It is quite often I received complains from friends and relatives regarding internet problem. What they normally unsatisfied are wifi is slow, having difficulty to connect to certain web page, and even face similar problem when loading Facebook videos. There could be a few reasons behind all these. It can be an Internet Provider issue, router problem, wifi weak, or channels clashing with neighbors.

We will never know the solution if we don’t understand the root causes of the problem that we are facing with. It could be 1 or more causes that I listed above. So the first step is to diagnose the networking problem, and narrow down all the possible angle, so when we know the root cause of it, then we can fix our networks.

Diagnose the WIFI signals

It is always important to diagnose the problem first. So below are a few things we have to try an error before we decide what to fix.

So if you have a router at home, it will be good if it is connected with at least 2 devices. The first one go with a desktop / laptop that connected via a LAN cable (wired), and the second one it is going to be your phone or your tablet device.

Most of the standard cheap router is able to handle less than 5 wireless devices, when you have more than 5 devices,  then you will encounter networking problem.

Slow router processing speed OR too many WIFI access around

If the internet access works good with a wired LAN cable, but do badly with WIFI, then there are only 2 reason why this happened. The first major reason is too many wifi access around. Second reason is because the router processing speed no longer can catch up with all the devices that connected with it. Normally this happened when you have more than 5 to 10 wireless devices that connected to your router simultaneously. The budget way is to disconnect all your wireless devices, and keep only 1 or 2. If the problem is solved, then please consider change your router that can handle more wireless devices.

You still probably can stick with new 2.4GHZ router, but comes with a better processing power. But if after you removed all the devices, and those 2 that you kept earlier are still having internet connection problem, then it must be too many Wifi access around your area, that directly affecting your wifi channel.

If down to this, there is only one solution, is to change to a new AC router (5.0 GHZ).

Could it be Internet Provider Issue?

Yes, potentially it can be an Internet Provider Issue, or broken international cables. If you only use a PC/laptop connected to your router using LAN cable, if the internet is still not met your expectation, then it is most likely an Internet Provider problem.

So I added a flowchart into this post. It will helps you on how to diagnose the slow network problem.