Slow internet can be the cause of much disparity when you’re working against the clock and it can also be godsend when you realize you need to go outside to enjoy the weather. In any case, having an efficient internet connection can ensure that you’re as productive as possible. This tutorial will help you speed up your internet on your laptop.
1. Choose a web browser and stick with it. If you limit yourself to 3 tabbed browsing, you can use Google’s Chrome browser but it has been known to be resource hungry when you go for multi tabbed browsing. Opera as well as Firefox are also good candidates but the underlying necessity will come from having to deal with as less ads as possible.
2. Installing an Adblock app will help aid in ridding your viewable webpage of unnecessary content. This means your browser has less to do with managing ad content downloads and more to do with loading files and images meant for the content at hand. In today’s environment you can find Adblock Plus for all the web browsers mentioned above.
3. Close unused tabs in your browser. Within Google’s Chrome browser, you have the option to continue where you left off. We usually forget that we’ve dealt with a page prior and forgot to close that particular tab. It’s good practice to close tabs you’ve finished dealing with so you don’t have to wait for other critical pages to load, allocating necessary bandwidth to where it matters most.
4. Allowing cookies and caching will help with your page load times. If you’ve visited the site prior or has content that is common across the platform then your browser does not need to ask the internet to provide the same information repetitively. Like the previous step, enabling cookies and caching helps allocate bandwidth to where necessary. It’s also good practice to not have your browser clear its caches when you close the app. In each respective browser, you should be able to locate the options for cookies within “Advanced settings” or within “Privacy settings”.
5. On the hardware side of things, make sure you’re on the latest BIOS update for your laptop. Apart from passing on patches to the firmware for all necessary hardware connected, it often includes improvements/revisions to the Management Engine Interface as well as the board’s MAC address. The latter is a means to identify a device when in a network.
6. Make sure you’re on the latest drivers for your Ethernet port’s NIC or your Wireless adapter or both. Installation of drivers can come with an additional utility/app to manage your connection but often times you should come across a standalone driver installer.
7. If you’re working off of Wi-Fi, make sure your line of sight from the broadcaster to your device has little to no hindrance in the path of propagation. Likely culprits for signal degradation can be due to having other electrical appliances like microwaves and refrigerators interfere with the signal broadcast. Water plumbing running through walls can also degrade the signal strength as can hollow bricks.
8. Speaking of Wi-Fi, regardless of wireless or wired routers, its good practice to have your router based on the latest firmware. You can cross reference the version you currently have with the one available on manufacturer’s site. Mind you, there are instances where a newer update has made browsing/connectivity experiences much worse than what was prior. It’s for this very reason to always be careful when updating your router’s firmware and if things go downhill, that you can revert to the previous more stable firmware.
9. You should make sure your Wi-Fi router is located at a point that has the least conflicting path of propagation. Having the router up on a fridge isn’t ideal but if its wall mounted above all your other appliances, will help improve signal strength and quality of your connectivity. Likewise, if you can manage to run your Ethernet cables along the shortest routes without any sudden kinks/bends that should help as well. Please keep in mind that CAT5/CAT6 has an effective length of 100 meters between active devices.
10. When on the subject of Routers, make sure you’re not operating off of two firewalls. Some have already begun to go, “what?” Simply put, every router you can buy right now has a feature for a firewall and it is enabled by default. Your OS on the other hand also has the option for a firewall which often is enabled by default. Two firewalls end up being the cause of limited access or even no internet access at all. In this case, it’s good practice to have your OS’s firewall disabled and leave the firewall on the router enabled.
11. Cross reference your ISP’s package with the numbers you’re getting via a speedtest. Although it doesn’t tell you the whole story, it does give you an indication as to your connections potential and possibly if you’re going to the wrong sites with high expectations or if your hardware’s your limiting factor. You could clear the onboard caches of both the router and your modem by performing a power cycle/reboot and then run your test’s experiments to rule out a dodgy ISP(connection).
12. You may also want to make sure you don’t have any stowaways on your system hogging all your resources. Using Malwarebytes is a good way to detect and rid your system of suspicious guests. If you have an anti-virus, you should make sure you’re on the latest virus tables/app revisions to counter any new threats. Installing an app like DUMeter can help you monitor your system’s incoming and outgoing traffic to round out any anomalies with web based traffic and hopefully help you find the root cause as to a slow internet connection.
The above steps should help you get a snappier experience when browsing the net but please be advised, this tutorial does not take into account when a site or platform is undergoing maintenance, suffering from an attack or if the developers are purposely introducing a new mechanism into the site to aid with browsing. The aforementioned aspects can hamper how you visit a site and can seem like your connection may be off.
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