How To Speed Up Your Broadband Connection

The first place people often point their finger when they are experiencing slower than usual broadband is their Internet Service Provider,

10:34 07 June 2017

However this usually isn’t the case and there’s much you can do yourself to improve your broadband download speeds. Here’s our handy guide of easy tips to help you get up to speed

 

Test Your Current Speed

It’s important to get a benchmark before you make any of the changes we suggest below. We always recommend making both wired (using an Ethernet cable from your router) and wireless speed tests. This helps identify if you’re having general speed issues (wired) or whether wireless interference could be the cause of your issue (wireless). If you’re getting good speeds on wired but not on wireless see our section called Change Your Wireless Settings.

 

Ensure All Equipment Is Working Correctly

Now you have your speed test benchmarks, let’s make sure that all your equipment is working properly. One of the main culprits for slow speeds are your microfilters. You should have a microfilter plugged in to every phone socket and extension in your home, regardless of whether you’re using that socket, microfilters split your phone line so that your telephone line can carry both voice and data at the same time, if they’re not plugged in correctly or have degraded with age then your broadband speeds will suffer significantly. This is a relatively inexpensive check with new microfilters only costing a pound or two and are widely available in supermarkets, PC outlets sometimes even pound stores.

 

Change The Position Of Your Router

There are a number of factors that can affect the wireless signal throughout your home, thisck walls, doors, other electrical appliances like your TV, Sky box even baby monitors. Best practice is to place your router as high up as you can, on top of a bookshelf or cupboard for example and away from any other electrical devices.

 

Stay Secure

We always recommend that you keep your Wi-Fi password protected, having an open network may mean that other people are sharing your connection, which will slow you down.  To check this follow the instruction on your router to log in via a browser and check your Wi-Fi Settings. We also recommend that you monitor what programs you have running on your PC, Windows updates, security scans and background applications can cumulatively add up bandwidth and affect your speeds.

 

Monitor Users

How many people are on your network at once will certainly affect the speeds that you personally receive. It’s not uncommon now for a household to have a couple of mobiles, a tablet, a console all connected at once. If numerous people are streaming content or gaming online then this will eat in to your bandwidth and you may start to notice a slow down.

 

Try The BT Master Socket

If at this point you’ve seen no improvement in your speeds we should try to rule out any internal wiring issues that could be affecting speed. This is more common than you’d think. To do this locate the BT Master Socket) the main socket where the line enters the house. Remove your microfilter from the main socket, remove the front faceplate and behind that you’ll find another socket, this is the test socket. Plug your microfilter in to that and restart your router then re-run another speed test.

 

Change Your Wireless Settings

We have a handy guide on how to change your wireless channel on your router which can be found here: http://www.supanet.com/how-to-change-the-wifi-channel-on-your-router/

As mentioned previously interference from many electrical appliances and even a neighbours router using the same channel can cause a slow down when using Wi-Fi. There’s a little trial and error here but by changing the channel and doing another speed test you’ll be able to find the best channel for speeds in your home.

 

What To Do Next

 

If you’ve done all the steps above and are still experiencing slower than normal broadband, we recommend contacting your ISP who can conduct further tests, this will be easier than normal as you’ve already done most of their pre-help checks and should an engineer be required to fix a fault it’s unlikely you’ll be charged for the visit as you’ve ruled out any internal issues.