Introduction
A poor-quality internet connection may result in slow internet speeds that significantly hamper work on the web, video streaming, file downloads, and video conferencing. Delays and instability of the connection can be caused by various reasons, including a weak WiFi signal, network congestion, a large number of simultaneously connected devices, or an internet service provider (ISP).
The current state of the link can also depend on the technical characteristics of the router, the state of its firmware, or the correctness of its settings. However, there are several ways to improve the situation without spending money on upgrading the tariff plan. It is possible to increase the speed of the Internet by restarting the router, changing the location of the router, reducing the number of downloading applications, and connecting the device to the Internet through an Ethernet cable. In addition, it is vital to check the state of drivers and connection speed on the computer or smartphone.
This How-to guide aims to provide recommendations on how to make the Internet faster on computers, phones, and other gadgets.
Router Placement
Router positioning is the most important thing to get a powerful wireless performance and fast internet speed. Since Wi-Fi operates by radio waves, its range and efficiency will be greatly affected by any physical obstacles, structures, and objects that are around the house. The most common mistake that slows down many internet connections is hiding the router in the cabinet, behind concrete walls, or in a utility closet at floor level.
This limits the spread of the signal, making you lose packets, have latency, and experience dead spots. Your router needs to be positioned in a way that it would become a broadcasting point for signals. To make sure it works properly, it should be placed in a high, open, and central place in the house.Place the router on a high shelf or mount it on the wall. This way, the radio waves will move both down and out and avoid furniture.
Also, different materials affect your Wi-Fi in different ways: drywalls and glasses do not interfere with the signals, but brick, concrete, plaster, and solid metal may block your Wi-Fi altogether. There are also some appliances that work at the same 2.4 GHz frequency as your router does, such as a microwave, baby monitor, and cordless phone, and that create much wireless noise.
Moving the router to a place that is not a kitchen or a utility room is going to improve the connection instantly. By positioning it high and open, you decrease signal refraction and increase ping time.
The placement of your Wi-Fi router can make a big difference in internet speed and signal quality. It should be placed in an open and elevated spot and not in cabinets, furniture or on the floor. Also avoiding thick walls, metals and microwave ovens, as well as keeping the router away from sources of wireless interference, can positively affect the signal quality. In case the router is equipped with external antennas, it is necessary to follow the manufacturer’s instructions about their placement for better performance.
The router should not be placed on the far side of the house in case if you often use Wi-Fi in rooms that are located on the other end of the house. In the case of large houses, it is better to choose a mesh Wi-Fi system or an additional access point to cover the whole house rather than amplifying the power of your router. It is necessary to check the new router’s performance after changing its placement.
DNS Settings
There are some methods to improve the performance of a computer, like changing the DNS server, so that it can quickly find the websites and online services that one uses most. Domain Name System is responsible for converting web addresses into IP numbers so that one’s web browsers can locate them and load them faster. One can install the best DNS on their computer or laptop by changing the default settings, because the former is normally set up by an Internet Service Provider.
Some of the most popular DNS servers that offer good performance and safety are.cloudflare DNS and Google Public DNS. It goes without saying that switching DNS will not improve one’s bandwidth, but only change the way one’s device looks for websites. On the Windows system, one needs to go to Settings – Network – Wifi or Ethernet – Hardware properties, and then change the DNS server in order to complete the procedure.
The process will involve some technical expertise, but it generally should not be very difficult, as long as one has enough patience, tries a few popular sites after changing DNS, and remembers the previous settings, in order to return to them in case something goes wrong. All things considered, changing the DNS can be very helpful if one is trying to get rid of slow and obsolete servers.
Domain Name System (DNS) settings represent the Internet’s phonebook, essentially translating web addresses (google.com) into numeric IP addresses (142.250.190.46). By default, your ISP will usually assign their own servers handling local DNS requests.
The problem with default configurations is that they are often slow, unreliable, and not optimized which adds unacceptable latency to every Internet request before it reaches a website. Replacing the default gateway with a faster and more reliable public provider is among the fastest and most effortless ways to accelerate your Internet connectivity without changing your subscription plan.
The distance between your premises and target DNS server defines the lookup time or latency; the shorter the distance, the faster the result. Leading public DNS providers offer you an option to utilize their optimized backbone with tens of thousands of nodes around the globe, dramatically reducing the latency of any website or domain lookup.
In addition, most public DNS services provide built-in protection against phishing, tracking, and malware domains. Replacing the default DNS gateway is a trivial operation that can be accomplished by editing a few lines in the system’s configuration file. It makes sense to test the performance of a public provider on a single computer before proceeding to reconfigure the home router and accelerating every device connected to it.
Restart Router
Rebooting the router is one of the easiest options to deal with a weak internet connection. There are several factors that can influence a router’s work, including software problems, problems with connections or overwork of the device. In order to reboot the router, press the power switch on the device or simply disconnect the power cord from it. Wait for approximately 30 seconds and connect the device back.
Let the router connect to your internet connection in a couple of minutes and reconnect your devices to the Wi-Fi network. This option is helpful in case of temporary problems with the network, but it won’t boost the speed provided by your plan. Be careful about pressing the Reset button on your router since this action will lead to factory resetting. As a result, all the custom settings will be reset, including your Wi-Fi name and password.
Router rebooting—or power cycling—is a simple but most efficient way to fix poor connection and speed within a second. In a similar way to computers, routers feature a processor, RAM and an operating system. After some time spent processing data for many phones, smart TVs and laptops, the short-term memory (RAM) of the router becomes full.
