When slow broadband speeds do not relate to issues with are connection then they can often be due to software or configuration issues on your laptop. In this article I’ll show you how to troubleshoot these faults and some of the common solutions.

Your first task should be to assess the current speed of your web connection. Your Internet service provider may have tools for doing performance checks you can also use freely available services like speed test.net to get the ping speeds, download rate and upload speed. These can be used to make before and after comparisons when doing changes.

The first operation worth doing is getting rid of browser add-ons. These modifications can use up a lot of bandwidth as you browse the web. Disable them initially if you do not want to get rid of them entirely.

Next, consider the state of your browser program. It may actually need to be updated with the latest patches and security updates. Configuration changes can easily be made using add-on such as Faster Fox. Simply reducing multimedia options can help improve the load speed for website pages.

It is also worth trying out different browsers as well. Each manufacturer will try to support all the different web technologies but some of them will perform better than others at rendering video content, flash technology, etc.

You can also reduce some of the contingency on your slow broadband connection by reducing the amount of programs permitted web access. This is principally done through your firewall application by blocking specific services/applications permission to access the web.

Finally, if you find your laptop running very slow in general then this could be contributing to the sensation that you’ve got a slow broadband connection when in fact it’s just the generally slow computer. Try increasing the virtual memory size, defragmenting this drive and clearing out hard drive space to improve overall performance.