As you might know, Internet speed varies during certain months, days and even time of days if you use a cable network like your television cable provider. It's because we're all sharing the big, bad Internet connection and when more people are using it (7-9 p.m.) it gets slower. You can't do anything about that. But you CAN do other things to help speed up Internet access.
I first logged onto the Internet when I was a mere child living with my parents. I couldn't have been more than 30. At that point my computer was about the same size as a fully developed Saint Bernard and about as slow.
The Internet existed but it was still pretty useless. There it was, this huge expanse of potential but no one knew what to do with it. Everything was in text, there weren't any pictures and it all seemed kind of fly by night. Porn would eventually change all that.
The first thing I remember finding that seemed at all interesting on the Internet was a real estate site from Los Angeles. I was stunned and shocked that I could browse (the text only) listings of homes for sale across the continent from me.
I was hooked.
Many evenings I sat with a cup of hot chocolate staring at the blinking amber text, slowly loading all the housing options in Encino, California.
It went something like this ...
For sa ...... (elapsed time 5 minutes)
le. Two bedro ....... (elapsed time 2 minutes)
om bungalow. (elapsed time 10 minutes)
$45 (elapsed time 2 minutes)
,000.
Because of the super-fast Internet speeds of today I can pull up that little tidbit of information in as little as ... oh ... 10 minutes or so. About half the time. Impressive.
I'm not stupid but sometimes I do stupid things. Not keeping track of my Internet speed over the past few years is one of those stupid things.
I actually did keep track of it judging by the number of holes punched into my office wall, it was just an unusual system is all. Once I realized my Internet was 7 fist holes slow, I decided it was time to do something about it.
Also, about 2 weeks ago my Internet connection got so bad I couldn't in fact even connect to the Internet at all. What followed was a day long extravaganza of swearing, crying, smiling, scowling and eventually ... surfing.
Several things were adding up to me having a really slow download speed. And I'm going to show you how to fix the problem if you have slow downloading too. But FIRST.
What the hell is download speed?
Download speed is the speed at which your computer can load "stuff" from the Internet. Like what stuff?
- websites
- photos
- video/audio streaming
- file downloading
So if it takes a long time for your computer to load any of these things, but the rest of your non-Internet related computer tasks like Photoshopping, Excel, Word etc. work fine, you probably have a poor download speed which is taking precious years off of your life and delaying the instant gratification you could be getting from Men being hit directly in the nuts by their kids' basketball videos.
Here's a handy list of all the things I ended up doing that day to make my Internet 3x as fast.
Table of Contents
How to speed up your home Internet.
Remember your Internet speed varies all day and all year but if you do any or all of these things you'll get faster speeds. Why do you want faster speeds? To stop cacheing, slow loading pages or any other Internet misbehaviour that stops you from instant gratification.
1. Do a speed test.
If I had been doing speed tests regularly, and really understood them, I wouldn't have spent 2 out of the past 4 years of my life waiting for Amazon.com to load.
To do a quick test to see how quickly your computer is downloading information from the Internet click here. The website is called Speedtest. Just click "Begin Test" when the site loads and it will tell you exactly how fast or slow your computer is downloading and uploading information.
Download speed is measured in megabits per second (Mbps). Your download speed might range anywhere from something extraordinarily bad like 2 Mbps or something as astonishingly good as 50 Mbps.
Think of it in terms of driving. Going from one place to another at 2 Miles per hour isn't going to get you there nearly as fast as if you were going 50 miles an hour.
A good download speed to aim for is 25Mbps.
When I tested my download speed before fixing anything my download speed was 4.77 Mbps. BAD. Really, really, bad.
By the end of the same day, after I fixed everything, my download speed was 28.65. Good. Very, very good.
When my download rate was only 4 Mbps I could click on a website, walk away, make a coffee, drink said coffee, draw my own stick figure porn, come back to the computer and STILL only half of the page will have loaded.
Bad. Especially for someone who makes their living ... you know ... ON THE INTERNET.
