Contributing Factors to your Internet Speed

Internet connection can be the most important thing to you. Almost everything that any one person does can be tied to online activity. You can do banking transactions, shop online, study and finish a course, learn to cook, among others. As a result, your internet speed matters a great deal. Not everyone, though, enjoys the superior internet speed. 

There are a lot of contributing factors to how fast you can do things online and it pays to know them to make sure that you get what you are paying for. Internet speed for mobile users is also a huge concern because people today stay homeless and travel more. To be able to stay connected while on the go has become a truly important thing. The three biggest issues with internet speed are your location, the internet package that you are subscribed to, and how much you are using your connection. For a mobile connection, the device you are using will also play a role in determining your internet speed.

In the United States, people who live in the city have more options as to Internet Service Providers (ISP) while those who are in rural areas have less to choose from. This may be true for other countries around the world. It only makes sense that providers set up business in a bustling city and expand from there moving forward until they reach far-flung places. If you have tested your connection and learned that it is below par, or worse, not living up to the promise of speed that your provider has given you, there are ways to crank up your connection, within the limits set by your ISP.

Normal Internet Speed – How to Determine

It’s difficult to set a specific number to what you may call the normal internet speed. This is because a lot of factors come into play other than the ones controlled by your provider. For mobile connections, however, the ballpark figure used is the average. It's at 12-80 Mbps. Still, this is influenced by the type of your equipment, how old it is, and the places you frequent when you use your mobile data. It also matters if your phone can support 4G-LTE technology.

Nevertheless, your normal speed can be determined by testing how fast your current connection is and then comparing it with the speed that you’re supposed to be getting. At the end of the day, you’re supposed to get the kind of connection that was promised to be delivered to you by your ISP. Generally, you can get faster connections on wired lines than wireless ones. For instance, it’s a challenge to be able to stream movies when you are camped out in the woods compared to when you are sitting on the couch at home, connected to your home internet.

Today, technology has enabled connections like broadband cable, fiber, and DSL. Download speeds can go as fast as 50-150 Mbps (with much lower speed for uploads). Mobile cellular providers also have serviced almost everybody who lives in urban areas while still offering internet to rural homes even at a lower speed. It is better to accept the discrepancy in speed than to not have a connection at all.

Testing your Internet Speed

How exactly do you test your internet speed? There are various testing websites available today. You just go to their page and you can have your speed tested in as short as a few minutes. Some of these sites are Speedtest and SpeedOf.Me. It pays, however, to have your speed tested by your service provider. If you are, say, a Comcast subscriber, you can contact their customer service to run your speech check for you. This way, you get a more accurate result and they stay informed as to the speed that they give to you as their customer.

This is particularly important especially when you are trying to complain about your slow internet connection. Your ISP will be able to do a hands-on check on your internet speed and determine where the problem lies. They can, then, try and resolve the issues.

However, when you are experiencing internet connection problems, the issue can sometimes be disconnected from your ISP. This is where your responsibility as an internet user comes in. There is a need for you to know the many variables that come into play when you use your internet.

Slow Internet Issues and How to Deal with them

It’s easy to blame the provider when your internet speed falls short of the maximum and it doesn’t hurt to seek their advice on how to deal with the problem. Remember, though, that factors that impact your connection speed are a mixture of ISP-related controls and other things. Here are some of them.

Hardware

Hardware that connects you to the internet is your router, modem, several cables, and various servers. Sometimes the problem with your speed can be attributed to as simple a problem as a disconnected cable. Make sure to check all your cabling to ensure that nothing went completely unattached or partly detached. It also pays to check if your router or modem is not too old to be performing optimally. If it is outdated, better replace it with a new one to enjoy improved internet speeds.

Your wireless connection is also dealing with a lot of interfering signals, so you have the option to change your router’s channel to avoid this.

Software

Do a regular scan of your computer to detect malware or applications that mess with your bandwidth. Get rid of all these malware that rob you of your internet speed.

Throttling

Your providers have access to your internet consumption for purposes of monitoring. Also, since you are subscribed to a specific package, which only allows for a specific allotment, your ISP has the freedom to purposefully slow down your connection if you have consumed your allocation.

For instance, if you download movies, this consumes a substantial amount of data that your ISP can detect which can then trigger them to dial down your connection speed.

To circumvent this, you can use a VPN provider so your ISP cannot throttle your connection.

Location

Your distance from the server is directly proportional to the speed of your connection. The far away you are from the provider of signal, the longer it must travel to get to you, and the slower your internet is. If possible, stay close to the server to get maximum internet speeds.

Time

Like vehicles getting caught in heavy traffic during rush hour, your internet connection may also experience a slow down when a lot of people access at certain times. You may want to schedule your heavy usage, such as streaming or downloading movies on slow hours like on a weekday morning.

Congested Network

If your connection is shared among family or a group of people, and it is not unlikely that some may be streaming videos from Netflix or YouTube or watching a live broadcast of a certain show, or downloading software programs, then a slowdown in your internet connection is not surprising.

It may help to impose some bandwidth control by installing an app that does that for you. You can also take matters into your own hands and have other users in your household to pause some of their online activities to pave the way for more important things. Either way, your internet speed will be greatly improved.

When all else fails

If after having done all these, you are still unsatisfied with your internet speed, maybe it’s time to consider getting an upgrade of your internet subscription. You can contact your provider and level up your connection. After all, as far as the internet connection goes, you should be getting what you pay for.