Speed boosting for broadband

As the majority of broadband visitors to this site are interested in speed, as promised, we begin an in-depth look at what you can do to turbo-boost your connection.

Getting the most out of your broadband connection is a perennial issue, especially if you are sharing bandwidth among a number of users. So what can be done to ensure we get maximum revs?

Unfortunately, due to the nature of these things, its a process of elimination to find where problems lie and to optimise what bandwidth we have available. Lets then start with some of the more common frailties and fix them first.

Up to date - Download Internet Explorer 7 or switch to another browser such as Opera or Firefox. IE6, which many people are still using, downloads all the elements of a web page in a sequential order. This isn't the most efficient way of going about things and so pages with lots of images take longer than necessary to download.

Baggage - Dont carry around extra weight, it will slow you down. Go Start/Control Panel/Internet Options and reduce the number of days for which history is stored. Do you really need to keep track of 30 days worth of browsing? Regularly purge temporary browser files too. A free software download that simplifies your housekeeping is CCleaner (Windows only), youll be amazed at how much garbage, which can be safely thrown away, you accumulate over time.

Passengers - Regularly check your computer for spyware and other junk that could be interfering with your connection by grabbing bandwidth. Switching off all applications that could be making a claim on your connection such as email, messaging and chat software, VoIP etc, a bit brutal but you should notice a difference.

Updating Anti-virus and operating systems are usually configured by default to search for updates automatically as soon as the user logs on. This can significantly slow you up when you first boot up. Consider changing the timing of updates to during your lunch break or overnight instead.

Location - If you connect wirelessly via a router be aware that signal strength decreases with distance and will be affected by factors such as thick walls, doors, reinforced steel joists, reinforced concrete, microwave ovens and Bluetooth mobiles. As far as possible, try to site your router away from potential sources of electrical interference such as computers and other hardware. Also ensure it is well ventilated and not over-heating as this will affect performance too.