The result of this is a number of IP conflicts, overfilled routing table cache, overheating and consequently speed drops or freezes. Router reboot helps to clear digital junk and reset network cache, chooses the least occupied wireless channel and creates a new connection with your Internet Service Provider (ISP). This solves any connection problems that appeared due to the problems with handshaking.
The Power Cycle Workflow for 30 SecondsThe safest method to clear the memory of the router and avoid possible damage to its delicate internal circuits, please follow this manual:Unplug power. Remove the power cord from the router, do not press only the “Reset” button as it can erase your Wi-Fi password.Wait 30 seconds.
During this time let the router stay unplugged to make the capacitors inside the hardware discharge completely and empty the memory.Power up the modem first. If your router and modem are separate devices, plug the modem in first and wait until it stabilizes, which takes two minutes.Plug in the router. Connect the power cord back and wait for about two-three minutes to boot up, assign new local IPs and rebroadcast the Wi-Fi signal.Test speed. Connect to the router and do a speed check.
Ethernet vs Wi-Fi
Ethernet and Wi-Fi can both provide internet access; however, they present different advantages to the user. First of all, Ethernet is a network cable that connects the device to the router. The connection is stable and rarely experiences lag; thus, it is better suited for gaming, online conferencing, video streaming, and other activities that involve the heavy download of information. On the other hand, Wi-Fi uses radio frequencies to establish the connection, and it is more convenient since most devices including laptops and cell phones have the appropriate hardware to use it.
Nevertheless, the reliability of the connection can be compromised by potential barriers and the distance between the device and the router. Hence, in the case of choosing between Ethernet and Wi-Fi, the former should be used when a stable connection needs to be established while the latter is convenient in other situations. It is reasonable to suggest that people get both services and use Ethernet for devices that do not have an appropriate connection whereas Wi-Fi can be used for other gadgets.
The basic dilemma of whether to use either Ethernet or Wi-Fi can be boiled down to this: performance vs convenience. Although Wi-Fi allows one to connect anywhere without any cable, it has always been prone to all sorts of interferences. The hardwired Ethernet, on the other hand, sets a dedicated connection that gives you the maximum speed, performance and security that your ISP can offer.You will get a better idea of which connection type is best for your case after understanding the inherent differences in structure of these two transmission mediums.Performance Characteristics Throughput and speed.
The Ethernet cables (Cat6 or Cat6a) deliver guaranteed throughput speed of up to 10 Gbps without any drop in the speed. The speed of Wi-Fi decreases sharply with physical distance and walls.Latency and ping. Wired connections have low latency that keeps ping below 5 milliseconds.
The wireless networks suffer from packet latency due to congestion of airwaves.Signal interference. Wi-Fi gets interference from radio waves of nearby routers, bluethooth devices and microwaves. Ethernet does not suffer from external interference.Connection security. Wired connections have a built-in protection from interception by not allowing anyone to tap into it.
ISP Issues
However, there are some situations when poor internet connectivity is not caused by the problems with your computer, router, or Wi-Fi. These problems can be related to your Internet Service Provider (ISP) due to service interruptions, network congestion, maintenance, technical issues, or some problems with your internet plan. In case your internet connectivity became unexpectedly slow, you need to perform a speed test and see whether the speed of your internet matches the speed provided according to your plan. Check it on different devices to understand whether there is a problem with the whole network.
Additionally, you can check the service status on the website of your ISP and contact its customer service with a question regarding any possible interruptions in your area. In case you experience some troubles periodically, make sure to document it along with dates and results of the speed tests that will help your ISP resolve the issue. If the connection does not work according to your expectations, make sure to ask the ISP to check your line, modem, or even internet plan.
Internet service provider issues belong to external performance bottlenecks, which arise outside the home network and cannot be resolved by any router tweaking and additional hardware installation. If your Internet connection slows down, cuts off, and suffers from latency, it is quite likely that its origin lies somewhere in your provider’s infrastructure, routing configuration or data handling. Internet providers distribute data through wide distribution networks, which include copper lines, fiber optic, neighborhood nodes, etc. They are susceptible to various environmental impacts, wear-and-tear and other technical breakdowns.
Moreover, the Internet providers themselves monitor and regulate their networks through software systems, thus creating artificial barriers for your network performance during the times of its maximal activity. The most widespread problem on the part of the provider is network congestion, also known as “peak-hour slowdown.” As residential internet bandwidth is shared between multiple households in one neighborhood node, it slows down sharply when everybody streams videos or downloads something.
Some providers even engage in targeted bandwidth throttling, slowing down specific operations such as torrenting, 4K video streaming, or gaming in order to save on the capacity of their networks. In addition to the capacity problems, the routing configuration problems inside the domain of the provider can lead to data being routed through long routes across the whole country to access a certain website. The knowledge about whether the problem is internal or external saves you many hours of trying to resolve it.
Here’s another article you may find useful:
8 Best Free VPN Services to Try in 2026
Windows 11 Running Slow? 15 Easy Fixes
7 Best Browser Extensions for Productivity
Bluetooth Not Working? 10 Simple Solutions
7 Ways to Fix Wi-Fi Connected but No Internet
Conclusion
Boosting your internet speed does not necessarily mean that you should go out and buy a new router or switch to another internet service provider. Basic improvements in terms of positioning the router, periodically resetting it when needed and cutting off unnecessary network activity can boost its efficiency.
Adjusting your DNS settings might come useful if you are experiencing difficulties with loading web pages, whereas using an Ethernet cable will give you a better result compared to wireless network. One must also be sure whether the fault lies with the ISP because many problems with connection can be fixed by doing so. You should carry out regular speed tests and compare them with your internet service package to detect any issues.