Test, fix and boost your broadband

When you’re used to a high-speed internet connection, it’s frustrating to find that it’s not as fast as it should be, and if you rely on your connection for work, or keeping in touch using services such as internet phone calls, it can be even more annoying.

All too often, when you try to complain to an internet service provider you’ll get poor-quality technical support or be fobbed off with a reminder that what you’ve bought is only guaranteed to be ‘up to’ a certain speed, with no set rules about what’s contractually acceptable below that theoretical level.

But you’re not completely at the mercy of your internet service provider (ISP) ­ there are steps you can take to speed up your broadband connection, or at least track down the real cause of problems. In this article, we’re going to show you exactly what you can do to get back up to speed.

Diagnose the problem
In the days of dial-up modems, solving problems was pretty easy ­ since they relied on audible sounds down the line, if you could hear crackles when you made a voice call it was a pretty safe bet that they’d cause problems with your downloads too.

But if you have ADSL broadband, the modem or router is talking to the telephone exchange using inaudible frequencies.

While that means you can use the phone line at the same time as broadband, it also means problems that slow down your connection might not be obvious.

On top of that, broadband is a lot more complicated and there are lots of different things that can slow down your connection at different places in the link between you and the rest of the internet.

There could be problems with your equipment, with the phone wiring in your home, with the local telephone exchange or at your ISP. And if you call out a phone engineer because you think there’s something wrong with the line and the problem turns out to be with your equipment, or an extension you installed yourself, you’ll face a hefty fee.

So it pays to try to find out where the problem lies ­ and don’t worry, it’s nowhere near as complicated as you might imagine, and there can be simple solutions.