Chances are, you pay a lot of money for your internet connection, but are you really getting what you’re paying for? You want to make sure you’re getting your money’s worth, and unfortunately, that’s not always the case. If you feel like your Internet is dragging, it may not just be you. There are several reasons for an Internet slowdown, and we’re going to run through a few so you can find the one affecting you.
Testing Your Internet Bandwidth
The first step is to test your Internet bandwidth. If you end up going to your service provider, you’ll want to give them something more than, “It seems a little slow.” There are many different sites you can use, and they even have services you can use to test your cellular speed using your smartphone.
Before you start up your test, you need to make sure everything is setup right. If you’re using a testing service on your computer, make sure you run it using a desktop or laptop that is plugged directly into your router or cable modem. It’s important that you don’t use Wifi, as it has it’s own potential speed problems that can throw off your results. You should check to see that none of your other household gadgets are using your Internet, as that can also interfere with the test. Stop any video streaming, file downloads, or online gaming to better your results.
Once you’ve checked all of these items, you can run the test on your desktop or laptop computer. It will automatically select the best server near you, and then run the tests to figure out your download and upload speed. Don’t be alarmed if your upload number is much lower than your download speed, this is normal. If you’d like to run another test when your done on a different server, you can return to your screen and select on another server name or location.
Reading the Results
When reading your results, it’s helpful to run multiple tests for a few days, and try them out at different times in the morning, afternoon, or evening. If you’re up late at night, you can also run tests then, and this will give you a better sense of it you have any time-based slowdowns. If the numbers are fairly consistent, you can then match them to the numbers your provider says you should be getting. If the average is 75% or less of what your provider advertises, you should contact them immediately.
There are four key parameters that indicate the health of your internet connection. Most of the “self help” sites that measure your connection health test upload and download speeds. You should also be checking Latency and Jitter. Those two tests will help diagnose issues you might have with voice over internet protocol phone calls. CNS, Inc. has a service that measures all four of these key parameters several times per day and provides a continuing graph of the health of your network connection. With one of these graphs, internet service providers will respond to calls for service with a higher level technician who can fix your network connection issues faster.
If you’re having problems testing your bandwidth speeds, contact Computer Network Services at 650-326-6112 to set up an appointment to test them out for you!
