Troubleshooting Rural Broadband broadband speed problems

Before starting to troubleshoot the performance of your Rural Broadband broadband connection, we recommend that you run a Rural Broadband Broadband Speed Test to confirm your current internet speed.

You may also want to find out the guaranteed minimum download speed you have subscribed to from Rural Broadband.

You can find this info by checking a Rural Broadband broadband bill, your Rural Broadband contract or by contacting Rural Broadband.

Probable causes of Rural Broadband’s slow broadband performance

Is it the Rural Broadband broadband that is running slow or is it your device (PC/laptop/phone)?

You need to consider the number of apps are running on your device.

The speed problem may be due to the over-utilisation of your system resources e.g RAM/CPU Processor and as opposed to an issue with Rural Broadband’s broadband connection.

If you are on a laptop then you can use the task manager to see your Processor and Memory utilisation.

On any other device, you should try restarting the device which hopefully should kill all applications that may have been hogging your systems resources.

Run the Rural Broadband Speed test on your PC and your mobile phone to check how the speed test results compare between the 2 devices.

This should hopefully give you more information to help determine if the issue is with your PC/Smartphone or the Rural Broadband broadband connection.

• What does the Rural Broadband download and upload speed mean?
• Who is the best Internet Service Provider in the UK?
• 5 tips to improve your Rural Broadband broadband speed
• Simple DNS tip to speed up internet browsing speed on Rural Broadband

Is the Wi-Fi network the cause of the issue?

The root cause of the performance issue may be your wireless network and not the Rural Broadband internet connection.

You can rule out the Wifi network by connecting your computer directly into the Rural Broadband broadband router with a network cable and then run the Rural Broadband Speed test again.

If the speed improves when you’re connected by a network cable, this shows that the issue may be with your wireless.

A few other things to look further into:

• Are the Wireless channels that you’re using for your Wifi network (SSID) overlapping with your neighbors?
• Is your wireless signal from the broadband router obstructed?
• Does the speed improve when your are standing right in-front of the Rural Broadband internet router?

Who’s connected to my wireless network?

Have you checked that your Wi-Fi network password has not been compromised? Do you have an un-secured wireless network? How strong is your Wi-Fi network password? It could be time to update it.

Others could be on your Wi-Fi network and eating up all your Rural Broadband speed by downloading, uploading or even streaming music or videos on your Rural Broadband internet connection! Worse than that, they may be conducting illegal activities using your Rural Broadband broadband connection.

There are three apps that you can potentially use to analyse your Wifi network to see who is connected:

• Microsoft Windows users can use Wireless network watcher
• MAC users can use whoFi (who is on my Wifi)
• WiFi scanning application WiFi Analyzer

The above applications analyse your Wi-Fi network and show you a list of the everything on your wifi.

• How to check who’s on your Rural Broadband Wi-Fi network

Do I need a Wifi network booster for my Rural Broadband broadband?

If you discover that there are Wifi black holes at your home, a Wifi extender also known as a Wifi Booster is the best solution to boost your Wifi signal to cover any black holes.

• Best Wireless Signal Boosters

The Wifi extender picks up your existing wireless network signal just as it is starting to become weaker and re-transmits the Wi-Fi network signal to extend it’s reach.

Place the wireless network booster near where your Wifi signal from the Rural Broadband broadband router is starting to become weaker.

Place it approximately where your wireless signal is dropping down to 2 bars. Walk around your house with a tablet to find where this location is.

When did you last upgrade the Rural Broadband broadband router?

The Rural Broadband and broadband infrastructure, in general, are constantly updated to provide new features and improve reliability as technology evolves.  Always ensure that your Rural Broadband broadband internet router is running on the most up to date software.

Most Rural Broadband broadband routers allow you to perform the software update by logging on the Rural Broadband broadband router and simply clicking on a button to perform the update.

If you can’t do this, contact Rural Broadband and they will do this for you or guide you through the process.

In addition to updating the software, if you have had the same hardware for a long period, it’s probably worth talking to Rural Broadband to ask for a hardware upgrade.

Is the cause of the problem external to your home (at the exchange)?

This is probably the most common cause for Rural Broadband broadband performance issues in your area and is more common for broadband connections that are delivered via phone lines.

If you’re not sure if this is relevant in your case, contact Rural Broadband who should be able to run the appropriate line checks to check if there is a issue on the Rural Broadband broadband line.

Is the performance issue due to Rural Broadband Internet congestion?

If you’re finding that the Rural Broadband internet connection speed in your area is slows down during certain periods e.g weekends or evenings, then it may be due to congestion during peak times.

• What’s Broadband Contention Ratio and does Rural Broadband have contention?

You should speak to Rural Broadband to check your guaranteed speed.

Re-testing your Rural Broadband broadband connection

After the problem has been fixed either by yourself or Rural Broadband, retest your broadband connection using  at least 2 separate Speedtests to ensure the problem is fixed:

• • Use the ookla internet broadband speed checker to test your Rural Broadband connection
  • Check your Rural Broadband broadband speed using Ookla Offical Speed Test
  • Test your Rural Broadband internet connectionspeed using fast.com speed test
  • Check My Broadband Speed Checker Rural Broadband internet speed checker
  • • 0845UK Broadband Speed Checker and troubleshooting