When Connections Are Bad, They’re Bad

Can you remember a time when you needed to download something from the website and you were just staring at the estimated time left for the document to be downloaded?

Especially when the loading bar reached 99%… and the stupid internet connection gets disrupted.

We bet this is what you look like when that happens.

Sometimes, you even caught yourself pleading or making promises at the loading bar! Like, “OMG, there’s only another 5% left, if you reach 100%, I will never curse you ever again, I’ll even polish you!” Yeah, like it’s going to respond to your emotions and hurry up just to please you. Good try though, buddy.

Or perhaps, when you are studying abroad and you need to call your parents on Skype and the line is just horrendous. The call gets through, and you spend the next ten minutes saying “Hello, can you hear me?”. You try a few more times, saying hello. 10 minutes, now 30 – all your precious time wasted.

Anyway, fear not folks, we will share some tips on how to improve your internet speed.

1) Use Different Browsers

The problem with main browsers such as Chrome, Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari is that they take up a lot of memory space on your computer. This could affect the browsing speed and your computer’s performance. We reckon that you guys try using lightweight browsers like Avant and Slimjet.

2) Change the Settings of Your Existing Browsers

If you insist on using your existing heavyweight browser, here’s what you can do to improve the speed:

i) Remove or disable your existing add-ons, plugins, and extensions
ii) Keep a minimum number of tabs open on your browsers
iii) Turn on your cookies and caching (if you’re worried about privacy and security, you can always ban cookies by default while adding trusted sites to your “Exceptions” list)

3) Turn off Apps that Require Huge Bandwidth

You can turn off or limit the bandwidth allocations to BitTorrent, Dropbox, Skype, and other similar programs to free up some bandwidth for browsing.

4) Optimize Your Computer

i) Make sure your computer is free of spyware because these can slow your system down
ii) Free up your hard drive’s space
iii) De-fragment your hard drive every month or so
iv) Turn your computer off regularly

5) Use the right modem for the right place

Modems are optimised for indoor or outdoor usage. Home modems have better signal performance indoors and typically give you a heavier quota whereas a mobile dongle is made for lighter internet usage, so can lead to frustration if you’re planning to use it solely at home.

Test your internet speed before and after to see if our tips helped. Let us know if you have any other tips.