And then … the internet pauses, seeming to consider the request.
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It might be you (sorry).
It might be the infrastructure youre working with.
It might be your internet provider.
Lets explore some causes and solutions together.
What is a good internet speed?
Step one is to conduct a so-called speed test.
Each uses slightly different methods, so Schwantes recommends trying both to see to it theyre consistent.
A megabit is one million bits of data.
What qualifies as a good internet speed depends on what youre using it for, however.
Those recommended speeds can be high relative to available levels across much of the United States.
What does it mean when a 7-year-old has an interruption?
How long can you wait for them to get back up to speed?
Will they be able to get back on track after those interruptions?
Netflix, on the other hand,recommendsa mere 15 mbps download speed for streaming content in 4K/Ultra HD.
Is the slowdown coming from inside the house?
Like a computer, routers store information in their memory, and sometimes an error gets saved mistakenly.
Restarting is a way to shake out the cobwebs.
And Wi-Fi signals degrade the farther they travel.
Around the start of the pandemic, Schwantes noticed his internet slowing down.
In this case, the problem was him.
He was using a decade-old wireless router.
After replacing it, he said, his speeds improved dramatically.
Whats happening on the other side of the wall?
The biggest speed variances come from the different ways data flows through the tubes directly outside your home.
Not everyone in the United States even has access to fiber internet.
What is copper wire?
(Kids, ask your parents.)
They need to be boosted frequently to push data over longer distances.
In the middle is cable internet, which is generally slower than fiber but can provide relatively high speeds.
Since cable TV is traditionally a one-way broadcast medium, cable connections generally have faster downloads than uploads.
A relatively new entrant to the residential broadband market is fixed wireless.
As the name implies, this bang out of connection doesnt involve a tube running directly into your home.
Satellite internet is generally not as fast as fiber or cable internet.
Can I just switch to a different provider and get faster internet?
you’ve got the option to certainly give it a shot!
However, a dearth of competition in the broadband market across the United States may make that tricky.
This article wasoriginally published on The Markupand was republished under theCreative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivativeslicense.
