At times it may happen that the speed of your internet connection slows down and you do not get the expected download speeds that were promised to you by the ISP to which you had subscribed to get a fast broadband Internet connection at home.
Now let’s get to the points that will help you to troubleshoot your slow Internet Connection:-
Some of the reasons why you might be experiencing slower Internet connection speed than usual are for instance; say you are accessing the web during peak hours. Or your download manager could be downloading files in the background thus consuming all the bandwidth. Or, if you are accessing the Internet over Wi-Fi, maybe you’re too far off from the wireless router.
There are external factors that may slow down the Internet as well. If your Internet connection is through your existing phone line there may be a fault in the wiring, which may negatively affect your connection speed.
A question which arises is that- DOES YOUR TELEPHONE LINE NEED REPAIR?
We do not require any special equipment to find out whether your telephone line is to be altered or repaired as it may be responsible for the slow Internet speeds. Here are a few tests to discount other possibilities.
Test 1. Unplug the cables of the router and modem, wait for some minutes and then connect the modem followed by the router. If you have been experiencing connectivity issues after a power-outage, power cycling will most probably fix the issue.
Test 2. Shut down all the applications including any firewalls and anti-virus software. Then log on to speedtest.net know the actual download and upload speed of your Internet connection. If you have Wi-Fi at your place, remove the router for a moment and connect the ADSL modem directly to your computer’s Ethernet port via a physical LAN cable. Repeat the speed test. Check for any improvement in the connection speed.
Test 3. To make sure that viruses or spyware programs are not responsible for your slow Internet, open command prompt and run the following command:
This will help you to figure out if any of the programs on your computer are connecting to the internet without your knowledge. If you find a strange process in the netstat result listing, kill it through the Task Manager.
Test 4. If your Internet speed hasn’t improved even now, then you should be probing the phone line. The statistics from your DSL modem /router will give the required data.
Open the web dashboard of your modem /router and note the following values for the downstream connection (not upstream).
The fields are generally available under Statistics –> ADSL.
Some other factors:
- Line Attenuation (or Loop Loss) – It measures how much signal is lost between the phone exchange and your modem. Greater the distance between the exchange and your home, the higher the attenuation. Anything below 50dB is considered acceptable.
- Sync Speed (or Rate) – The speed at which the router connects to the exchange equipment.
- SNR Margin (or Noise Margin) – This represents the difference between your current SNR (Signal-to-Noise Ratio) and the SNR that’s required to serve a particular speed. If the SNR Margin is low, you may experience frequent disconnections. Ideally, this should be 12dB or higher.
Once you have all these values, paste them into the ADSL calculator and it will give you an estimate of the maximum speed that you get from the ISP.
If the SNR Margin is low or the Line Attenuation is high or if the calculated maximum speed is lesser than what you are paying for, the fault lies somewhere between your modem and the phone exchange. Keep a record of all these values at different times of the day and give your phone company a call as it’s something that only they can resolve.
