Even if you’re paying top dollar for high-speed Internet service, you may not be getting the performance you expect. Follow our guide to boost your broadband speed.

If you’re serious about the Internet, chances are you spend anywhere from $30 to $99 per month for a broadband Internet connection. But regardless of how much you pay, are you getting all the speed that your Internet service provider promised you? And does your connection persist reliably without dropping out frequently or requiring modem reboots? With our quick guide, you can squeeze every last kilobit-per-second (kbps) of throughput out of your broadband modem and keep your connection running smoothly.

1. Test Your Connection Speed

Before you start tweaking, get a baseline reading of your downstream and upstream connection Internet speed. If possible, measure the speeds at different times of day, especially during the hours when you use the connection most frequently and at least once after midnight or 1:00 a.m. (when competition for bandwith is likely to be at its lowest level).

2. Update Your Firmware or Get a New Modem

If your cable or DSL modem is more than a couple of years old, ask your ISP for a new one. The exchange will probably be free; if there is a fee, you can usually waive it by agreeing to a new one-year contract. The latest cable modems meet the DOCSIS 2.0 (Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification) standard. If you have a 1.1 modem and a high-throughput plan, you’ll likely experience a large speed increase just by swapping modems.

Even with a brand-new modem, make sure that you have the latest firmware installed. I upgraded my two-year-old Efficient Networks 5100b DSL modem from firmware version 1.0.0.39 to 1.0.0.53 and immediately saw my Speedtest throughput increase from 5.3 mbps to 5.9 mbps, just a hair below the 6 mbps that I’m paying for. Cable providers such as Comcast usually push new firmware to modems, so there’s no need for most cable modem users to perform upgrades themselves.

To update your DSL modem, you’ll have to connect to its Web interface, which means that you’ll need to know the IP address of the modem on your local network. This information should be in your user manual; alternatively, you can find default settings for most modems on the Internet. The address will probably look something like 192.168.100.1 or 192.168.0.1. Enter this character string into your browser and the Web interface should come up. You’ll likely have to sign in, using either a security code printed on the bottom of the modem or a default username and password (unless you previously changed it). Write down the login information for future reference.

Once you’ve logged in, check the firmware number on the status page and see whether a newer version of the firmware is available on the manufacturer’s site. If it is, download this more recent firmware to your PC and then find and run the firmware update procedure from the modem’s browser utility. Reboot, rerun Speedtest and see whether your data is traveling faster. Besides boosting transfer speeds, using a new modem or updated firmware can solve a host of nagging connection issues, such as intermittent dropouts.

3. Check Your Modem Parameters

While you’re updating the firmware, check some key parameters. First, the maximum allowed speeds (both downstream and up) should match your service plan. If they don’t, your ISP didn’t set your service up properly. Give your ISP a call and ask it to fix the setup remotely.

Second, look for signal-to-noise ratio (or SN margin) and line attenuation, both measured in decibels (dB). The lower the signal-to-noise ratio, the more interference you have and the greater the number of packets that will need to be re-sent because they didn’t come through the first time. For this reason, a noisy line can dramatically cut throughput. Line attenuation measures the drop in voltage that comes with splitting the signal (especially for cable modems) and with long runs of cable or older wiring. Excessive signal loss will cause a drop in throughput.

For DSL modems, anything above about 50 dB for line attenuation is poor and 20 to 30 dB is excellent. For signal-to-noise ratio, 7 to 10 dB is marginal and 20 to 28 dB is excellent. My modem’s SN margin registered at 12.5 dB, barely reaching the good range, and its line attenuation reading was 30.5 dB, which rates as very good. Note that acceptable ranges may vary depending on your service level and modem type (faster connections need to be cleaner), so check with your cable or DSL provider to see what numbers you should look for.

4. Troubleshooting Line Quality

If your off-peak Speedtest numbers didn’t measure up to your plan’s specifications and if you found poor signal-to-noise or line attenuation numbers, it’s time to troubleshoot your wiring. Excessive noise may cause intermittent dropouts, too.

