how to get the best speed out of your broadband?

your not going to get a better speed if your getting what your supposed to.

Speed boosters

internet speed boosters are a waste of time, your already betting the top end of your broadband service. there only worth using if your downloading from a slow server (which is rare), they increase download speed to top out the speed you have already by downloading multiples of the file rather than 1 so the speed increases.

they only work if for example yuor download speed is 4mb (which is about 400kBps when using it) and your getting 100kBps from the server, they will break the file up into peices and make multiple connections for each peice of the file so the speed increases.

Home wiring

the only real speed difference you can do without upgrading your internet connection is to sort out your wiring. the longer the wires the more interference, the more connectors or extensions you use to get to the wall phone socket the more interference.

if you have your internet on a phone line, plug it into the main phone line in the house.

some people disconnect the bell wire to there phone line to get a slight boost in speed.

but again this is only good if your not getting your advertised speed, you might get a little more but not much.

Network speed and Internet Speed

when you check your connection speed, use an online speed testing site like speedtest.net, the 100mb is the speed your computer can communicate with the router,

Your ethernet speed only tells you how fast data can move within your own ethernet network. Your actual downloading speed from the internet depends on your Internet Service Provider.

use google's free dns adresses

it works for me

http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/docs/using.html

Main things you can do to improve your network performance is to get a firmware such as tomato for your router.

Then spend some time setting up some QOS rules. Good QOS rules will allow your time sensitive traffic to have little to no slowdown even if many people are doing a ton of random crap on the network.

Also use good DNS servers, eg 4.2.2.2 and 4.2.2.3 (while they wont improve download or upload speeds, it will help webpage loading to be a little bit more responsive)

Find out which speed you are paying for and do many speed test. if you are not getting at least 80% of the speed you are paying for then call the ISP and ask them to either switch you to a different router on their end, or you will switch ISP's.

Optimize your browser. Enable features such as pipelining in firefox and increase the max connections.

(Now for for non free solutions)

If your router is a low end, eg 150MHz with 8MB ram, then consider getting a new router with at least 32MB RAM and 4MB flash and a 400+ MHz CPU. Slower routers with less memory will often have trouble handling multiple connections at one time which will cause dropped packets and significantly higher ping times than would otherwise be given the network load.

Switch ISP's, if you are on an ISP such as AT&T, comcast, or timewarner , then it is in your best interest to look for a better ISP (look right not) If no better one is available then stick with the lesser of the evils.