Slow internet speeds can be very frustrating and can certainly ruin your online experience, especially if you’re waiting over a minute for a page to load! Sometimes slow loading times can be out of our hands and I’m going to go over the most common causes for a slow internet connection and what you can try to do to improve it.

1: Poor Internet Service Provider connectivity – Sometimes your ISP can be responsible for your slow internet. You can usually determine this by monitoring your speeds throughout the day, are you getting fast speeds late at night and early in the morning? If you are and the slow speeds your getting are mainly in the afternoon and evening then chances are you ISP has oversubscribed, this is a term used to describe when too many users are on the same segment at once. This causes a bottleneck and therefore slow speeds.

Solution: If this is the case then get in touch with your ISP, explain the problem, be patient as you are likely to get through to their customer service department and depending on the ISP they can range from useless to slightly helpful. Explain that the issue you’re having is only at certain times of the day. If you feel your getting nowhere ask to speak to a manager. Sadly your last hope might be to get a new ISP. Check online reviews to see who offers the best service in your country.

2: Bandwidth theft – If you are running a wireless network then it is quite possible somebody is stealing your bandwidth.

Solution: This is very typical for unsecured wireless networks so make sure you have a strong wireless key. Always use WPA security and never WEP, WEP can be hacked very easily, with a long and complex WPA passphrase it will be almost impossible to break into your wireless network

3: Poor Wireless connection – A common cause that is often overlooked. So many people are on wireless networks nowadays and although it is very convenient it is also more susceptible to interference and signals problems.

Solution: To establish whether this is happening try using a wired connection into your router, if your speeds are fine then chances are you are suffering from a poor wireless signal. If this is the case then establish whether you have a range problem or not. You can usually tell this by checking your signal strength. If the strength is good then consider changing your wireless channel to 1, 6 or 11 (these are ‘non-overlapping’ channels).

4: Faulty hardware – This can be a faulty network card (wired or wireless), a faulty network cable or even a faulty router and or switch.

Solution: Ideally you are going to need access to another computer or laptop and router. Check the other computer first with another cable and wireless card, if the problem persists then try changing the router over. By doing this you are checking all the network hardware and proving whether it is faulty or not.

5: Spyware and malware – There are plenty of types of malware and spyware that can severely affect your internet speeds. This usually occurs when they intercept internet traffic to redirect you to different web pages; the extra overheads caused by this will severely impact the speeds you’re getting. They can alter your dns and proxy servers to rogue ones which are usually located in countries like Russia and China. The extra latency caused by your computer contacting them will reduce speeds also. Finally some malware and spyware can be used to steal your bandwidth for one of many reasons, and what will this result in? Yep, you guessed it, slow internet speeds.

Solution: You should make sure you have an up to date anti virus and anti malware solution on your system. Make sure your getting regular updates and run a full scan with a program like Malwarebytes or Stopzilla. You can also try rebooting into safe mode with networking and see if the problem persists. If it doesn’t then chances are there is a program or piece of malware on your system that is slowing the internet down (the said program or malware will more than likely not load in safe mode).

Remember that sometimes websites can load slowly because they are under heavy load. If only one or two sites are slow and the rest are fine then chances are this is the problem. Regardless, by following the above you can successfully troubleshoot your internet connection and hopefully speeds things up if they are running slow.