What is Making Your Internet Slow?

A really common issue we are asked to resolve on a regular basis is internet or network slowness. As more line of business apps move to the cloud, this can cause some serious problems for a company. Slow internet can even affect employee productivity.

Fortunately, there are many things we can do to discover what is making the internet slow at your business. Call us today to schedule an appointment to really get at the issue, but here are some common reasons it is slow for you.

Malware

If the internet is just slow for an individual user, the most likely culprit is malware on the computer itself. An infected computer can be making a lot more requests behind the scenes to the internet. More than a typical user makes. This makes the computer lag because it is trying to process all of the additional traffic.

Solution: Make sure to run a thorough scan of the computer for viruses and malware. Sometimes the results can be confusing, so if you aren’t sure what it is, make sure to talk to a professional before deleting something you actually need.

Video Streaming

You know the saying, “one person ruins it for the whole company”. This is very true when it comes to internet slowdowns. Often we can pinpoint the culprit through network traffic monitoring tools. Typically we find one device pulling all of the bandwidth for the entire company.

Solution: Sometimes we will just throttle that user or device to limit them to a set amount of data. We also will have HR talk to the person and tell them to stop streaming videos. Finally, we can also block the video streaming services or sites that are being visited so the entire network can be used for business purposes.

Failing Network Equipment

Another likely culprit for your slow internet or network speed is failing equipment. It’s true that hardware fails from time to time. If it didn’t, we’d probably be out of business eventually! Even firewalls, switches, wireless access points fail. If your equipment is getting up in years, this can definitely be the case.

Solution: Have your IT service provider run some tests and see if any are dropping signals or packets frequently. They can also replace the device with a new one and see if that improves things.

Requirements Have Changed

As many of our day to day business requirements move to the cloud, we are now just asking more of our internet connection than we did previously. You could have remote users all over the world accessing your network. Your local employees could be doing the majority of their work on the internet. Needs can definitely change as your business aligns with the changing technology.

Solution: Unfortunately, the best solution here is to purchase faster internet, which can get extremely costly. You just have to factor in the opportunity cost of your employees being significantly less productive due to the slowness of the internet.

Honestly, this is just the top four reasons, there can be a plethora of reasons the internet is slow at your office. If you have been dealing with it for too long, and you are in Orange County, CA, definitely give us a call to schedule an evaluation of your network.