Watching live streams in High Definition (HD), or playing video games on the Internet can become quite nightmarish if the online speed keeps fluctuating or dropping off. For those who depend on the internet for their work internet speed is crucial. Switching Internet service providers is only possible for the most affluent of families, but more than 46 million households in America alone have access to only one service provider. And that too with speeds of 25Mbs per second, or a little higher, which is actually quite slow in modern terms. First, do make sure that your internet speed is indeed too slow. For that, Speedtest.net is the ideal site to access and satisfy yourself that your internet is truly slow (sometimes, or generally, or always). And only if and after this is positive, it is time for action. Of course, one can always upgrade to a higher tier plan with the ISP (Internet Service Provider). But that is always an expensive option. Instead the following Best Ways To Speed Up Your Internet can be tried out first before opting for a drastic solution.

Speed Tips

Some of the Best Ways To Speed Up Your Internet, before turning to really drastic solutions, are enumerated her:

• Browser Protection: Viruses mostly attack through the Browser, and that may have a lot to do with slow speed of the internet. While downloading a Virus Software may become necessary, using a secure browser to start with is always the best idea. Particularly sensitive applications may use the browser, particularly to do with personalized banking, and Bitdefender or AVG may be the only answer.
• Ad-Blocking: A slow connection can be made worse by Ads slowing down the system even further. If it is optional, please don’t load Ads, and should not fetch more data than required from multiple servers, to shorten wait time. Ads are often loaded before other content on the web page, so its best to block them in advance. Using a pop-up ad blocker is often the quick answer to internet slow speed. Improvement in browsing speed may be immediately noticeable if all extraneous data is blocked from the system. Of course, having less ads does make the internet more bearable!
• Anti-Virus Software: It is quite possible that indiscriminate downloading, sometime of forbidden matter, may result in malware being lodged into the system. This may not only harm the contents, but slow things down to crawling speed. Malware hijacks the bandwidth, which slows down the internet speed abysmally. Personal information such as Passwords and bank account data can be at serious risk if Anti Virus Software is not installed, quite apart from slowing down the system. Malware can even steal essential computing resources, such as the CPU, and completely stall the computer. Anti Virus Software are continuously being upgraded these days, to prevent aggression by the latest malware, so it is best to look around before selecting the most suitable package to install.
• Router Restart: One of the simplest actions to take is also one of the most effective: it is to switch off and then physically unplug the Router, and waiting for at least 10 seconds before plugging it back in, and restarting the Router. Of course this time varies with make and model of the Router. But a minute should be enough for most Routers.
• DNS Records: DNS Records are the Records of IP addresses visited while browsing on the internet. The computer system keeps these records in order to speed up future visits. But when the user is redirected to use a different server, these DNS Records become a hurdle to speed instead. ‘Flushing the DNS’ is often the answer, and it is quite easy to execute.
• Internet History Deletion: the Internet naturally saves masses of information much like Saved Downloads, Cookies, Cached images and extensive history, which are all quite useless for normal operation. Deletion of these unnecessary clusters of information automatically improves Internet speed sharply.
• Ethernet: Connecting an Ethernet cable to your Router speeds up the Internet immediately. It also provides high security when using a public Wi-Fi.
• The 5GHz Switching: The normal 2.4GHz band used for most Wi-Fi traffic is being overused, so Router companies are also providing Routers capable of broadcasting on the 5GHz Band. This improves Internet speed magically, as it also avoids interference from appliances like Microwave ovens.
• VPN: Using a VPN (Virtual Private Network) is a clever idea, because the ISP is often the culprit. The ISP sometimes throttles Internet speed because streaming services like Netflix pick up a lot of bandwidth. But with VPN, the ISP cannot identify where the traffic is coming from, and it cannot throttle it.
• VPN-Ready Router: Investing in this will automatically improve Internet speed significantly, but a careful market search should be made before selecting the best model.