5 REASONS WHY YOUR INTERNET CONNECTION MAY BE TOO SLOW
At the WiLine customer support center, some of the most common calls we receive are related to network bandwidthh problems. More often than not, these are related to only a handful of causes that can be addressed on the customer side and not network related. In this document you will find 5 of the most common issues that can cause your business internet connectivity performance problems.
Router/Switch Problems
When you start experiencing a drop in performance, your first port of call should be your internet router. If your router isn’t configured correctly, this can lead to performance problems. For example, if your Maximum Transmission Unit (MTU) is set too high or too low, it will lead to speed problems. You should ensure that your router configurations are consisted with WiLine recommendations. If you are testing different configurations on your router, be sure to log your changes so you have a restore point to go back to if something goes wrong.
Wi-Fi Connection
WiLine uses licensed point-to-point radio to transmit its signal, while this is a wireless technology, it is far more reliable than traditional Wi-Fi. Before you think there is an issue with WiLine’s Network, you should troubleshoot your wireless network (if you are using one) as this is one of the most common causes of performance issues. Wi-Fi operates in an unlicensed frequency spectrum, meaning that anyone can “fire up” a Wi-Fi router at any time. So if one of you or one of your neighbouring businesses has recently installed a new router they may be causing signal interference, this requires computers and routers to continually resend packets to overcome the issues clogging up the network. On severe cases it may even cause service interruptions. To fight this interference try repositioning your Wi-Fi router or change the channel and band that you’re using. The 5 Mhz spectrum is often less populated than the 2.4 Mhz.
Background Processes
These can dramatically increase the bandwidth consumption of your network. Some of the applications you install on your computer run these background processes and these can have a significant impact on the performance of your network and even though you often don’t notice that these processes are running, it is always wise to audit background processes when troubleshooting a slow connection.
Check Your Equipment
Your WiLine connection is comprised of several pieces of equipment that are critical for the quality of the service you receive. Our state of the art antennas and roof installations can withstand a lot of bad weather conditions but with time they can become misaligned and the radio signal quality can decrease. This could be a cause of slow performance on your network, however there are other, more common causes, that can be linked to. Here are some likely places to look:
- – Your Main Switch or Router
- – Your Wi-Fi Router (if you’re using one)
- – Check all the cables in the system, especially those exposed to weather.
The best way to troubleshoot equipment faults is where possible, to replace and test different configurations until you isolate the culprit.
Malware
If only one of your systems is infected with malware, this could be significantly impact and even cripple the performance of your network. Some of these programs spontaneously generate network traffic (often to and from the internet) that will make your connection appear slow. The more stations you have infected the more network traffic you could be generating and the slower the connection. The best way to deal with this is prevention, you prevent this by having your anti-virus software up to date and running on all your workstations.