Luckily, a lot of internet-slowness problems are simple to fix. Work through these troubleshooting steps and see if your speeds increase. If not, it might be time to call your internet service provider (ISP). For example, if your plan supports only 15 Mbps of download speed, then you’re probably not going to have a great experience with streaming. That’s especially true if your kids are trying to do virtual school and your partner is also on video conference calls. You should also check to make sure your router configurations match the manufacturer’s recommendations. If you accidentally changed the settings, it could have affected your internet speeds. If all fails, try the old standby trick of turning it off and on again. Unplug your router for a couple minutes and then plug it back in. Hint: It also helps to station yourself near the router for the strongest signal. If things are only sluggish on your laptop, then the problem is your hardware. Try clearing your cache and make sure you’re connected to the right network. You can also try these other steps:
Restart your device. Check for updates, viruses, and malware. Delete some old or unused programs. Say goodbye to extra photos or videos (that you already have backed up to the cloud). Try different browsers. Test out Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Apple Safari to see if one works better than the other. Change the password on your Wi-Fi network. If you have an unsecured network, or if you’ve been using the same obvious password for a while, you might have some hop-ons hanging out on your network.
If everyone in your house is streaming and gaming all at once, ask them to take a break while you make that conference call or finish that presentation. You’ll also want to close down any extra apps you have open on your device that you don’t need right away. It’s not as flexible as wireless, and you can’t work from your back deck anymore, but Ethernet might be able to pull you out of that low-speeds slump for a bit. But sometimes, when all else fails, it’s time to pick up the phone and call your internet service provider. A customer service rep can tell you if the network is down in your area or if your speeds are being throttled, either due to network congestion or your plan’s data cap. They can also check your connection on their end. We’ve heard endless tales of friends not getting the internet speeds they need, calling up their ISP, and the internet rep changing something on their end so our friend gets a nice boost in download speed. (Moral of the story: It never hurts to ask.) We will say, it’s good to check your internet speed at Speedtest.net at different times during the day and night. You might find certain windows of time are just no bueno for building Maroon 5 playlists on YouTube. But it might just be that your provider throttled your speed.
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