Before you scream fits that you aren't getting a good download speed after taking the test, pay attention to what day it is and what time it is. You'll always get a slower download speed at night (when everyone else who uses your Internet Service Provider is home using the Internet too). Because of this, test your speed at a couple of different times in the day and week.
2. Replace your modem
Now that you've established you have a really crap download rate it's time to check on your modem. An older modem might not be able to handle the faster download speeds of today. Even a 5 year old modem might not be able to keep up. If your modem is from your cable company ask if you can exchange it for a newer model. That's what I did.
3. Have your lines checked.
My Internet is provided by my local cable company so I had them come out and check to see if there were any issues with the cables running into my house. Indeed there was. The line running from my house across the street is damaged and needs to be repaired, so the technician booked an appointment to come back and fix it. He also took a look around my house and found an old splitter that another technician put on my house over 10 years ago. It was faulty and out of date and was barely conducting any signal at all. He replaced the splitter and my download speeds increased immediately.
4. Increase your download speed package.
Another thing my handy cable technician mentioned was the Internet package I had with my Internet Service Provider. I signed up for my Internet package when I first got Internet in this house 15 years ago and that was that. I never thought about it again and definitely didn't think about upgrading it or looking at new packages.
You see, most Internet providers offer you a bunch of different Internet packages to choose from. They offer different maximum download speeds as well as different amounts you're allowed to download.
I had a package that allowed for 15 Mbps. I've had this package for 15 years. It's so useless that it became obsolete recently but my cable provider neglected to tell me this. Luckily the technician didn't.
He suggested I get the 30 Mbps package even if it was more money because that's how I was going to get more speed. As it turns out, the 30 Mbps package was $1 CHEAPER than my slower, 15 Mbps package for some reason. I signed up immediately.
My Internet download speed shot up again.
5. Move your router.
Think of your router as a cat. It wants to be RIGHT in the middle of the action all tangled around your feet. It should be somewhere around the middle of your house if you're wanting it to get full range around your home.
If it's stuck in a corner of the basement it's going to have more house interference and obstacles to get past to make it up to your bedroom as you scroll your iPad for the meaning of your latest dream.
6. Buy a new router.
THE SINGLE UNIT ROUTER
If you live in a smallish house or apartment you can use a regular router (single unit router). These routers get plugged directly into your modem and they service the entire house.
This is a big one. It may be that your Internet speed is fine and the thing that's slowing everything down is your cruddy router. Try plugging your computer right into your modem instead of using your router and do the speed test again. If it's remarkably faster then your router is the problem.
My router was a problem. So I started researching routers and 2 makes kept coming up. Netgear's Nighthawk and TP-Link.
I ordered this Netgear Nighthawk 1750 from Amazon in 2015 and I'm still using it. I'll be upgrading it to the router that's picked by many as the best router for 2020, the Netgear Nighthawk X10 which has a coverage that's almost twice as big and almost double the processor size as the one I have.
Upgrading your router is the one of the most effective ways of speeding up your home Internet especially if you have multiple devices being used at the same time. For instance if you're using your laptop or ipad at the same time you're watching Netflix. Investing in a high end router is especially GREAT for families with multiple download uses going on at the same time, like video streaming, gaming and browsing among several different people.
MESH ROUTER
If you live in a bigger house with several levels you might want to think about getting a Mesh Router. A mesh router plugs into your modem PLUS it has several wireless satellite units you can place in different rooms. You get much better coverage this way and no dead spots.
If I bail on the single unit router I'll get this Netgear Orbi mesh router. Partly because it's Netgear and that brand has worked well for me. And partly because, I mean why lie, right ... partly because I like how it looks.
A good router makes a big difference. Upgrade your router at least once every 3 or 4 years. (I've waited five, but I'm especially cheap and resistant to change)
UPDATE: I recently bought ( June 17th, 2021) this GOOGLE Wifi Mesh. I got the 3 pack like I've linked to because my house is small BUT it has a lot of interior walls that are solid brick. That makes router signals and such a bit of a nightmare. My download speed from my very old Netgear router was 2.2 mbps. Once I set up the Google mesh (and configured it until it said my connection was "great") my speed increased immediately to 61 mbps.
