How to make sure your Broadband/ADSL goes as fast as possible – if you live in the UK.

Doing one or more of the following could have a positive impact on your broadband speed:

1. Buy one of these for 12 quid: http://www.adslnation.com/phpapps/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=24&products_id=105 it just plugs in to your BT Master socket (you unscrew the old one – a 3 year old could do it) and gives you a less noisy signal along with two outlets – one pre filtered for your phone and the other for your broadband.

2. Buy one of these for £6.49 to go between your new faceplate and your ADSL modem: http://www.adslnation.com/phpapps/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=21&products_id=117 they come in longer lengths, see: http://www.adslnation.com/phpapps/catalog/index.php?cPath=21 but try and buy the shortest that you can get away with.

3. Optimise the service that your ISP is giving to you:

a) Find out what your actual upload and download speed is (despite the speed that your modem might have told you that it connected at) by going here: http://www.speedtest.net/   and clicking on the spinning Orange Pyramid. This will give you an idea of your real throughput – and you can use this to measure if any of the steps listed have made an improvement.

b) Go to http://www.speedtester.bt.com/ and check the maximum speed that BT thinks your line can provide. Note: that this site gets choc-a-bloc – so don’t be surprised if it takes a number of goes and crashes half way through …..

c) If the results from b) is a lot higher than a) it could be that your line is syncing at a higher speed than your ISP is providing you a service at. For example, your line might have synced at 6MB – and be capable of giving you a 6MB broadband connection – but your ISP may only be providing you a 2MB service – for example. Check your contract (to see what speed you signed up for) and talk to your ISP if the actual speed is a lot less than you could get – and which you signed up for.

d) A final/concurrent check, would be to go here: http://www.samknows.com/broadband/search.php and check the status of your telephone exchange – because if there is a problem with capacity there – your ISP can’t do much about it.