Your first task is to determine whether the signal is already degraded when it reaches your house or whether your own wiring is at fault. To test this, move your cable modem as close as you can to where the wire first splits. If possible, take a laptop and power cord for your modem outside to the junction where it connects to the house. Retest and see if things improve. If they don’t, call your cable company. If your own wiring looks to be at fault, reduce the number of splits that occur before the wiring reaches your modem and/or replace the wire itself, which may be faulty. The ultimate solution for cable modems is to create a split directly after the junction box and then run a clean new cable directly to your modem, using the other split for all of your TVs (which are less affected by noise).

For DSL modems, noisy inside wiring tends to be due to the other phone equipment on your line. This interference is supposed to be controlled by the filters placed between the wall jack and each device. Make sure that they are all in place. If you still have too much noise, the best solution is to install a “DSL/POTS splitter” immediately after the phone box, where the wiring comes into the house, and then run a dedicated “homerun” wire straight to the modem. This arrangement will completely isolate your modem from the regular phone wiring - and the new wire should help, too.

If you don’t want to do this job yourself, you can ask your cable or phone company to perform both tasks for a fee.

Finally, improper grounding can be a source of noise, especially on cable. Make sure that all of your TV equipment is plugged into properly grounded outlets, with polarized plugs oriented in the right direction and without any three-prong-to-two-prong adapters. If you have an electric outlet tester, use it to check for excess voltage on your cable wiring. An electrician can find and fix any grounding problems, which are safety concerns as well.

5. Optimize Software Settings

Now that your cable or DSL line is as clean as you can make it, you’re ready to tweak your system and applications for maximum performance, and Improve Internet Speed too.

For optimizing network performance parameters in Windows XP or Vista, we like TotalIdea Software’s Tweak-XP Pro Premium and TweakVI Premium. Both programs simplify optimization without requiring you to understand Registry editing or hidden Windows settings. Both packages include dozens of tweaks in addition to network and browser adjustments. The Pro version of Network Magic, an excellent network monitoring utility, includes optimization capabilities as well.

System-level optimization is less important in Vista than in XP, since Vista tunes your TCP stack dynamically. In fact, Vista users can probably get away with just optimizing specific applications, especially their browsers. To speed up Firefox page displays, try Firetune or Fasterfox. Both are free and one-click easy. Fasterfox adds a few more customization options for expert users. Both tweak low-level Firefox settings such as cache memory capacity, maximum simultaneous connections and “pipelining” (performing multiple data requests simultaneously).

6. Accelerate Your Downloads

Frequent downloaders can save huge amounts of time by using a download manager like our favorite, FlashGet. FlashGet creates multiple simultaneous download links and then puts the file together afterward. All you do is click or drag download links to the FlashGet window; the program does the rest. It integrates with Internet Explorer and works with Firefox using a companion utility called FlashGot.

1. Change the System ID: Devices come with a default system ID called the SSID (Service Set Identifier) or ESSID (Extended Service Set Identifier). It is easy for a hacker to find out what the default identifier is for each manufacturer of wireless equipment so you need to change this to something else. Use something unique- not your name or something easily guessed.
2. Disable Identifier Broadcasting: Announcing that you have a wireless connection to the world is an invitation for hackers. You already know you have one so you don’t need to broadcast it. Check the manual for your hardware and figure out how to disable broadcasting.
3. Enable Encryption: WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy) and WPA (Wi-Fi Protected Access) encrypt your data so that only the intended recipient is supposed to be able to read it.

WEP has many holes and is easily cracked. 128-bit keys impact performance slightly without a significant increase in security so 40-bit (or 64-bit on some equipment) encryption is just as well. As with all security measures there are ways around it, but by using encryption you will keep the casual hackers out of your systems. If possible, you should use WPA encryption (most older equipment can be upgraded to be WPA compatible). WPA fixes the security flaws in WEP but it is still subject to DOS (denial-of-service) attacks.