I can use my laptop in the living room, which I couldn't do for years (because of the brick walls in my house) as well as my front porch. I can now highly recommend getting a Mesh router to improve your Internet speeds.
7. Password protect your router.
This one is something most people don't think about but you should because everyone is a cheater and a liar when it comes to the Internet. Probably even you. If you don't protect your router with a password ANYONE in the area of the router signal can use it. So while you're comfortable in your family room wondering why Netflix keeps pausing ... your neighbour is comfortable in their family room illegally downloading the entire Beatles library through your Internet.
Bonus tip for speeding up your Internet
Call customer service!
Once I realized I'd been experiencing really, really bad Internet service partly because of poor lines, connectors and modem I called my Internet Service Provider and complained. I explained that I'd been a great customer for years and I was incredibly disappointed that I was paying for what was supposed to be great service but in fact was getting terrible service.
They offered me $25 off of my monthly cable bill for a year. That'll save me $300 this year.
That's money I can now put towards the downpayment on a nice little bungalow in Encino.
IMPORTANT LINKS FROM THIS POST
Download speed: Speedtest
For small homes: Netgear Nighthawk X10 single unit router
For larger homes or those with dead spots: Google WIFI Mesh
→Follow me on Instagram where I often make a fool of myself←
TucsonPatty
Just wondering if those numbers are still relevant. (Of course they are - it’s Karen, for God’s sake!)
I do not remember running the speed check way back when, but I did just now at 1:45 p.m. local time, with Xfinity, and I just clocked 69.48 Mbps. I think that is pretty great, and I don’t have any issues.
Paul S
I hope the rest of the country quickly catches up to the MidWest. I'm paying $79 a month for 900 Meg and most of the time it's delivering 830-870. Upload speed 60 Meg. Latency 6ms.
I'm using the Internet company's modem ($5) a month. That way if it fails or the speeds increase they give me a new one.
The modem includes a router but I like having my own placed in the middle of the house. I don't have cable TV - just internet so I don't use cables to hook up the TV's etc so I spent extra for a tri-band linksys ac4000.
Jane
I think this post might be a bit out of date. I just found out from the speedtest that my download speed is 123. (fiber optic from ATT in St. Louis; I have a deal in which I pay $30 a month for internet)
Interesting test!
Garth Wunsch
Trash your WiFi. It's actually making you sick in all sorts of ways you never even dreamed of, and 5G being rolled out is an absolute disaster for all life on earth. No, it's not conspiracy - there's thousands of peer-reviewed papers to back this up, but government and big Telcos won't touch it - yet - too much money involved - it's the new smoking! If you don't believe me, Google EMF sensitivity. It was making me VERY sick. I've hardwired everything to ethernet. Download speed = 270 Mbps. Upload speed = 308 Mbps.
Brian Pellow
I realize this article is a couple of years old because we are now up to gigabyte speeds. Technology changes so fast that by the time this comment reaches print it will be out of date also. Today with the advent of smart TV's, streaming video, remote work from home, and the COVID crisis, more demand than ever is being put on the internet system. Fiber optic cabling can help but is in limited areas as well as satellite internet in remote locations. The number of devices, smart TV's, computers, cell phones, Alexa, and others connected to your router can also affect the speed as they all have to share the bandwith of your connection so disconnecting or turning off devices that are not in use can help. Password protecting those devices also help prevent hackers from gaining backdoor access to your network too.
Capt Ron
Great Article Karen - Another reason for password protecting your modem. A close friend and his wife went on vacation leaving their 21 year son at home. At 2 am the police were beating on the door with a search warrant and weapons drawn. Took the 21 yr old in his PJs out in the front yard in the cold weather (yes we can have cold weather in FL) barefoot, handcuffed, and went through the house and took every computer, CD, storage device, family pictures, his father's old pistol, and every camera. 1-2 months later everything was returned and the reason surfaced, A neighbor had managed to tie into my friend's internet service and was downloading child porn!
