Why Are My Internet Speeds Slow?

Your business upgraded its internet plan. You are paying for the best of the best, real speed at last. You expect slow loading times and dropped video calls to be a thing of the past. Yet even after the upgrade, your network is still struggling. Employees are still complaining about slow applications, and visitors connected to the guest Wi-Fi are better off using their personal data plan. How can that be? You are paying for the fastest internet available. 

Here’s the thing, your business may have been promised the fastest internet on the market, but only one piece of the puzzle was upgraded. Your business network is about much more than the speed coming into your building. 

Think of your internet connection like the water coming into your home. You can bring plenty of water into the house, but if your shower faucet only lets so much water out at one time, that’s all you get. The same idea applies to your network. You can have lightning fast internet coming into your building, but if your firewalls, access points, or network switches don’t keep up, you lose much of the speed you are paying for. 

In this blog, we will look at three common culprits that could be slowing down your network. If you haven’t replaced this equipment recently, it may be the root cause of your internet problems. 

A firewall is the security checkpoint for everything coming into and going out of your network. Every email, file download, and video call passes through it before reaching your devices. It is constantly scanning that traffic to block threats and keep your network safe. 

Sometimes older firewalls, or firewalls that were originally sized for smaller businesses, cannot keep up with the demands of today’s workplace. As a result, even if your internet provider is delivering exactly what you are paying for, your firewall can become a major bottleneck when too much traffic tries to pass through it at once. 

This is especially common after a business upgrades its internet plan but keeps the same firewall that was installed years earlier. The internet plan changed. Your network demands changed. The hardware didn’t. 

Firewalls can also be configured to prioritize certain types of traffic over others. If these settings are not configured correctly, your firewall may prioritize a large file download over a video call. The result often feels like slow internet speed, when in reality it may simply be the way bandwidth is being prioritized at the firewall level. 

Access points are what broadcasts your Wi-Fi signal to phones, laptops, tablets, and other connected devices. Like any piece of technology, they have a shelf life. An access point that is five or more years old may not support the same Wi-Fi standards that newer devices expect. As a result, the access point physically may not be capable of delivering the speeds your internet plan provides. 

Even newer access points can struggle if there are not enough of them for the space, or if they are placed in the wrong locations. One access point trying to cover a large office, or a building with thick walls and significant interference, will often leave some areas with a strong signal while others are left struggling for a connection. Everyone connected to that access point is also sharing its available bandwidth, so as more devices connect, network performance can slow for everyone. 

Many offices overlook just how many devices rely on Wi-Fi today. In addition to laptops and phones, smart TVs, printers, copiers, and other office equipment now connect to the network as well. 

Wi-FI congestion also plays a role. Congestion occurs when too many wireless signals are competing in the same space at the same time. Picture a crowded room where everyone is trying to talk at once. Even if everyone has something important to say, the noise makes it difficult for anyones conversation to come through clearly. 

Wi–Fi works much the same way. Nearby networks, wireless devices, and even appliances like microwaves can crowd the same wireless space, slowing performance even when your equipment is working properly. 

Switches are often the overlooked piece of your network puzzle. They are the hardware that connects everything inside your building, from your firewall and access points to the devices plugged in throughout your office. If your internet plan delivers a gigabit of speed, but your switch ports or the connections between switches are only rated for a fraction of that speed, the extra bandwidth you are paying for never has a chance to travel. 

This issue commonly appears in businesses that have grown or upgraded equipment over time without replacing everything at once. A new access point connected to an aging switch is still limited by whatever that switch can handle. It is a quiet bottleneck because nothing appears to be broken. The switch is doing exactly what it was designed to do. It just was not built to support the speeds your business now expects. 

Slow internet speed rarely comes down to a single cause and, although they are convenient to blame, it is almost never entirely your internet provider’s fault. More often, slow performance is caused by a combination of aging equipment, business growth that outpaced the network design, and hardware that was never intended to support the speeds businesses expect today. 

The good news is that these problems are fixable and diagnosing them does not require guesswork. A network assessment can evaluate your firewall, access points, and switches together to identify exactly where the slowdown may be occurring, rather than replacing equipment at random and hoping for improvement. 

If your business is paying for fast internet but not experiencing the performance you expected, it may be time to take a closer look at your network. MMIT can evaluate your infrastructure and help determine whether your current equipment is limiting performance before you spend money on a larger internet plan you may not even need. Contact MMIT today to schedule a free network assessment.