When video streaming starts buffering, online games begin lagging, or a work call freezes, most people blame their ISP, and it feels like the simplest explanation. But in reality, there are multiple other causes of slow internet that are often inside your home, including your devices, your router, your router placement, and several other things.
The next time you start experiencing slow internet, you should check a few important things that we have mentioned below before picking up your phone to lodge a complaint so that you can fix the problem on your end without requiring any technical assistance.
Check Your Router Placement
One of the most overlooked and common causes of slow internet is poor router placement. If the WiFi router placement is poor, the WiFi signals can be weak. As the distance between the router and devices increases or there are obstacles in between, the signals will start to weaken. If you have tucked your router in a corner, stuffed it inside a cabinet, or placed it behind a TV, you are likely to experience poor and weak WiFi signals.
Placing your home WiFi router, like the EE WiFi Router, in a central, elevated, and open position can resolve this issue to a huge extent. You can also remove physical obstructions around the router to further improve the speed and stability.
Restart Your Router and Devices
It sounds too basic and simple, but rebooting your router and devices can genuinely solve many connectivity issues. Often, temporary glitches, cached errors, and overheating issues can cause the internet to slow down. By restarting your router and connected devices, you can clear outdated IP assignments, reset software bugs, refresh the network cache, and improve performance after a long uptime. So make sure that you restart your router after every one to two weeks and restart your devices if you notice lag or connectivity issues.
Check Who Is Using Your WiFi
Unexpected internet slowdowns can come from bandwidth-hungry users or devices, who may be using the internet without your notice. Even background internet activities can consume a large portion of your connection’s bandwidth silently. Possible bandwidth hogs include someone streaming on the network, cloud backups running in the background, gaming consoles updating games, or someone leeching off your Wi-Fi network.
Check all the connected devices for any background internet activity. Open your router admin panel (192.168.1.254) and check all connected devices. In case there are any suspicious connections, remove them and set a strong WPA3 password.
Test Your Speed on a Wired Connection
Before you directly blame your ISP, you should check your connection using an Ethernet cable. Using an Ethernet connection removes the WiFi network from the equation and gives you the best possible connection that you can get. Since the WiFi network can suffer from signal loss, interference, and shared channels, using an Ethernet connection can help resolve and diagnose the issue.
If the speed of a wired connection is good, the issue is with your WiFi setup. Whereas if the speed of a wired connection is also slow, there is a possible ISP or line performance issue.
Run Speed Tests at Different Times
If you are using a speed test to determine the speed and performance of your connection, know that internet speed can fluctuate throughout the day and also on the website/platform that you use for speed testing. Testing your internet speed at various times of the day can help you see patterns instead of judging based on one single reading. Always use a reliable speed test tool like Speed.is or SpeedTest three to five times at different hours to come to a conclusion.
Scan for Malware or Device Overload
Sometimes, the problem may not be with your internet connection, but your device. Your device might be slow because of too many apps running at once, malware using the bandwidth, RAM-heavy tasks making the device, and dozens of browser tabs open. A sluggish device can often feel like a slow internet connection. Therefore, make sure that your device is malware-free by running antivirus scans and closing unnecessary apps to free RAM and other system resources.