Karen
OMGOMGOMGOMG. Wow. Terrifying. ~ karen!
Ella
252.27 download and 224.25 upload speed
Guess I won’t complain!
Karen
I guess not!!!!! ~ karen
KathC
If you're in Canada, try https://performance.cira.ca/ for your speed test. CIRA is using the data to map bad internet all over the country to help push governments and service providers to do better.
Karen
Wow! Good for them! ~ karen
Sean Murray
Hi there,
I am sending this Email to you now from Great Britain, it is the fourth of July 2015 and is 19.15 pm..., my internet is very slow over here so it might not arrive for a bit.
Please let me know when it arrives, have just seen Omar Shariff on the television, he is not looking too well , hope hes ok...
Ok, putting the silliness away for a moment, I have read alot on this blog and from what I have seen there are some people that could help me out.
I have just done a bios update on my Lenovo laptop and then I checked my internet on speedtest and my downloads are still pathetic at around 10 mbp/s but what was once around 1.5 for my upload speed it has now suddenly shot up to over 7000 mb/ps. It is so fast now that the data amount runs out before the test is finished.
I am just on a pesky old router which is shared by others and its only running on 802.11n with a 2.5 ghz bandwidth. I cant find the answer anywhere on the internet and I am concerned it may damage my laptop.
Best Regards.
Sean Murray.
phill
Really??? Great info except YOUR ISP is throttling your internet!!!! None of your suggestions will work.
Karen
O.K., Mr. Exclamation point. I'm in Canada. Where throttling is illegal. Also, even with the abolishment of net neutrality, there's no evidence that throttling has begun in the US yet. ~ karen(!)
Doug
Good advice, but I feel you are underestimating the effect that the neighborhood draw can have on your ISP.
I'm in Barrie (semi-northern Ontario), currently running about 10kbps (yup, that's a 'k'). Modem and router are heavy-duty, Bell has come to "fix the lines" about 3 times this month and my PC runs like a dream. Forever ago in Windsor, it was the same story. Bell must have had a rolladex of reasons to say why the internet would stop working - I kid you not, squirrels was on there a few times.
For whatever reason now, bandwidth just tanks to 1991 speeds and the only thing with enough gusto to blow through whatever is going on is Netflix for some reason.
[To clarify, I am talking about bandwidth tanking when absolutely nothing else is on the wifi (including cell-phones) - I don't try to binge-stream on Netflix on TV and be like, "what? why no internet on compooter?"]
fredfuches
I did a speed test on my computer at 2am on Wednesday, 12/28/2016 and here are my results;
Ping 28ms, Download Speed 1.97Mbps, Upload Speed 3.10. Is that good or bad? I come home from an 8 hour shift of hard physical labor and all I want to do is watch some youtube videos before going to bed and I can't even do that anymore because youtube's video buffering keeps loading as slow as possible or disappearing completely. I have also noticed websites like red tube, metacafe, and dailymotion all barely load videos or crash before their videos start. And they all use the same buffering plus loading time bar which is causing performance problems. Windows 7 troubleshooting in network and sharing center doesn't do anything helpful except to remind me I am connected to the internet.
So my question; is this a router problem, or is it because I live in a rural area where comcast won't make available faster cable and internet speeds? Because I'm about to take a sledgehammer to my computer and go back to reading books.
Karen
Hey Fred! To see if the problem is your actual Internet speed or your router, you should plug your computer directly into your cable/Internet line. So basically take the router out of the equation. Then do a speed test and see how it comes out. 1.97 Mbps is abysmal by the way. It isn't a surprise you can't watch anything on Youtube. If the speed test shows you have much faster speed without the router, then the problem is the router. If the speed test shows basically the same speed when you've bypassed the router, it's your actual Internet. Call up your Internet provider and complain. Good luck! ~ karen
Rachel
Buying a new, better router can actually be a huge help to make your internet faster. Running a speed test is also a good way to see just how fast your internet is. Thanks for sharing the tips!