4. Restrict Unnecessary Traffic: Many wired and wireless routers have built-in firewalls. They are not the most technically advanced firewalls, but they help create one more line of defense. Read the manual for your hardware and learn how to configure your router to only allow incoming or outgoing traffic that you have approved.
5. Change the Default Administrator Password: This is just good practice for ALL hardware and software. The default passwords are easily obtained and because so many people don’t bother to take the simple step of changing them they are usually what hackers try first. Make sure you change the default password on your wireless router / access point to something that is not easily guessed like your last name.
6. Patch and Protect Your PC’s: As a last line of defense you should have personal firewall and Install anti-virus software installed on your computer. As important as installing the anti-virus software, you must keep it up to date. New viruses are discovered daily and anti-virus software vendors generally release updates at least once a week. You also must keep up to date with patches for known security vulnerabilities. For Microsoft operating systems you can use Windows Update to try and help keep you current with patches.

It wasn’t too long ago that computers were a luxury rather than a necessity. Only the lucky and the wealthy had even one in their home and a network was something reserved for large corporations.

Fast forward a decade or so and everyone has to have their own computer. There is one for the parents and one or more for the kids to use for homework and games. Home users have gone from no Internet access to 9600 kbps dial-up Internet access beyond 56 kbps dial-up access and are moving on to broadband connections to increase internet speed or match the T1 connections they relish at work.

As the Internet and the World Wide Web have exploded into our culture and are replacing other media forms for people to find news, weather, sports, recipes, yellow pages and a million other things, the new struggle is not only for time on the computer at home, but for time on the Internet connection.

The hardware and software vendors have come forth with a variety of solutions allowing home users to share one Internet connection among two or more computers. They all have one thing in common though- the computers must somehow be networked.

To connect your computers together has traditionally involved having some physical medium running between them. It could be phone wire, coaxial cable or the ubiquitous CAT5 cable. Recently hardware has been introduced that even lets home users network computers through the electrical wiring. But, one of the easiest and least messy ways to network computers throughout your home is to use wireless technology.

It is a fairly simple setup. The Internet connection comes in from your provider and is connected to a wireless access point or router which broadcasts the signal. You connect wireless antenna network cards to your computers to receive that signal and talk back to the wireless access point and you are in business.

The problem with having the signal broadcast though is that it is difficult to contain where that signal may travel. If it can get from upstairs to your office in the basement then it can also go that same 100 feet to your neighbors living room. Or, a hacker searching for insecure wireless connections can get into your systems from a car parked on the street.

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use wireless networking. You just have to be smart about it and take some basic precautions to make it more difficult for curiosity seekers to get into your personal information. The next section contains some simple steps you can take to secure your wireless network.

Broadband Security in 6 Easy Steps

- SPEED UP NETWORK BROWSING:

* Open up regedit.
* Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Explorer/RemoteComputer/NameSpace.

Delete the key: {D6277990-4C6A-11CF-8D87-00AA0060F5BF}.

- FASTER WEB PAGE LOADING:

This tweak will help web pages load faster, it has no real effect on download speeds, just helps your pc look up websites faster thereby speeding up how fast the page loads and making web-surfing more enjoyable.

Navigate to this registry entry and change the following settings:

For XP & 2K

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\ServiceProvider

For 98, 98SE & ME

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\VxD\MSTCP\ServiceProvider

On the right for ALL OS's change these entries: (ALL values are HEXIDECIMAL)

DnsPriority = 1
HostsPriority = 1
LocalPriority = 1
NetbtPriority = 1

To change the value right mouse click on the value and select modify and enter the values above once you have done all of them reboot to take effect and see how fast your pages load.

For 98 & ME they should look like:

01 00 00 00

- SETTING IE'S SETTINGS CORRECTLY

Open Internet Explorer and select Tools - Internet Options - under the General tab in the Temporary Internet files section select the Settings button.

Select "Every visit to the page" and set the amount of disk space to use: to no more than 100MB. Now select the Connections tab and select LAN Settings make sure EVERYTHING there is unchecked and select OK.

