What could be more frustrating than slow internet speeds? Imagine that you are watching your favorite show and right at the climax scene you witness something. Suddenly a wheel starts spinning in front of you and you immediately understand what is happening. A wave of anger and frustration hits you and your happy environment is sabotaged. The situation is even worse if you are a hardcore gamer and right before you get your last win, the screen freezes. Yes, your internet is leaving you to suffer an agonizing defeat.
The internet lag can be most disastrous for professionals, especially when everyone is working from home in the midst of a global pandemic and relies on the internet to complete assigned tasks and communicate with their teams. With slow internet speeds, you can miss an important team meeting and run into problems later. If you want to minimize connectivity issues, it’s best to sign up for something reliable like Time Warner’s internet packages, for example, so you can enjoy it worry-free. Subscribing to a good internet plan can reduce the chances of slow internet or connection problems, but it can never be eradicated.
There may be several reasons. Slowdowns could occur if you browse during peak hours, or any equipment, especially your router, may be outdated and needs attention, or your ISP may be throttling your Internet. If that’s the case, we’re here with all the details you need to know about how to tell if your ISP is throttling. The bottom line is that if your service provider is throttling your internet then you cannot ignore the issue at all as it will surely affect your personal and professional online tasks.
What is damping?
Internet throttling refers to the phenomenon where your service provider throttles your bandwidth and tries to slow down your connection, thus affecting your internet speed, once you reach your data cap. This practice is extremely annoying for gamers, streamers, or those who need to download large files. You will experience constant buffering and lag.
Is it legal for providers to limit data?
Internet service providers can reduce your Internet speed for various reasons. First of all, there are internet plans that come with a certain monthly data limit. As soon as the user exhausts that data limit before the end of the month, instead of terminating the Internet service, the provider could drastically slow down the speed of their connection.
Another factor that could cause a provider to throttle your data is high demand and peak usage, especially during peak hours, due to network congestion. Usually, the act of restricting the Internet is legal because the provider mentions it in the fine print, although most users have no idea about it.
How to find out about the Internet restriction?
To learn more about internet speedup, you can simply start by running a speed test. There are many speed tests available online, even free, that can help you find out your current internet speed. Make sure to run your speed test when your internet is not in use and background tabs are closed. This could affect speed test results, especially if certain downloads are running in the background.
How to avoid Internet slowdown?
In the event that your internet is throttling, there isn’t much you can do to stop it if you want to stick with your service provider. However, you can try browsing through a VPN. Install a quality VPN as it can be an effective tool in avoiding speed lag. In fact, you may be able to experience an immediate improvement in your Internet speed if that works for you.
The best solution would be to switch to a more reliable and stable Internet Service Provider that has a strong reputation in the market and impressive customer ratings. The best advice would be to go for an internet plan with no data cap to avoid a data overage situation in the first place. It may cost a little more than internet packages with data caps, but it’s worth it in the long run.
final thoughts
Throttling attempts are becoming very common in the US and this affects your efficiency and productivity while doing your routine online activities. So if you experience lag while streaming, gaming, or browsing, you can run a speed test to check your actual internet speeds. If it’s slower than it should be, try using a fast, high-quality VPN, or switch to a more reliable ISP that offers unlimited data at an affordable price.
Categories: How to
Source: HIS Education