01/07/2015
Slow Internet:
This one frequently surprises people. we’re doing more and more online than ever before. In many ways the computer is transforming from a device on which we do local computing (running our programs, creating documents and so on) to a device that provides an interface to the larger world of the internet. The problem, of course, is that the internet comes to us through a single point: our internet connection. As a result the speed of our online experience is almost completely dependent on the speed of that connection. Things quickly get confusing, however. When a YouTube video won’t play smoothly, is it the connection or the computer? It could be either, but most often it’s the connection. When a website fails to come up quickly, is it the connection or the computer? Well, if just a single website is slow, then it’s probably not the connection but either the website itself or your computer. If most websites feel slow, then the speed of your internet connection may be to blame. Many people see it as their computer being slow, when in fact it’s the resources used getting to the internet and the resources out on the internet that are to blame. Unfortunately there’s almost nothing you can do to your computer that will speed up your internet connection appreciably. Yes, I know, there are utilities that claim to be able to tweak settings to do so, but they rarely have an impact and when they do it’s often something you’d never notice. You can’t make the internet connection faster, but given that your internet connection is a resource that’s shared among all applications on your computer, and in fact among all computers on your network, there are a few things you can do to help make it appear faster. What to do: Take stock of how many computers you have that are accessing the internet simultaneously, and decide if they all really need to be doing so. Turn off the computers, or the internet-connected applications on those computers if it makes sense. Take stock of all the applications running on your computer that could be accessing the internet and make the same decision: do they really need to be running? If not, exit them. Watch the number of browser tabs or windows you keep open. Many modern web sites – in particular social media sites – will often make periodic contact across the internet checking for updates even if you do nothing in your browser, sometimes even if the tab or page isn’t visible. The thing to realize is that use of your internet connection is, in a sense, a competition between all computers and all programs that are trying to use it. What’s happening on a computer in the next room could easily impact the perceived speed of the internet, and as a result, the perceived speed of your computer. That’s not to say that your computer may not be contributing to the problem: many of the other things I discuss in this report as slowing down your computer can absolutely manifest as slowing down your internet. My point here is simply that a slow internet connection can look like a slow computer, when in fact the computer isn’t at fault at all.