IE6 ONLY - select the Privacy tab and choose Advanced check the box "Override automatic cookie handling" and for First-party Cookies - Accept, Third-party Cookies - Block and check "Always allow session cookies.

Set your temporary internet cache to 100mb and delete it weekly.

- RESET YOUR MODEM REGULARLY

Another thing to do about once a week if you modem is on 24/7 is to power cycle your modem, just completely disconnect power from it for atleast 15 seconds and then power it back on.

- DNS CACHE FIX

By default Windows 2K & XP cache everything in the DNS cache service, both correct and faulty DNS lookups. To increase performance by eliminating the caching of faulty DNS lookups, change the following values from whatever their original values are to zero.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Dnscache\Parameters]
"NegativeCacheTime"=dword:00000000
"NetFailureCacheTime"=dword:00000000
"NegativeSOACacheTime"=dword:00000000

- USE ETHERNET INSTEAD OF USB

Always connect your modem via ethernet (Network Interface Card) instead of USB, ethernet is faster and much more stable. Also make sure you have the latest drivers for your NIC from the manufacturer NOT Microsoft, alot of times the drivers from the manufacturer have advanced settings that help optimize the performance of your NIC that the native Microsoft drivers don't have.

- SCAN WEEKLY WITH FOR SPYWARE

Make sure to keep Ad-aware, SpyBot and SpywareBlaster up to date and do weekly scans.

- UPDATE YOUR DRIVERS AND FIRMWARE:

Make sure you have the latest drivers for your NIC from the manufacturer. If you are using a router make sure you have the latest firmware.

- MINIMIZE YOUR AMOUNT OF PROTOCOLS:

For 2K & XP - Under your LAN connection - properties - general tab, uninstall all the protocols there that you do not need. *Note - If using 2K & XP and you are a stand alone pc then the only protocol you need is Internet Protocol TCP/IP.

- SETUP TCP/IP PROPERLY:

(XP Only) Setting your TCP/IP metric setting properly, it should be set to a value of 1. To do so do the following:

Open your control panel – select the network icon – right click on your LAN connection and select properties – highlight Internet Protocol TCP/IP and select properties – advanced – select the IP settings tab – in the interface metric box put the value 1 – ok. Also disable NetBios over TCP/IP if you are not file or printer sharing.

- FORWARD BUFFER MEMORY TWEAK:

This value controls how much RAM TCP/IP uses for storing packet data in the router packet queue.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters]

"ForwardBufferMemory"=dword:00024a00
"NumForwardPackets"=dword:0000024a
"MaxForwardBufferMemory"=dword:00024a00
"MaxNumForwardPackets"=dword:0000024a

*Note - These values should be adjusted according to your MTU value, the above are based on a MTU of 1500. For further support on Internet Speed, please visit Improve Internet Speed

Literally dozens of different utility programs are available on the Net, often free downloads, that promise to improve internet speed and performance of a home network. These utilities alter the computer operating system's default settings so that Web surfing, email, Internet conferencing, and other Web-based applications may work faster than before...

... . The vast majority of these programs run on the Microsoft Windows family of operating systems and are designed for broadband networks. In theory, those with high-speed network access stand to gain the most from network optimization and increase Internet Speed.

Most speed patches change TCP/IP settings in the Windows Registry such as the MTU size and other related sizes. Some patches alter parameters in Windows .INI files. Some may even replace system library files.

Consider the following tips when experimenting with this type of software:

1. Be sure to download programs that work with your specific operating system and network configuration. A patch designed for Windows 95 dial-up networking will probably not produce the desired results on a Windows 98 system using cable modem.

2. Stick with programs developed by or reviewed by well-known companies. Microsoft, for example, occasionally releases patches that are generally helpful bug fixes to operating system components. Newly-announced utilities from lesser-known organizations, on the other hand, may be more experimental or speculative patches that may do more harm than good in some situations.

