How to increase the speed of the Internet on a computer, smartphone or tablet

Not all users are sat­is­fied with the speed of the Inter­net con­nec­tion. Usu­al­ly, the lim­it­ed capa­bil­i­ties of the provider are to blame for this. But some­times low speed is asso­ci­at­ed with cer­tain prob­lems observed on the device. Let’s find out exact­ly how they are solved.

Speeding up the Internet on a computer and smartphone

Usu­al­ly a fast data trans­fer is required to watch videos on YouTube or any oth­er sim­i­lar ser­vice. And how sad that some­times the video starts to slow down, to load for a long time. Reduc­ing the qual­i­ty of the video can at least par­tial­ly elim­i­nate this prob­lem. For exam­ple, on YouTube, this is done in the low­er right cor­ner. And you should not choose 4K res­o­lu­tion if you are view­ing on a reg­u­lar, rel­a­tive­ly inex­pen­sive mon­i­tor — you still won’t see all the delights of this set­ting. By the way, YouTube can auto­mat­i­cal­ly adjust the res­o­lu­tion, focus­ing on the band­width avail­able to you.

You can speed up the load­ing of sites by acti­vat­ing the traf­fic sav­ing mode. It is also called tur­bo mode. It works on the same prin­ci­ple that Opera Mini uses on old mobile phones. The site is first loaded on a spe­cial serv­er, where it is com­pressed in every pos­si­ble way, after which it is sent to the brows­er. As a result, you down­load few­er megabytes, and the process starts to take less time. Com­press­ing pages in this way works in Google Chrome, Yandex.Browser and Opera. To acti­vate this mode, you need to go to the brows­er set­tings.

Using a VPN can lead to slow page load­ing times. This ser­vice is usu­al­ly used to vis­it sites blocked in our coun­try. How­ev­er, a VPN rarely boasts high speed, espe­cial­ly if it is pro­vid­ed for free. There­fore, we rec­om­mend turn­ing it off when vis­it­ing reg­u­lar sites that open with­out any prob­lems even with­out a VPN.

The Inter­net slows down and the ubiq­ui­tous adver­tis­ing. Some pages con­tain dozens of adver­tis­ing ban­ners! But these ban­ners can also be ani­mat­ed! Can you imag­ine what the load on the proces­sor becomes? That is why we rec­om­mend down­load­ing a good ad block­er for your brows­er. Yes, this will reduce the income of site own­ers, but you will sig­nif­i­cant­ly speed up the load­ing of Inter­net pages.

This advice may seem sil­ly to you, but try clos­ing extra tabs in your brows­er. The fact is that the Inter­net brows­er active­ly con­sumes RAM, and its lack can affect the speed of open­ing new pages. If you haven’t used a tab for a long time, just close it. You can book­mark the address of the page it con­tains so that you can eas­i­ly return to it in the future. In Google Chrome, just click on the aster­isk locat­ed to the right of the URL, or use the key­board short­cut Ctrl + D.

It is pos­si­ble that mali­cious appli­ca­tions are con­sum­ing your traf­fic. That is why we rec­om­mend access­ing the Inter­net only with acti­vat­ed antivirus. Yes, these pro­grams cost mon­ey. But they allow you to avoid the most seri­ous prob­lems, includ­ing a decrease in data trans­fer speed. If you do not have an antivirus, then install it right now (you can use the 30-day tri­al peri­od). After that, be sure to run a full com­put­er scan for virus­es.

Also, oth­er devices can active­ly con­sume Inter­net traf­fic. For exam­ple, if your router sup­ports a built-in tor­rent client, then it may sud­den­ly start dis­trib­ut­ing movies con­tained on a con­nect­ed exter­nal hard dri­ve. In some cas­es, a tablet can also inter­act with the glob­al web. Well, the game con­sole in sleep mode can down­load all kinds of updates. There­fore, we rec­om­mend that if there is a lack of Inter­net speed, dis­con­nect all devices that you are not cur­rent­ly using from Wi-Fi.

We also rec­om­mend remov­ing unnec­es­sary pro­grams that con­sume traf­fic in the back­ground. On Android and iOS, My Data Man­ag­er will help you cal­cu­late such appli­ca­tions — you can down­load it from
Google Play and
App Store absolute­ly free. You can also find out about the amount of traf­fic con­sumed by each pro­gram in the oper­at­ing sys­tem set­tings.

