6 Reasons Why Your Broadband Speed is Less than Advertised

In this Internet era, broadband speed is one of the most important aspects of the digital crowd. With everything connected to the Internet highway, it’s no wonder that our lives are so much dependent on the Internet. Thanks to the online services, you can avail of many facilities at your fingertips, be it an Uber ride or a pizza from your popular food chain. So, all you need is a stable Internet connection but have you ever noticed and wondered why your broadband speed is less than advertised?

First, let me tell you that you haven’t subscribed for a 20 Mbps connection as you might haven’t noticed the tiny little “Up to” before the speed rating. Many ISPs market their speeds in huge fonts, but they indeed mention that the connection is “Up to 20 Mbps” (or some other speed). This is a simple marketing strategy to lure users into subscribing to them. So, your Internet speed will be less than the advertised, but how much? You can check your broadband speed from the Speedtest website link below.

• Check your Internet Speed

So, have you checked your Internet speed and it seems much less than the advertised speed? Are you ready to draw daggers with your ISP or drag them to the courtroom? Well, hold your horses for a second as many other factors contribute to your low broadband speeds. Here are 6 reasons why your broadband speed is less than advertised by your ISP.

Reasons Why Your Broadband Speed is Less

So, apart from the misleading marketing strategies from your ISP, here are some of the factors that might contribute to the lower broadband speeds. Check if you have the below issues and try to improve the issues wherever possible.

• Hardware Issues at Your End: So, first let’s just start off with your hardware issues. If you have an old router or crappy wiring or a poorly configured/placed WiFi connection that’s a victim of interference, you’ll end up with slow speeds than anticipated. This is what you should check before going to war with the ISP.
• Server Side Issues: Even though you have a good broadband connection and a stable connection, the downloading speeds also depend on the server’s speed from which you’re downloading. It also depends on the various routers, and relay points between you and the server that might cause the slower speeds and it’s not your ISP’s fault at all.
• Latency: Even though everything’s fine at the server end as well, the distance between the server and you will cause the speed drops. This is called as latency and is one of the important factors of Internet speed. If you’re residing in the US and downloading something from Asian servers, it would be slower due to the wait times during the transactions.
• Congestion: Moreover, you are not entirely buying a 20 Mbps leased line, instead, you’re sharing the connection with many other users in your locality. So, the users will compete for the speed and you might end up in congestion.
• Peak Hours: Well, this is another issue you’ll face in a shared connection. The network speed will be too low if you’re using the Internet at peak hours when everyone tries to connect to the Internet.
• Throttling: Internet speed throttling is one of the issues you could talk to your ISP. Many ISPs might slow down certain types of traffic, such as peer-to-peer traffic. Moreover, your ISP might throttle the speed once you reach a certain amount of data usage for that billing cycle.

So, that’s a lot of factors contributing to your broadband speed, right? Let us know if you’ve anything to share with us regarding this post.

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