Boost your broadband

Some websites recommend removing the ‘ring’ or ‘bell’ wire from your system by disconnecting it at the master socket. This is because it’s not needed by modern phones with electronic ringers and it can act a bit like an aerial, picking up interference from devices such as central heating relays, damaged microwave ovens, fluorescent lights or even flashing Christmas tree lights.

Other wires in the cables don’t pick up interference in the same way because they are used in pairs, which helps cancel out any signals picked up. See the section entitled 'Improve broadband performance with an I-plate', but also read about the legal issues surrounding changing BT wires below.

If you have very old phone wiring at home, the cabling might not be as resistant to interference as newer installations, especially if it was installed in the days before BT allowed people to add new sockets. This is due to the degradation of cables and fittings.

Unfortunately, it’s illegal to replace or tamper with this wiring yourself if BT installed it, and it could be a lot of work, so it’s not worth doing unless everything else fails to improve your broadband speed. If you’re in this situation, first, try plugging your broadband modem or router directly into the master socket rather than using extension sockets or cables. If it improves matters, you can then use a good-quality long Ethernet network cable or a wireless connection to link the router to your PC.

Our 'Diagnosis checklist' section gives tips on how to improve your wiring. If you’ve worked through that and still face problems, let’s look at some of the other factors.

The missing link
The PC itself is one aspect that is often overlooked and, in particular, the way it connects to the broadband modem or router. Some early broadband services used modems that connected to the PC via USB. On older computers with fast broadband connections this won’t perform well. It’s much better to use a broadband (ADSL) router with a built-in modem and connect it to your PC using a network cable. Ask your ISP about compatible broadband routers ­ – and then shop for the best price online.

Wireless connections aren’t immune to problems either. Wifi can be affected by interference from other nearby wireless devices and the thickness of interior walls. So, if you have a very fast broadband link that seems slow on a PC linked wirelessly to the network, try connecting it to the router using an Ethernet cable instead.

Don’t forget that the router itself can be faulty – ­ it’s really just a small computer and sometimes an update to the router’s firmware, or even changing to a different brand, may improve matters. Check the website of your router’s manufacturer for details. It’s rare for the router to be the problem, but if you happen to have a second broadband router or modem it can be helpful to swap it and see if the problem still occurs. However, if your spare router is very old, and you have one of the latest high-speed broadband services, the router might not be compatible.

It’s also possible to tweak some of the Registry settings on your computer to improve broadband performance, and in rare cases, such as we found, you can sometimes get dramatic improvements this way. See the section entitled 'Tweak your Registry to speed up your broadband' for more details.

Software sold as ‘Broadband Accelerators’ also uses this tweak, but since you can do it for free there’s little point in paying for them. Products that aim to boost the speed of your internet connection fall into two categories: those that tweak settings you could adjust yourself free of charge and those that compress data so there’s less of it to squeeze through your broadband connection; thus it arrives faster. The best-known example of this software is On Speed, but compression tools won’t make it any faster to download files that are already compressed, such as most forms of video and music.