As for the com­put­er on which Win­dows is installed, here you need to per­form the fol­low­ing steps:

1. Press the key­board short­cut Ctrl+Alt+Del.

2. Click the “Start Task Man­ag­er” but­ton.

3. Go to the tab, which, depend­ing on the ver­sion of the oper­at­ing sys­tem, is called “Per­for­mance” or “Per­for­mance”.

4. Click the “Open Resource Mon­i­tor” but­ton.

5. In the win­dow that appears, go to the “Net­work” tab.

Now keep a close eye on what’s going on. So you will see which pro­grams are cur­rent­ly con­sum­ing Inter­net traf­fic.

There is a sim­i­lar tool in Mac OS. To dis­play it, go along the path: Find­er — “Pro­grams” — “Util­i­ties” — “Sys­tem Mon­i­tor­ing”. In the win­dow that appears, go to the “Net­work” tab.

Some­times the rea­son for the long load­ing of sites is not the active con­sump­tion of traf­fic by oth­er pro­grams or devices, but the exces­sive num­ber of plug-ins installed in your brows­er. If there are already two or three dozen of them, it’s time to remove the extra ones. There is no doubt that half of the exten­sions you nev­er use at all. To dis­able them, you need to go to the appro­pri­ate set­tings sec­tion. Dif­fer­ent Inter­net browsers use their own meth­ods:

1. In Opera, click on the three dots locat­ed in the low­er left cor­ner, after which it remains to select the “Exten­sions” item.

2. In Google Chrome, you also need to click on the ver­ti­cal three dots, which is locat­ed in the upper right cor­ner. Here, the mouse cur­sor is first hov­ered over “Addi­tion­al Tools”, after which you need to click on the “Exten­sions” item.

3. In Microsoft Edge, you need to open the menu, after which all that remains is to click on “Exten­sions”.

4. In Yandex.Browser and Fire­fox, you also need to open a menu in which you should click on “Add-ons”.

5. In the page that opens, you need to dis­able those exten­sions that you either do not use at all, or use extreme­ly rarely.

On smart­phones and tablets, exten­sions are only sup­port­ed by a few browsers. If you use one of these, then also fol­low our advice — do not for­get that a large num­ber of plu­g­ins neg­a­tive­ly affect page load­ing speed.

You can also rec­om­mend updat­ing the dri­vers and the oper­at­ing sys­tem itself. This can indeed pro­vide an increase in Inter­net speed, but not in all cas­es. Dri­vers are eas­i­est to update using the pro­gram
dri­ver boost­er. We advise you to leave it on your com­put­er so that it noti­fies you in time about the appear­ance of a new ver­sion of a par­tic­u­lar dri­ver. How­ev­er, this can not be done, espe­cial­ly if your PC is equipped with fair­ly old com­po­nents. As for the oper­at­ing sys­tem, updates for it are con­tained in the cor­re­spond­ing man­ag­er locat­ed in the OS set­tings.

It is pos­si­ble that you only think that the Inter­net speed has become slow­er. You just start­ed down­load­ing larg­er files — now games have become heav­ier, and movies, and oth­er media con­tent. In this case, you can think about chang­ing the tar­iff plan. Espe­cial­ly if you are still access­ing the glob­al web over the wire at speeds low­er than 100 Mbps.

Do not for­get that the speed of Inter­net dis­tri­b­u­tion over Wi-Fi depends on the capa­bil­i­ties of the router. There­fore, mea­sure the real Inter­net speed only when the com­put­er is con­nect­ed to the router by wire.

It must be admit­ted that in some homes, providers are using old equip­ment, not want­i­ng to change it. If a large num­ber of young ten­ants have moved into your house in recent years, then it is pos­si­ble that the installed equip­ment has ceased to cope with the traf­fic that has arisen. If your mea­sure­ments show that the data trans­fer speed con­stant­ly does not reach the val­ues ​​declared in your tar­iff, you will have to change the provider.

Increasing the speed of Internet distribution over Wi-Fi

Mod­ern routers are capa­ble of cre­at­ing Wi-Fi net­works in which data trans­fer is car­ried out at very high speeds. You just need to “poshaman­it” with the set­tings. First of all, we rec­om­mend that you cre­ate a net­work using the 802.11ac Wi-Fi stan­dard, if the router allows it. In this case, the speed will be high­er, but the net­work range will be slight­ly reduced.

