If you’re looking to increase the speed and quality of your broadband connection and your home network, you’ve come to the right site. This independent site provides top tips, free guides and impartial product and service recommendations to give big speed and quality improvements so you can make the most out of your broadband connection and home network. Our expertise is in broadband and IT. For the latest reviews and analysis, visit our blog.
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Where to start if you want to improve your broadband and home/office network
A great place to start on this site is our regularly-updated Increase Broadband Speed Guide, which we believe is the most comprehensive online. This will take you through the 17 top tips that are proven to work. You may also want to go straight to one of our most popular individual guides, which are:
- How to Speed Up DNS Look-ups
- How to Fix Bufferbloat With Smart Queue Management
- How to Set Up and Improve Wi-Fi
- Wi-Fi Set Up Guide: how to maximise signal level and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR)
- How to Measure Your Speed Accurately With Our Online Speed Test
- 10 Gigabit Ethernet Guide: is it time to upgrade to 10 GbE?
- Online Speed Tests: the best and worst and how to use them
- 15 Ways to Improve Video Conferencing (including Zoom and Skype)
Buying guides
With ridiculous performance claims from some manufacturers about their products (particularly over Wi-Fi performance), trying to find the right product can be a minefield. We provide guides on how to find the best products for your needs, with some recommendations of equipment that we have used ourselves:
- Which Broadband Modem Router/Hub: our 2021 guide to choosing the best
- Best Wi-Fi Access Points For 2020
- Review of Ubiquiti’s UniFi Wi-Fi 6 Long Range Access Point – our Best Wi-Fi Access Point For 2021
- Best Routers For 2021
- 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10 GbE) Guide
Why go for superfast and ultrafast broadband?
About 95% of UK premises now have access to superfast fibre broadband (delivering download speeds above 30 Mbps), and an increasing number can access ultrafast services (>100 Mbps). Broadband technology is for a purpose and not for technology’s sake. If you are not sure of the benefits you’d get from superfast or ultrafast broadband, then hopefully our articles will convince you:
Broadband is not about the numbers; it’s about all the exciting range of services that the technology potentially brings to your life or business. That’s why, on this site, we want to bring your attention to the new and improved services that are enabled with high-speed broadband. Here are some recent articles:
- 15 Ways to Improve Video Conferencing
- A 4k HDR Christmas Present from Sky: Sky movies go HDR with Dolby Atmos
- Review: Sky Finally Launches HDR With Its Ultra HD 4k Service
- Review of Disney Plus in the UK
- BBC iPlayer Ultra HD (4k) Demonstrates Amazing Picture Quality
- Review of Apple TV+
- Superfast Broadband Fuels Streamed Video-on-Demand Services
- Amazon Music HD Service Spells New Era for CD-Quality Music Streaming
Guide for rural communities wanting FTTP
With recent improvements in the Government’s Gigabit Broadband Voucher Scheme and the introduction of ‘top ups’ by local authorities, there’s never been a better time for communities to take proactive action to bring full-fibre Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband to their areas. Our regularly-updated guide on how to get it, based on real experience and lessons from bringing FTTP to rural communities in Cambridgeshire, can be viewed here:
Guide For Rural Communities: How to Get Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) Now!
Broadband technology simply explained
Broadband technology can be hard to understand if it’s not explained very well. Understanding it can often really help you work out what’s realistically possible and the best ways to improve your broadband. On this site, we try to explain technology in a way that helps you may the right decisions. Here are some articles you may find useful:
- What is Fibre Broadband? FTTC and FTTP Explained
- Chart of Fibre Broadband (FTTC) Speeds Versus Distance From the Street Cabinet
- What is G.Fast?
- Chart of Standard Broadband (ADSL) Speed Versus Distance From the Exchange
- Fibre Broadband VDSL2 Vectoring Finally Arrives
- G.INP, the New Fibre Broadband Enhancement Arrives
What if you cannot get superfast or ultrafast broadband?
With increasing availability of superfast and ultrafast broadband in the UK, it can be extremely frustrating if you are not able to get those services. Read our guides on some excellent alternatives that may be available to you:
- Review of 4G Mobile Broadband and Guide to Increasing 4G Speeds
- Guide on Multiple Connections and Broadband Bonding
- Guide on Bonded ADSL (or ADSL Bonding)
In the unlikely scenario that you have no other option than standard (ADSL) broadband, SNR tweaking can boost speeds, as detailed in our guide:
Whatever broadband connection is available to you, you can get the very best performance possible by eliminating bufferbloat and maximising Wi-Fi performance, as detailed in our guides:
- How to Improve Performance and Fix Bufferbloat with Smart Queue Management
- How to Set Up and Improve Wi-Fi
We hope that this site is useful to you, and we love hearing success stories, so please get in touch to let us know if we have been helpful. We receive many emails every day from people looking for specific solutions to their broadband problems. While we do try to respond to as many of these as we can, we apologise that we cannot provide detailed responses to everyone.