What to Do When the Internet Feels Slow
Overview
Slow internet has a lot of possible causes: your device, your Wi-Fi, the office network, your ISP, or even a specific website. This guide helps you narrow it down before opening a ticket.
Before You Begin
- Your work laptop or computer.
- A second device, like your phone, to compare.
- A few minutes to run a speed test and check a few things.
Steps
- Run a speed test. Go to fast.com or speedtest.net in your browser. Note the download speed, upload speed, and ping.
- Compare to your normal results. A typical office connection should give you at least 50 Mbps download on a wired connection or strong Wi-Fi.
- Test the same site on your phone using office Wi-Fi. If the phone is fast and your laptop is slow, the issue is your laptop.
- Switch from Wi-Fi to a wired connection if you have one. Plug an Ethernet cable into your laptop or dock and rerun the test.
- Close unused browser tabs and background apps. Video apps, large downloads, and cloud sync can eat bandwidth.
- Restart your laptop. This clears stale network connections.
- If only one website is slow, the issue is that site, not your network.
- Ask a coworker if they are seeing the same thing. If yes, file a ticket and mention the time, your location, and the speed test result.
Troubleshooting
- If your phone is also slow on office Wi-Fi: the office network is the issue. See Troubleshoot Office Wi-Fi That Keeps Dropping.
- If everyone is slow: check whether your ISP has an outage. See Check Whether Your ISP Is Having an Outage.
- If video calls keep freezing but websites load fine: your upload speed may be low. Switch to wired and rerun the test.
- If your laptop is the only slow device: update your Wi-Fi driver via Windows Update or restart. If that does not help, file a ticket.
- If you are working from home: see Set Up a Home Office That Actually Works for ways to improve speed.
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Need More Help?
Submit a ticket at support.bostonmit.com or email support@bostonmit.com.