Your Connection and Data Throttling What You Need to Know Now: Part 2

Why Is My Internet Slow?

Throttling is one of many potential bottlenecks that can slow down a consumer Internet connection.

If you’ve gone through the appropriate tests and determined that your internet isn’t being throttled, as we described in part one of this article, or you simply aren’t convinced one way or the other, there are other tests you can perform to find the true cause.

Here are a few reasons why your internet could be slow:

Your modem and router are old or outdated. Most of the time, the issue is something to do with your modem and router — they might need a restart, or be too old to function properly.

You’re connected during “high traffic” hours. The second most common issue is “peak use” slowdowns from other customers. It’s normal for cable Internet to slow down around 30% from 5–9 PM when everyone in the neighborhood starts their nightly Netflix binge.

WiFi connections are slower than Ethernet. Finally, keep in mind that it’s normal for Internet connections to slow down when you’re on WiFi vs. plugged in with Ethernet. Connect your computer to the router with Ethernet and run a speed test to see if the speed is still reduced.

Go through the checklist below to check if there’s another issue before assuming you’re being throttled:

  • Reset your router. Occasionally, the equipment just needs a reboot to get your connection back up to speed.
  • Connect via Ethernet cable to see if it’s a problem with your WiFi
  • Connect via another device to see if the problem is isolated to one computer.
  • Check for viruses with a reputable antivirus and malware scanner
  • Call your service provider to see if they can detect a technical issue. If not examine your own equipment. Is it up to date? If it has been a long time since you upgraded your router, for example, the slowing of your Internet may be down to hardware issues.

New Hardware for Better Internet Connections

If you have a router or modem that can’t keep pace with your needs, you might find your connection going down, or slowing down without explanation. And if you are working from home now consumer grade modems and routers aren’t necessarily the best Most consumer grade routers and modems are designed to handle basic traffic because they’re on the cheaper side. As you go up in price you’ll typically, but not always, get better products.

Better modems and routers usually have faster Central Processing Units (CPUs) and more Random Access Memory (RAM) than the cheapest products, which means they can handle more devices, more requests, and more data without giving out. The more you use your Internet, the more you’ll have a need for better hardware.

When you had your home Internet installed, did you connect to it using the WiFi password provided by the service technician? If you did, you are using a combination modem and router in one unit. These devices are good for people who don’t want to buy their own routers, but they’re usually on the cheaper side and aren’t up to handling a large workload.

While you may have WiFi, those WiFi speeds may be limited by the limited hardware in the system. The newest WiFi, called 802.11ax or WiFi 6, is faster and better than previous generations. But the WiFi technology in these devices may only support up to 802.11n or WiFi 4, which is more than 15 years old.

You won’t get the best speeds with your new tech on these types of units. You may even notice a lot of lag time and dropped connections to the equipment if you have a lot of devices in your home connecting at once. The equipment just might not be able to keep up with the demand.

A router is a router and a modem is a modem, right? Not exactly. Do you remember how slow your computer was ten years ago compared to the faster computer you have now? Computers have CPUs with more cores and faster frequencies than before.

RAM is also faster and more of it can be crammed into a single chip, meaning better performance for all the data that gets sent back and forth. It works the same way for routers and modems. Faster CPUs are generally better and may be able to increase your performance. But RAM is typically where most routers fail. More and faster RAM can handle more threads, which is especially important is you have a lot of network traffic going back and forth

If you do over-utilize your network, slow CPU and RAM can cause bottlenecks in your network. When you have a bottleneck, something has to slow down. It’s just like a lot of traffic on the highway having to slow down when the lanes are reduced for construction. Everything needs to process through the router and modem before it gets to the final destination, after all. So your frequent buffering might be caused by cheap hardware not being able to keep up.

Power users – like new home workers – that send large amounts of data back and forth or that have a lot of users and devices accessing data at the same time can benefit from upgraded routers and modems that feature faster CPUs and more RAM.

Need help optimizing your home network for remote work? Contact us today, we’ll be happy to help.

Your Connection and Data Throttling What You Need to Know Now: Part 1

In 2020, along with 1,001 other strange things, a huge number of people across the world, including here in California, have found themselves displaced from their offices and working from home. Which means that they are no longer relying on their company’s superfast business Internet in the office but their own home network and their own ISP.

Many have found that, even if their company has been willing to pick up the tab for upgraded Internet access – which some have and some haven’t – they never quite seem to get the speeds they are paying for, or, if they do it comes in bursts before slowing down.

What the heck is going on is a reasonable question here, especially if slow Internet speeds are affecting your work. Buffering Netflix is one thing, being kicked out of an important Zoom meeting because your Internet connection fails is quite another.

In this two part series we are going to take a closer look at this problem, starting with an issue many people do not understand: data throttling.

