A slow Internet connection is one of the most frustrating experiences we can face in our day to day life. There are many causes that can make your Internet work much slower than it should, although fortunately many of them have a fairly simple solution that does not require any investment. Next, we explain the most common causes of an Internet connection not offering the speed it should.
The first thing you should do is perform a speed test on your Internet connection to make sure that it is offering the speed promised by your provider. Once you have ruled out that the problem is from here, you can start paying attention to the points that we are going to describe below.
Bad router location
This is surely the main cause that many Internet connections do not work the way they should, especially if you are a user of Wi-Fi networks. Wi-Fi technology allows us to access the Internet in a very comfortable way, and without the hassle of cables, but it also has some drawbacks, such as a fairly limited range, and that it is quite prone to electromagnetic interference.
It is possible that your router is located in a corner of the house, and that the Wi-Fi signal cannot reach some areas of your home . This will cause poor signal reception, and your browsing experience will be slow and frustrating.
You can follow 2 very simple steps to check if the problem of the slowness of your Internet connection is due to a bad location of the router.
The first step is to look at the icon that represents Wi-Fi on the Windows 10 taskbar . This icon represents the quality of the signal reception of your wireless network, so it will be very easy to know if it is arriving with sufficient intensity.
The next step is to take your smartphone or laptop, and place yourself at a point in the house that is closest to the router . If your internet speed improves by doing this, it is a sure sign that the router is misplaced.
Too many devices connected to your network
Another very common cause of an Internet connection running slower than normal is that there are too many devices connected. Currently we all have in our homes a large number of devices with the ability to connect to the internet , whether they are desktops, laptops, mobiles, tablets, Android TV devices and many more.
Take a count of all the computing devices you have in your house, and you will see how many of them have the potential to connect to the Internet and stay connected, even if you are not using them. This problem particularly affects users who do not have a very high-speed Internet connection.
It also checks that the rest of the inhabitants of the home are not making a very intensive use of the network, such as watching high-resolution videos, or downloading large files in bulk. If your brother is downloading movies or series through torrent networks, it is very likely that this is the cause of your internet running quite slow.
In the case of very densely populated urban areas, it is also possible that the saturation of your Internet connection is on the part of the provider . You are simply not offering enough bandwidth to meet the needs of all your customers. In this case, the only thing you can do is change the provider.
Outdated network adapter drivers
Drivers are a very important element to allow the correct functioning of all the components that are inside a computer. The network card is no exception, and its performance can be compromised if you are using an old version of the driver.
To update the network card driver you just need and the official website of the manufacturer . Once inside, you have to find the exact version of your network adapter, and look for the latest version of the driver available.
Once you have found the latest version of the network adapter driver, we recommend that you download it and try to install it on your computer. It is possible that the installation process fails because you already have this latest version available, although if you have an outdated version installed, you can install the new driver without problems.
Presence of viruses and other forms of malware
This problem is not very common today, because the Windows 10 operating system is quite robust, and it is much more difficult for you to suffer from malware infections than in previous versions.
However, on the Internet we are never completely safe from threats, so it is possible that your computer has been infected by some form of malware, which is affecting its proper functioning.
Performing an antivirus scan is the first step in trying to fix this problem if it is present. Windows 10 already includes a fairly competent antivirus called Windows Defender as standard, simply use it to scan your entire computer, and see if it has suffered any infection from viruses, spyware, Trojans or some other form of malware. You can also resort to antispyware software for added protection.
Your neighbors are stealing your Wi-Fi connection
We've come to the end of our article on the most common causes of a Wi-Fi connection running slower than it should. In heavily populated urban areas, you may have had to hang out with sneaky neighbors , who are willing to use your Wi-Fi connection without your permission.
This problem should not be present if you use a password to protect your Wi-Fi connection, although we can never rule out not entirely. In the configuration interface of your router you will see a list of all the devices that are connected to your Wi-Fi network.
Check your router's manual to see how you can access this option.
This is the end of our article on the most common causes of your Internet connection working slower than it should.