Also, be sure to check the router set­tings to see if it is dual-band. At a fre­quen­cy of 2.4 GHz, the net­work cov­er­age is very exten­sive, but it is unlike­ly that you will be able to get a par­tic­u­lar­ly high speed of down­load­ing data from the net­work. If you switch to a fre­quen­cy of 5 GHz, then even when using the 802.11n stan­dard, the speed will increase slight­ly. But, again, the range will be reduced.

It is also pos­si­ble that some­one else is using your traf­fic. This hap­pens if you con­nect to Wi-Fi with­out enter­ing a pass­word. In the router set­tings, you can eas­i­ly find out who is cur­rent­ly con­nect­ed to the net­work. How­ev­er, if your fam­i­ly has a large num­ber of devices that can access the Inter­net, you can sim­ply get con­fused in the list, which con­tains obscure device names. Also, the router will not show exact­ly who con­nect­ed to the net­work ear­li­er. There­fore, we rec­om­mend putting a pass­word on your Wi-Fi net­work. You should not be afraid of this, since on a smart­phone it is entered only once — then the gad­get remem­bers it.

To get into the router set­tings, enter 192.168.0.1 or 192.168.1.1 in the brows­er. You need to do this on a device that is either con­nect­ed to the router with a cable, or is locat­ed on your home Wi-Fi net­work.

The speed of a Wi-Fi net­work can vary quite a lot depend­ing on where exact­ly you place the router. Try to ensure that all your devices are close to the router. Usu­al­ly the ide­al place for its place­ment is the cor­ri­dor. If there is no fur­ni­ture in it, you can place the router on the wall — there are usu­al­ly cor­re­spond­ing loops on its bot­tom. And do not for­get that con­crete walls slow down the sig­nal much more than brick walls, not to men­tion wood. That is why in pan­el hous­es the Wi-Fi sig­nal extends over a not very long dis­tance.

There are sit­u­a­tions when a firmware update helps to increase the data trans­fer rate. Many routers have been active­ly sup­port­ed by their man­u­fac­tur­ers for many years. There­fore, go to the router set­tings — it is pos­si­ble that a new ver­sion of the soft­ware can be down­loaded here. And we rec­om­mend that you check the box next to the item “Acti­vate auto­mat­ic firmware updates”.

If updat­ing the soft­ware does not help, and ear­li­er you, at your own per­il and risk, seri­ous­ly delved into the set­tings of the router, then you can try reset­ting it to fac­to­ry set­tings. To do this, press the Reset but­ton locat­ed on the back of the device. But do not for­get that then you will have to con­fig­ure it from scratch.

If the Inter­net speed in the imme­di­ate vicin­i­ty of the router does not raise any spe­cial ques­tions, but in the next room it is great­ly reduced, then you will have to use a repeater. This device is also called a sig­nal repeater. It extends the Wi-Fi net­work. If the repeater turns out to be good, and you place it in the right place, then a high-qual­i­ty sig­nal will be observed even in the far­thest cor­ner of the apart­ment.

Final­ly, there is a rad­i­cal method. You can just buy a new router. Make sure it sup­ports both 5GHz and 802.11ac.

Increasing the speed of mobile Internet

On a smart­phone, approx­i­mate­ly sim­i­lar prob­lems can be observed, as on a PC. But they are less pro­nounced. If there are seri­ous ques­tions about the data trans­fer rate, then it will not be super­flu­ous to go into the oper­at­ing sys­tem set­tings. It is pos­si­ble that you have acti­vat­ed con­nec­tion only to 3G net­works. In this case, you need to switch to 4G (LTE), if the device allows it.

Alas, noth­ing more can be said. If your device only sup­ports 3G, we rec­om­mend that you sim­ply buy a new smart­phone. Now even bud­get mod­els are able to use fourth-gen­er­a­tion net­works, so the pur­chase should not become bur­den­some for the bud­get.

Conclusion

Now you know how you can try to increase the speed of your Inter­net con­nec­tion. In some cas­es, these meth­ods real­ly help. If they did not work, then the provider is to blame for not pro­vid­ing your home or even the area with high-qual­i­ty fiber optic cable.