers that are more committed to their customer’s internet connection speeds. Smaller players have to compete harder to retain customers than larger companies. And as a result, they tend to offer a higher quality of service all around. Click here for more information.
The speed that you’ll get will ultimately depend on the type of connection you have in your area. If there’s an NBN connection nearby, your internet should be lightning fast. If you’re on ADSL, it’ll be slower.
Optimise Web For Slower Connection
Most people have a reasonable internet connection speed. And that means that websites can afford to build a lot of bloat into their platforms. But when speeds are slow this bloat can make the web unusable.
At this point, you’ve got a few options to hurry things along. Some internet browsers, like Opera, have turbo modes. These modes only display information on the page that the browser thinks is essential. You can also do things like turn images off and view only HTML versions of websites.
