Home internet speed, without the marketing
Work out the speed your household actually needs, read a speed test properly, and diagnose a slow connection in the right order before you pay for an upgrade you do not need.
Home internet speed is the easiest thing in your house to be sold more of and one of the hardest to judge. The figure on your bill is a maximum measured in ideal conditions, the figure a speed test gives back depends heavily on which device you ran it from, and the slowness you actually notice at nine in the evening is frequently not a speed problem at all. Buying a bigger plan is the common response and often the wrong one.
Work out how much speed your household really needs by counting the people and devices that run at once, or use the speed calculator for a quick figure. Then learn how to read a speed test properly, including the upload number and the latency line most people scroll past. If the connection still feels slow, diagnose it in the right order rather than guessing.
The most common finding is that the line into the building is fine and the last few metres are not. When that is the case, channel congestion in the evening is the usual culprit.
Articles in this hub
- How much internet speed you actually needWhat streaming, calls, gaming and downloads really consume, how household use adds up, and why the number on your bill is rarely the number that matters.
- How to read a speed test and what it hidesWhat download, upload, ping, jitter and packet loss each tell you, why the result changes by the minute, and how to test in a way that proves where the problem is.
- Why your internet is slow: a diagnosis in the right orderA step by step diagnosis that separates a wifi problem from a line problem from a device problem, so you stop paying for speed you already have.
- Why streaming buffers, and what actually fixes itThe three separate causes of buffering, how to tell which one you have in two minutes, and the fixes that work for each.
- Switching broadband without a week offlineWhat to check before you switch, the questions that expose a bad deal, and how to sequence the change so you are not left without a connection.