Slow internet speeds can cause one of two things – sleep or sheer anger! Either is not great for productivity or your wellbeing… 

There are a number of things that can cause your internet to slow down and two common causes are either old routers or too many users. 

As you know we’re becoming increasingly reliant upon the internet and the speed at which it seems to dominate our lives seems to snowball year on year (apparently the average UK adult checks their phone at least every 12 minutes during waking hours). Well over half the world’s population (4 billion people) now use the internet, compared with just 1.5 billion 10 years ago. Alongside this is the amount of time we spend on the internet with the average user spending roughly 6 hours per day (that’s one third of their waking lives) using internet-powered devices!  

And it’s not as if we’re using just one device at a time… how often do we find ourselves using our PC and phone simultaneously? 

This vast expansion in internet usage has inevitably required some pretty hefty increases in the supporting infrastructure. International organisations have immense data centres, with the latest research exploring the possibility of housing servers on the seabed! 

But what, we hear you say, does this have to do with me? Well, if you and your team have increased your internet usage without updating your routers or wifi allocation then you could be heading (very slowly) into the equivalent of an internet death zone… 

Never fear! All is not lost! You can stop banging your head against the keyboard. Replacing routers that are over 5 years old will have an extremely positive impact on internet speeds. These will be significantly more powerful than older models, simply because they have to be. The latest routers also allow network segregation, allowing you to apply different Wifi allocations to different segments, giving increased allocation to the areas of the business that are the most dependent upon the internet. An added advantage of segmenting your network is increased security by ensuring that private individuals are not tapping into the same server space as business users. 

Not sure how old your router is or how to segment your network? Get in touch – we can work through this for you, speeding up your internet and allowing safe working practices. 

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