Believe it or not, internet bandwidth is never truly unlimited. The signal being sent to your devices is coming from a single cell tower that is shared with many other individuals simultaneously.

For this reason, internet service providers (ISPs) may sometimes “throttle,” or limit, your usage to certain speeds without expressly telling you when they are doing it in order to free up bandwidth for others connected to the same tower.

Typically, ISPs only throttle what they consider to be a “heavy” internet user — as per their own definition — during “times of high traffic.”

It’s frustrating to run a speed test and see that you’re getting less speed than you’re paying for. The question is: are you being throttled? Or is it some other issue?

What Is Throttling Data?

Throttling is the process of an ISP purposely slowing down an internet user’s data transmission. Sometimes you’ll see lower speeds that are difficult to explain and aren’t attributed to equipment issues. You won’t always receive a clear notification that your connection is throttled despite rules that pressure telecom companies to inform you, so the uncertainty regarding your slower connection can be incredibly frustrating.

Currently, you’ll usually see a throttling of your entire connection, but with the repeal of Net Neutrality, some people worry that ISPs may start throttling specific types of content. This is not yet a common issue.

Why Do ISPs Throttle Data?

There are multiple reasons why an ISP might throttle data:

  1. You have met your data limit. Many people have data limits on their internet connections. When they exceed the allotted amount of data, their speeds will often be drastically reduced.

Instead of cutting off access to internet service completely, ISPs instead prioritize customers that are within the terms of their plan. The slower speeds can be incredibly annoying, but it’s definitely preferable to losing the ability to surf the web completely.

  1. You are connected during a “high traffic” time. While bandwidth isn’t usually an issue for major internet providers, the fact remains that it is a finite resource. With extremely heavy data use that exceeds allowances, ISPs may need to throttle some connections in order to provide high speeds to the rest of their customers. This may be becoming more common in your area as thousands of people continue to work from home and will do for the foreseeable future.
  2. Your ISP is choosing to throttle your specific activity. With the repeal of Net Neutrality, the ability of an ISP to throttle may be expanded, adding the ability to throttle specific types of content or to charge higher fees to major data users such as streaming services like Netflix. If costs are increased dramatically for these content providers, the costs of paying off ISPs may be passed down to you.

How To Check If Your ISP Is Throttling Bandwidth

Note that throttling results in extremely low download speeds, while more common issues like Netflix congestion only cause a 10–40% speed reduction.

The most obvious way to tell if your internet is being throttled would be to run a free speed test available online. Unfortunately, most internet providers can detect speed tests and artificially inflate your speeds to make it appear that they’re not throttling you.

So, a speed test isn’t a foolproof way to identify internet throttling.

The only reliable method of checking whether your connection is throttled is through a Virtual Private Network, also known as a VPN.

ISPs may sometimes throttle only specific types of content, and a VPN can make this practice next to impossible by masking your IP address and activities from your ISP.

With your ISP forced to treat all of your content equally due to the inability to discern what sort of websites you’re viewing, you should then be able to measure your true speeds using an online speed test.

So, to reiterate, you can tell if your internet is being throttled by following these steps:

  1. Run an Internet Speed Test
  2. Use a reputable VPN
  3. Run the test again using the VPN to see if you get a different result.

If your speeds are significantly lower than normal and you can’t explain the problem after following the steps in the troubleshooting section below, the odds are that your connection is being throttled.

How To Fix Data Throttling

Thankfully, there are a couple of practical steps you can take to fix internet data throttling:

  1. Monitor your monthly data usage. If you’ve exceeded your data limit on a capped plan, you can usually avoid the issue by better monitoring your usage moving forward or switching to a plan with higher data allowances. If your data is supposed to be “unlimited,” however, there may not be an easy fix.
  2. Sign up for a reputable VPN. A good VPN may be able to provide you a solution to internet throttling. If a VPN cannot solve the issue, you may need to resort to one of the next two steps. One thing to keep in mind, though, is that many large online services such as Netflix and Hulu are getting better at detecting VPNs and may restrict you from using their services if they cannot determine your location.
  3. Switch to a new internet service provider. Some ISPs are more notorious when it comes to slowing down its users, and almost every ISP has a different data cap in its terms. If you are constantly being throttled, you may want to sign up with another internet service provider that has a significantly higher data cap.
  4. Express your concerns to government representatives. If these solutions don’t work for you, the only real recourse that remains is to try to convince representatives and Federal Communications Commission officials to fight for a more open internet. By submitting an FCC comment voicing your concerns or contacting your congressperson, you can add your voice to the many fighting against predatory throttling and content prioritization.

But what if you go through all of this and find that your slow Internet is not a result of data throttling at all? Now what should you do? This is an issue we’ll explore in the next part of this article.