I’m sure that there is more to this than I am covering. This is just a few suggestions.

Getting the most out of your Bandwidth.

Many people pay for extra bandwidth, hoping to make their internet connections “faster,” and oftentimes see no increase. We’ll go into this a little, and discuss a few ways to make the most out of what you’ve already paid for in bandwidth.

We’ll cover both Broadband and Dial-Up

#1) The source. If your ISP’s switching office (for dialups) is more than a few (5 or 6) miles away from where you’re dialing up from, you’ll see a significant drop in connection speed. If you think about the distance of wire your signal has to travel, the longer the distance, the longer it will take for your signal to get there and back. Also, the longer the run, the more chance for added distortion and signal loss.

#2) The building. If your phone/cable lines are aged, your signal strength will be lowered. Plain and simple. Old crappy wiring = poor signal = lowered connection speed.

#3) The wiring. If you can afford it, buy the best quality wiring from the wall jack into your modem, and from the modem into your computer (if using an external like a DSL or Cable modem, use high quality CAT5, CAT5e or CAT6. Gold connections on high quality insulated cable provide long-term high-quality signal. Use the shortest length of cable possible.

Long cables, especially uninsulated ones, can serve as a weak electromagnet if wound in a circle, or as an antenna. Extra static and magnetic fields are bad for both computers and network connections. Avoid it.

#4) Surge protection. This is kind of a touchy subject. Everyone should have a surge protector on their electrical connections as well as their phone/cable/dsl connections. Every place where you have a connection (instead of a straight wire) is going to cause slight signal loss, but several connections can cause significant loss. You may need to fiddle around a little bit, but I definitely recommend putting a surge on either the incoming cable, or the CAT5 cable off of the modem.

#5) Background services. Things like KaZaa and Limewire (and other P2P clients) can eat up bandwidth. Even little programs like weatherbug, stock tickers and chat clients can eat up bandwidth, which is why most gamers will close all such clients before logging on to their favorite game servers. During normal web surfing, AIM or WB won’t hurt you too much, but get several clients running, and it can add up.

#6) Other computers. If you have several computers in your house, and someone ELSE is running a P2P client, or playing a game, this will also inhibit your connection speed. Also, depending on your ISP, your neighborhood, appt complex, etc. may only get a few connections, and bandwidth is divided between several nodes instead of getting your own. Thus, your 1.5 Mbps is divided between the other 3 appts in your building, or whatever. Cable is notorious for this, from what I understand, DSL is better about it.

#7) TEST YOUR SPEED.Use a bandwidth speed test. I tend to use www.thebandwidthplace.com , but here is a link to several test sites.
http://home.cfl.rr.com/eaa/Bandwidth.htm

They also have more information available there.

Some of what was discussed is basic electronics, and translates over to stereo installations, house wiring, etc.

If there is a similar tut that I missed, PM me, and I’ll remove this