Not my internet, what’s wrong with your internet is the question that needs to be asked.
There are many factors to a bad internet experience. Even service providers suffer outages from their uplink connections. What I see most is certain brands of routers have issues because they are outdated. If your router is 5+ years old, it’s probably time to upgrade. Also, be sure to change the default password for your router. In some routers you can change both the default username and the password both. If you have a modem, make sure that username and or password is changed as well. Some routers Also come pre-programmed with unique passwords as part of the MAC address, these should be pretty hard to crack, but can be changed if need be. Doing these things can help prevent unauthorized access into your router whether it be a remote hacker or malware and viruses on the devices connected to your router.
Internet filtering can cause a slow down of your internet as well. These filters create a VPN tunnel to their servers and then a connection to the website you requested. This can cause major slowdowns, not only because of the filtering, but because VPN’s always have their overhead as well. If you need to filter, try Open DNS.
Speaking of DNS. This can be another reason why your internet can be slow. There are DNS servers all over the world, but usually the closest is your ISP’s and that is usually the fastest, unless you run your own. Slow DNS queries can play a role for a slow internet experience. So be sure you check your latency locally as well as remote like a Google DNS server (8.8.8.8).
Old computers and tablets (mobile devices) Do I need to elaborate more on this? I think it is pretty self explanatory. If it’s over 5 years old, it’s probably time to upgrade. This really goes for any internet enabled device. Especially if there are no more updates and it is EOL.
So to end I’ll talk a little about your router. Make sure the placement of your router is in the center of the house, upstairs or a higher level. Don’t expect a great Wi-Fi experience with your router in the corner of your basement with a smart tv or streaming device upstairs on the other side of the house to work very well. They do make access points and Ethernet extenders to combat poor Wi-Fi coverage, but most of the time, the correct placement can have dramatic effect on the performance. Or you can hard wire everything, that is the most secure and fastest solution. Unfortunately most finished homes, this can be a real pain if it wasn’t planned from the beginning.
I hope you enjoyed this episode of What’s wrong with my Internet.