Do you always feel that the Internet speed is slow? You may be in trouble

We say that there are many reasons for slow Internet speed at home. Is the quality of the router good enough? Is the routing function properly set? Are the network cables, especially those marked with copper wires, genuine? The rest includes choosing a reliable broadband service provider, etc. It can be said that there is a lot of knowledge everywhere. The lack or inappropriateness of any of these links may lead to poor Internet experience for home users. For this reason, in this issue, we will help you eliminate them one by one and find the real culprit for the slow Internet speed.

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In fact, many users will encounter this kind of problem, that is, they always feel that their home Internet speed is slow. Even professional practitioners find it difficult to specifically explain where the problem lies. In this case, we will first analyze the end-to-end process, that is, the client, access network, core network, and content resources.

Configuration error or unqualified network equipment

In fact, about 40% of the actual network speed is too slow due to such problems. First of all, let's look at the PC side. Does its performance meet the requirements? You should know that if the performance of the computer network card itself or the system memory is not enough, it will also cause you to fail to reach the specified speed when testing the speed. Therefore, when the speed supported by the computer network card is greater than the broadband bandwidth of the access, the speed agreed in the contract can be achieved.

In addition, if you change your broadband operator, you should also check whether your DNS domain name is configured correctly. The DNS you used before is still set to the DNS of the previous operator, which causes you to access resources within the network and be incorrectly dispatched to the outside of the network, thus affecting the network speed. In addition, whether the performance of the router at home is up to standard. You should know that router failure or setting problems can also cause the network speed to be too slow. Nowadays, there are many brands of home routers, with uneven prices and good and bad quality. At present, the failure rate of routers priced below 100 yuan is generally above 15%, while the failure rate of routers priced above 100 yuan is generally below 10%.

Therefore, you should try to choose a brand with good quality and don't be greedy for cheapness. In addition, when choosing a router, in addition to price and brand, you should also consider whether the wireless standard of the purchased router is up to date. Currently, wireless standards that support 802.11AC and above are mainstream. Of course, a small part of the reason is that the ONU (optical network unit) provided by the operator is of unqualified quality, resulting in bit errors and packet loss at the user end, which affects the network speed.

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Traffic surges to the point of uplink congestion

In actual situations, broadband service experience is poor due to reasons such as substandard access network optical power, bandwidth congestion, and excessive number of downstream users. This time, we mainly talk about the PON port optical power and OLT upstream power, which may sound a bit professional, but you just need to understand it.

Let's first look at the optical power of the PON port. If the optical power of the PON port does not meet the standard, there will be the possibility of bit errors and packet loss on the user side, increase line loss, and cause low ONU optical receiving power, which in turn affects the final network speed. In addition, when the number of users connected to the PON port exceeds the limit, it will also cause traffic congestion at the PON port, causing packet loss on the network side; when the OLT upstream power does not meet the standard, it will also cause bit errors and packet loss on the network and affect the network speed. In addition, when the OLT equipment uplink bandwidth utilization rate and the PTN ring network utilization rate exceed 70%, it is also easy to cause packet loss on the network side. Users need to request multiple times to access successfully, and the network speed decreases, affecting the access perception.

The most typical example is that during the peak evening Internet usage period, web pages open slowly, which is much slower than during the day. This is likely to be a problem with the access network. Another reason is that there are many users in the community, and a large number of users access the Internet at the same time in the evening. The sudden increase in business traffic leads to congestion of the uplink of the aggregation device, resulting in a slow Internet access experience for users in the entire community.

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When the core network bandwidth resources are insufficient

Among the many factors that affect network speed, one is that when the core network bandwidth is congested, and DNS and RADIUS performance is insufficient, it will also lead to poor perception of broadband services. When the bandwidth utilization rate exceeds the limit, it is easy to cause congestion and packet loss on the network side. At this time, users need to make multiple requests to access successfully, resulting in a perceived decrease in network speed. In addition, the DNS resolution success rate is lower than the high quality standard, resulting in extended time, or the layered network PING delay/packet loss rate is lower than the high quality standard.

In addition, ICP scheduling errors can also cause network speed to drop. For example, when a user uses a certain resource, the download speed is unstable, sometimes fast and sometimes slow, and the resource is introduced by the operator's IDC. It may be because the resource was scheduled to the wrong province or region, resulting in slow speed due to long-distance transmission.

Lack of content resources

The last thing we want to talk about is the problem of slow broadband speed caused by content resources. We say that content websites usually have a large share of traffic, and the top-ranked websites usually have more than 90% of the clicks. Therefore, improving the quality of TOP website business is also the key to improving user perception.

Among them, the more critical ones include parsing time, first screen opening time, page loading time, first buffering time, total buffering time, buffering packet loss rate, and latency. In addition, the matching degree between the service and bandwidth usually occurs when we watch videos. In simple terms, the video service requires a higher bandwidth. The minimum bandwidth for standard definition SD is 3M, the minimum bandwidth for high definition HD is 6M, the minimum bandwidth for full high definition FHD is 12M, and the minimum bandwidth for 4K ultra high definition UHD is 23M.

In this way, if you often experience freezes, choppy images, or long buffering times when watching videos, it may be because of low bandwidth. You may wish to upgrade to a higher bandwidth service appropriately based on your actual viewing needs.

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'Shortcuts' in broadband services

If the above technical or hardware factors are eliminated and the Internet speed at home is still very slow, then you may really be in trouble. It is very likely that the broadband service you purchased is "short-changed". It has to be said that the bandwidth promised by the service provider is far from the actual Internet speed used by the user. This has become a common phenomenon, which is often called fake broadband.

At present, all operators' broadband access is generally divided into two types: ADSL and LAN. Strictly speaking, both methods are shared networks, but the sharing range is different. How does fake broadband appear? Assuming that a community has 100M bandwidth and each household has 10M, then only 10 households can be allocated. Then, assuming that 5 households do not go online every day, the operator will allocate 15 households, or even more. Then, if all these users go online at the same time one day, it will naturally lead to insufficient bandwidth and slow Internet speed.

From this, we can see that there are actually many factors behind the slow Internet speed. Don't just point the blame at the wireless router at home. This is a more comprehensive problem that requires coordination and debugging from multiple parties to achieve a relatively satisfactory ideal Internet speed. Of course, these are just my personal opinions, and I hope they will be helpful to everyone's future Internet use.