Tips on How to Fix an Unreliable Home Internet

Wed, Aug 30, 2023 10:16 PM

When you work from home, there's never a good time for your internet to be out. A fast connection is useless if it drops out in the middle of a crucial meeting or grinds to a halt while you're watching a movie.

Your home network or internet service provider could be the root of your issues. We'll go through some of the most prevalent problems and what you can do to solve them.

Your internet connection is being throttled

If your connection becomes slow or inconsistent at the end of each month, it's possible that your connection has been throttled for exceeding your monthly data cap. Many internet plans (even some that promise "unlimited data") include monthly usage limits. If you exceed these limits before the end of the month, you may be charged additional costs or have your speed lowered significantly.

• How to solve this issue: If you routinely exceed your monthly data cap, it may be worthwhile to upgrade to a plan with a bigger data allowance. You could also switch to a service that does not have data caps. Learn more : Internet Service Provider Data Caps Guide

You have a lot of latency

You may have excessive latency if your connection works OK for watching Netflix but suddenly breaks down when you're on a Zoom call or playing online games.

The time it takes for a signal to travel from your computer to its destination and back is known as latency. If the latency is too long, real-time activities such as video chat and online games may be affected.

The first step in determining whether you have high latency is to perform a speed test. Your upload and download speeds, as well as your latency, will be displayed. A good latency measurement is between 50 and 100 milliseconds. A latency of more than 150 milliseconds might result in serious issues such as lag, dropped calls, and losing your connection to game servers.

• How to solve this issue: There are several ways to reduce latency on your home network, but the simplest is to use an Ethernet cable to connect the device you're using to your router.

Your network has an excessive number of devices

Even if your internet connection is fast enough to support all of your network's devices, there are instances when you have more devices than your router can handle. It's like attempting to run a packed restaurant. If you just have one server, it will be difficult to keep all of the tables pleased, even if there is plenty of food coming out of the kitchen.

If you have an older router, it will only connect with each of your devices individually. It may send a chunk of video data to your TV, a notification to your phone, a portion of a software update to your workplace computer, and then the next bit of video data to your TV.

If your network is overburdened, it may not be able to send the next block of video to your TV in time to keep the show running properly.

Multi-user, multiple input, multiple output (MU-MIMO) technologies are used in modern routers. This lets the router send data to multiple devices at once, allowing it to better control network traffic. Wi-Fi 6 routers offer even more input/output capability, as well as a number of other features to aid in the management of many devices.

• How to solve this issue: If your router is new and supports MU-MIMO, you probably don't have enough devices to justify upgrading to Wi-Fi 6 right now. If you have an older router and a lot of smart gadgets, however, upgrading to a Wi-Fi 6 router might be a better option.

Your router has malfunctioned

Although you may not realize it, your router is simply a specialized computer with a processor and software that keeps your network working. And, like any computer, the software it runs, as well as the entire device, might crash. This can happen for a variety of causes, ranging from software issues to the entire router overheating.

• How to solve this issue: Fortunately, the quick fix is as simple as turning it off and on again. This will reset the system, allowing all software to restart. The disadvantage is that, while power cycling the system will restore your network, it will not address the issue that caused your router to crash in the first place.

If you find yourself having to restart your router on a regular basis, you may be dealing with a more significant issue. Logging into your router and updating the firmware would be the first step. If the problem persists, it may be time to invest in a new router.

There's a lot of internet traffic in your neighborhood

If you have cable internet, you may find that your connection becomes slow or unreliable at the same time each day. This is due to the fact that cable connections share bandwidth with multiple households in the same area, producing congestion during peak hours. Switching to an internet provider that employs a different technology, such as fiber, is a better long-term answer.

• How to solve this issue: The simplest solution to this problem is to avoid bandwidth-intensive activities such as streaming video during peak nighttime hours. Of course, the reason there is traffic in the first place is that it is a time when you would want to relax and watch a movie.

The network of your service provider is unavailable

Sometimes the issue isn't your fault at all. Natural disasters and extreme weather, as well as the typical wear and tear on older equipment, can cause all or part of a provider's network to go down. Unplanned outages are more common in earlier wired technologies, such as DSL, and less common in fiber-optic technology.

ISPs must also take a portion of their network offline for maintenance purposes. Less reliable technologies, such as DSL, necessitate more maintenance. ISPs can usually avoid your connection from falling out completely during planned downtime, although you may notice a speed dip.

• How to solve this issue: If you think your ISP's network is down, they usually feature an outage tracker on their website. You can also contact your ISP's customer care department to report an outage and get an estimate for when your service will be restored.

If you've tried everything and still have an unstable internet connection, switching to a different provider can be worth it. When looking for a replacement, make sure to consider elements such as reliability and speed. Some types of connections, such as fiber, are intrinsically more dependable. Reading user reviews or looking at an ISP's reliability score on our customer satisfaction survey can also give you an idea of how reliable its network is.

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