Picture this: you are scrolling through Instagram and everything is working fine until suddenly you cannot scroll anymore because the internet is disrupted out of nowhere. Wouldn’t that be annoying?
When the internet becomes too slow, that tends to get aggravating and frustrating for us. The downloads get slower and take hours to complete and even the most mundane of tasks such as opening a website can feel like a headache.
There are many reasons why this happens, and one of them is internet throttling. Now what exactly is it? Here’s everything you need to know.
What is Internet Throttling?
You get your internet service directly from your Internet Service Provider (ISP). There may be some instances when your Internet Service Provider may slow down the internet on purpose. This action is referred to as throttling.
There are multiple reasons behind this and it can turn out to be excessively annoying for the customer. It can also be hard to determine when your internet service provider is throttling your internet, which is why you need to be observant at all times.
Below I share the when, why, how, and the what of your internet being throttled:
Why is Your Internet Being Throttled?
One of the main reasons why your internet service provider might throttle your internet is to save money and additional costs. The more data people use, the costlier it gets for internet service providers.
The internet business is ever-growing. More people demand an internet connection and the network just keeps on expanding. When the number of users increases, so does the cost. So, to save money, internet service providers use the throttling tactic.
When is Your Internet Being Throttled?
What are some of the things that you do that can result in your internet getting throttled? Here are some common examples:
- Use Internet During Peak Hours: There are some hours in the day when a lot of people use the internet at the same time, which results in network congestion.
Think of it like this, there are a lot of cars jam-packed on a street, what will that result in? Congestion! The same is the case with your internet connection as well. To prevent congestion, your ISP throttles the internet.
- Stream Content: Binging content is cool, but only until your internet is throttled.
When streaming your favorite movies and shows, you take up a lot of data because a higher resolution demands more data. To prevent you from using too much data, your ISP throttles your internet here too.
- Play Online Games: When playing with people from all over the world, you use up a lot of data, a lot more than you think. This also forces your internet service provider to throttle your data.
- Download Large Files: If you keep downloading files that have a size in GBs, then it is very likely that your internet service provider will throttle your internet to discourage your downloading.
How to Find Out if Your Internet is Being Throttled
Finding out if your internet is being throttled isn’t really that hard. There are a series of tests that you have to run to figure it out. Here are some things that you can do to see whether your internet is being throttled:
- Run an Internet Speed Test: The first thing that you can do is run an Internet speed test. You must ensure that you are getting the speed that you are paying for. If the download speeds are not close enough, then it is being throttled. You can run multiple tests and run an average to see how much speed you are getting.
- Try Using a VPN: A VPN encrypts your internet connection and makes a private network, hence the name “Virtual Private Network”. If your internet speed improves after using a VPN, then it is very likely that your ISP is throttling your connection.
A Bonus Tip
To prevent your internet from getting throttled, switch to an internet service that comes without a data cap. One example is Spectrum that offers unlimited internet data in the Spectrum Internet packages, from the budget-friendly options to high-tiered plans!