-I wanted to link to the post I made on why Internet is slow at home, but I saw that it hasn’t been posted yet
Internet speed can depend on several causes. One of them is usually the “bandwidth throttling“, a limit that some Internet operators secretly apply to connections, causing them to visibly slow down.
Bandwidth throttling is a “trick” used by telephone operators to slow down a user’s connection speed.
why do carriers throttle Internet speed? Many times, operators cause the connection to their competitors’ websites are slower, thus getting them to abandon these pages and not to contract their services. Another reason for speed throttling is the “abuse” of streaming or live video services.
Before panicking and calling our operator, the first thing we have to do is check that everything is working properly. As we have already pointed out, there are many reasons why an Internet connection may be slower. First, we must check that the connection infrastructure is correct, that the router is working properly (we can reboot it to “clear” its cache), that there are no unknown devices stealing our speed and also check the network security.
Next, we will have to perform a speed test, using one of the hundreds of free tools that we have at our disposal on the Internet. If after the analysis we find any speed problem, then we must check what is happening.
To perform the “throttling”, the operators use our IP addresstherefore, one of the simplest solutions to avoid this type of trickery is to use a VPN that masks our address. Once the VPN has been activated, we must perform another speed test and compare the results with the one we performed without the VPN.
In this regard, we must bear in mind that the VPN itself slows down the connection speed. Thus, when performing the speed test with the VPN enabled, the VPN should show a lower resultif the result is that we have more Internet speed with the VPN enabled, we are suffering from “throttling”.
Unfortunately, there is not much we can do if we find that the operator is throttling our connection. The best solution is to use speed analysis and contact consumer protection services that can help us with our request, or simply switch operators.