Thera
I hate the company we deal with here in Ontario, it begins with a B and has 3 letters after it, however;
PNG 17 ms
DS 36.34
US 10.62
Jennifer
Thank you for this post even though it made me want to cry white hot tears of frustration. I’ve been with the same ISP for more than a dozen years. When I signed up with them I picked their phone and internet bundle—the only one package they had at the time, and have chugged along with them ever since. My internet speed has been a frustration for a long time, and I’ve had multiple service calls over the years, but there didn’t seem to be much that could be done. After reading your post I, of course, did a speed test, and came in at less than 5 mbps. Figuring maybe my old modem was the culprit I called the ISP. Long story short, my modem was fine but the account level I was signed up for was only a maximum of 7 mbsp. I’ve been with them for this long and no one bothered to tell me that I could sign up for a faster service!?! I spent an hour on the phone with one of their “customer service” people tonight and I’ll now be getting up to 25 mpbs…for $20 less a month. When I complained that I had been a good customer for a dozen years, paying a boatload of money for slow service when they had faster service available for way less, probably for years, they agreed to waive the $30 “upgrade fee” that they normally charge when you order faster service… An "upgrade fee", seriously?
So thank you for the post. I’m now mad as heck but I have faster internet.
Karen
I'm so glad this helped you out! So you had a similar situation that I had. Same deal. Paying more for the least possible speed. A speed which is now obsolete! And when I talked to them they had the nerve to say "well ... it hasn't been obsolete for very long". At least I got a fairly good discount
Jennifer Arnott
Aargh!
Jenn
To make you feel better - we are in the country, on the edge of town. Our download speed at it's fastest is 2.1. We average 1.5 to 1.9. Our upload is .49. LOL. And I make my living on the internet. There are days when I must drink Bailey's in my coffee to maintain the patience level required for this.
Kitten Caboodle
Interesting how timely this was. Our cable/internet provider called to tell us that our leased modem was outdated and couldn't handle the new internet speed we just upgraded to. They sent a new 'gateway' (combo modem/router). Old speed tests showed 25ms ping and about 30Mbps download. We installed the new gateway yesterday and this morning I logged a speed test at 18ms ping and 161Mbps download. I tried it last night after 8pm and even then it was coming in over 120Mbps, which is actually better than my work's internet speed. They throttle the upload speed so it never exceeds 12Mbps but it doesn't really matter for our purposes. Thanks for all of the useful info!
Karen
Wow! You've got yourselves some astonishingly good Internet speeds! ~ karen
Julia at Home on 129 Acres
Our download is 1.28 Mbps. Looooove country internet. And I'm only a few km north of you, Karen. Cable or other high speed isn't even an option for us here. Funnily enough, our crap ISP is a main advertiser on speedtest. They're advertising speed up to 25 Mbps. Ummm, yeah. We haven't seen that ever, and we've had multiple service calls. The fact that I'm able to see your web site tonight means it's a good night. There's lots of times where sites won't load at all.
Elizabeth
We recently acquired a new-to-us TV and Apple TV but, we couldn't get a signal in the front room in our house. Someone suggested that we buy a new router, a quick trip to talk to the Apple Genius, back home to install, a few curse words later (because it is NEVER as easy as they say it will be), and we are up and running. Stronger signal to the darkest nether regions of our tiny bungalow, Netflix in the front room by the fire and BONUS - faster page loads.
We should have done this years ago :)
Karen
Crap! That's another thing I forgot to mention. The router I bought really is just "plug it in and go". It was astonishingly easy. I remember setting up my last router thinking ... a lot of people couldn't do this. They'd just give up. So when this router said, plug it in and go I figured "Yeah sure". But it was true. :) ~ karen!
Nancy Blue Moon
Uhhh..OK..I'll pass this on to my tech man..also known as my son...he handles all my techy stuff I don't understand..which would be all of it...it all sounds good when you say it though..That's a really cool box you're holding up there...Do you fall off those shoes much?