Five Tricks to Boost Your Internet Performance

Internet Speed Test

Hello!  Let me tell you quickly about last week’s experience with a customer.  They called me over because there network was performing very slow! Sounds familiar?

In most of the cases the performance of the network can be tweaked by fine tuning the applications that runs on a computer and you don’t have to upgrade your Internet speed or buy a new network devices.

So let me share what you can do if you experience slow speeds at the office

1 – Check for programs that load at the start up

If you are running Windows OS search and launch an application called MSConfig.  Browse for the tab that shows you the start up applications.  I won’t be surprised if you find lots of ‘tool bars’ or ‘search bars’ or too many instances of anti-virus programs.  Many of the applications tend to consume a lot of bandwidth.  By the way, you can remove many Spywares/Malwares just by checking this.

2 – Uninstall unused or undesired programs :

From time to time make sure you remove programs you are absolutely sure you are not using, specially those that connect to the Internet.  This will reduce the chances of wasting your capacity.

3 – Check your WiFi:

Prefer always wired connections over wireless connection.   WiFi networks, specially those running at 2.4 Ghz, can be easily saturated when lots of devices (laptops, tablets, phones, etc) are on a same channel.  If you have cordless phones make sure you don’t use the same frequency.   Move to 5Ghz if you can.

4 – Check your wiring :

Poor wiring installation or old cabling may offer poor networking experiences.   Make sure your Ethernet patch cord is good and not twisted.

5 – Enable Quality of Services ( Qos ) on your Internet Router:

There is too many content these days.  Routers may not know which packets are data  and which packets are voice or video.   So you may clog your network when syncing a big file to the company’s DropBox.  Most of today’s routers have QoS.  Make sure you enable QoS features to differentiate application’s capability to access the network.  Do assign priorities or establish rate limits on the amount of bandwidth a certain application can consume.

Ultimately, you may want to call  your ISP and have them check your link. Sometime when it rains the wiring may experience interferences or noise due to humidity.