3. Finally, consider making performance tweaks to your system manually rather than through use of a utility. Making changes "by hand" allows one to experiment more methodically and understand clearly where the modifications were made and where they can be undone. With utility software, much of it available only in binary form, the nature of modifications made may not be apparent or well-documented and thus much harder to undo. NEVER rely on the automatic uninstall capability of these programs!

Broadband speed patches can improve the Internet Speed and reliability of home networks with high-speed Internet service like cable modem or DSL. However, with so many variables involved in network performance, the only sure way to evaluate the quality of these packages is to (carefully) try them out on your systems.

If you have read How USB Ports Work, then you know that a USB port has a maximum data rate of 12 megabits per second (Mbps). However, of that available bandwidth, an individual USB device can use only up to 6 Mbps. And if you have several devices attached to the USB ports and they pump lots of data, this competition may further lower the data rate.

An Ethernet card, on the other hand, connects directly to the computer's bus. Ethernet cards come in two flavors: one that accepts 10 Mbps, and another that accepts 100 Mbps.

If you are on a cable modem late at night with no one else sharing the line, the cable modem can run at data rates faster than 10 Mbps. In normal circumstances, however, a few megabits per second is far more likely. Taking this into account, you could install a 100-Mbps Ethernet card if you want the best possible peak performance. Also, an Ethernet card is likely to be more consistent, since it is dedicated to network traffic (as opposed to a USB connection, which may handle traffic from a number of devices). One difference is the ease of installation. To install an Ethernet card, you have to open the computer casing, while the USB option takes 5 seconds to plug it in.

Increase Internet Speed l fix browser problems

If you're not getting the performance you expected from your high-speed Internet connection, here are some tips that might give you a Internet speed boost.

Start by checking the speed of your connection. Take a serious look at your computer. It might be part of the bottleneck. Computers rely on their processors to convert Web coding languages, such as HTML, JavaScript and Java, into the Web pages. The slower the processor, the more time it takes to convert Web coding into the sites displayed on your screen. Memory also is important. If you don't have enough, the computer will only be able to store part of a page to a few pages in memory at once. Additional pages are saved to the computer's swap file, which is memory created from free space on your hard disk. Swap memory (also called virtual memory) operates much more slowly than physical memory, so Web surfing to complex pages or sites with little memory can be a huge slowdown.

If you have an up-to-date PC with enough memory but your connection has suddenly slowed to a crawl, try rebooting your modem. If your modem has a reset button, push it to reboot. Otherwise, unplug the power cord from the modem. Give it a minute and then reconnect the power.

Then go into your browser and dump cookies, history and temporary files. In Internet Explorer, click Tools and Internet Options. On the General tab, click Delete Cookies, Delete Files and Clear History.

In Netscape, click Edit and Preferences. Under Navigator, find History. Click Clear History. Under Privacy & Security, click Cookies. Click Manage Stored Cookies. On the Stored Cookies tab, click Remove All Cookies. Under Advanced, click Cache. Click Clear Disk Cache.

If you're using Apple's Safari, click Safari and Empty Cache. Then click Safari and Preferences. Click Security, Show Cookies and Remove All.

Finally, reboot the computer.

Some people with cable access use splitters to separate the television and Internet signals. Splitters work, because the signals use different frequencies. But the cable company uses industrial-strength equipment. If you bought your splitter on sale at the five-and-dime, that could be the problem.

If you're using DSL, and you've added telephone extensions to every room in the house, that could be a problem, too. That has the effect of increasing the line loop, adding to the distance from the switching station. When adding lines, be sure you know what you are doing. Poor quality work or wiring can degrade the Internet signal.

Also, be careful of the networking cable that runs from the modem to the computer. If you roll over it with a chair, you could crimp the wires inside.

It is possible that your problem is in the wiring outside your home. The technical support people at your Internet service provider can check for problems.

Finally, a slow broadband connection isn't necessarily caused by a problem on your end. The Internet is made up of countless networks. Bottlenecks develop, and slowness could be a problem on a site, not in your computer.