WiFi Archives

Slow WiFi or Broadband Problems in Ireland?

Posted by James on 31/10/2017 | Featured

Having slow WiFi, or broadband problems that make your internet connection in your home unreliable, is a challenge that most of us in Ireland have faced. Thankfully, in many parts of the country, it is no-longer an unsolvable riddle. However, … Read More

Tags: Broadband, Internet Connection, WiFi, WiFi Performance

Network, WiFi, Internet Connection

Many times these days when somebody says that they’ve got a slow computer, the root cause is not actually the computer itself at all. Whether you’re shopping on Amazon, eBay, DoneDeal or Groupon, watching a movie on Netflix, or even reading your gMail, they’re all “in the cloud”. This is just industry jargon for them running on servers on the Internet, not locally on your computer, tablet or smart phone. They depend on your local network or WiFi performance, and Internet connection.

WiFi-performance-internet-test — Internet Connection Testing

Regardless how fast your iPhone, PC, Mac, or iPad are, nothing that relies on the Internet will be fast if your home network, WiFi or Internet Connection are slow. Unfortunately, there is a huge variance in the availability of high speed broadband in Ireland. You may have heard of the “digital divide”, well it is all too real in the green isle. Broadband providers will sell packages advertising speeds “up to” a particular speed, but many of them cannot supply anywhere close to the named speed. If you only have access to copper based phone lines and happen to be too far away from the local exchange, you may only be able to get very slow speeds.

Upload Speed

The advertised speeds often only mention the “download” speed and neglect to mention the very important “upload” speed. If you want to make an internet phone or video call over tools like FaceTime, Skype, WhatsApp you need a respectable upload or upstream speed too. If you want to upload photos or videos to Facebook, that too requires upload bandwidth. Some of the technology used by Internet Service Providers (ISP) like Asynchronous Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) does not fully allow for full duplex connections, or simultaneous bidirectional traffic. This means that if you upload a video over your 1Mbps* upload bandwidth, your 15Mbs download speed is slashed too. (*mega bits per second)

In other cases, bandwidth is shared between subscribers. The more people near you that are using the same provider, the slower your connection becomes.

Understanding what the real options are for Internet connections near you is important before you get stuck in a contract. If Fibre broadband is available where you live, it is a very good choice in most circumstances. Thankfully, fibre rollout is happening across the country and is starting to reach more and more remote areas.

WiFi Performance

Even if your Internet connection is solid, your experience online can be dramatically slowed down by poor WiFi performance, configuration or a broadband router that is struggling. Conflicting signals, poor range and electronic noise can all impact the network performance. All these can produce that horrible spinning “buffering” signal in your movie or Spotify playlist.

Identifying the cause of your slow network or online experience takes a bit of time. You may need to survey your network to pinpoint the bottlenecks. Before investing in a new router, or signing up to a new ISP, it’s a good idea to talk to someone knowledgeable in the art. It may just be that another device on your network is using bandwidth without you knowing! When it comes to your internet connection, talking to your neighbours about what works for them, can also be very useful.

network-usage — Monitoring network usage

DeGeekIT can help you identify the root of your computer performance problems and help you identify the best solution. If you are changing Internet Provider or WiFi Router, call us first and find out what’s best for your needs. Empower yourself! Spending a bit of time and money with DeGeekIT will help prevent you from wasting money on poor computer purchases! Contact us today!

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Posted by James on 24/07/2017 | Featured

Tags: Computer Slow, Internet Connection, Network, WiFi, WiFi Performance

Computers get slower from the moment we first switch them on and computer stores are more than happy to sell you a new one. But why is your computer slow and is there anything you can do about it?

Computers slow down over time, right? It’s just one of those facts that we get used to. Here’s the thing… It’s not quite true.

Technically, if you go out and buy a new computer today, don’t unpack it and don’t turn it on, it will be as fast in 10 years’ time as it would have been if you’d unpacked it on the day you bought it. If you do turn it on, but never connect it to the internet, never do anything with it (other than turn it on) and keep it in an airtight box, it is also likely that it will never slow down.

These scenarios, however, are unlikely and impractical in all but the most extreme fringe cases. (A factory that buys an identical backup computer in case a production machine fails, would be one such real example).

In the real world, as a home computer user, we want to use the devices that we have bought. In almost all cases this means using them on the Internet. When connected online, it is essential that we keep them patched and up to date. This introduces the first point of extra drag on the machine.

The reality is that the computer, the physical hardware itself, doesn’t really get any slower, with one notable exception that we’ll come to later (See HEAT and DUST). What makes your computer slow, or act slower, is that you’re unknowingly asking it to do more. It’s like taking a sports car and adding a caravan, a few kids, and a bunch of luggage… It is going to go slower!

So is there anything that we can do about it?

Well yes, to a point. Computer stores all have a vested interest in one solution… getting you to fork out on a new machine, or new parts. That’s how they make money. However, they also have a lot of pressure to shift existing stock and will often unload out of date (read “already slower”) machines and components on the unwitting.

In this article, I’m hoping to expose what makes your computer slow.

To be fully transparent, my vested interest is in selling myself. My business, DeGeekIT, is focused on helping you to help yourself. I sell my time and my advice. I can help you learn how to pinpoint the cause of slow computers (Windows, Mac etc) and other devices (e.g. Smart Phones and Tablets). I hope that I can save you money by showing you how to speed up the technology you already own and pinpoint the bottlenecks if there are any. If it turns out that by replacing one component, rather than replacing the whole machine, you resolve your performance issue, then I’ll point you in the right direction and help you fit it. I will not, however, be selling it to you or be making any profit from selling the hardware.

I’m independent and not affiliated with any brands, so I’ll be as impartial as humanly possible. I will always aim to help you find something that is price appropriate for the hardware you’ve already got. If it turns out that you do actually need a whole new computer, then talk to me first about your needs, and I’ll help you identify the right thing to buy and what to watch out for when the computer salesman is on commission to offload rubbish on you!