Broadband speed is crucial for business efficiency, impacting everything from video calls to data transfers. Yet, various factors can influence your connection’s performance. Understanding what affects broadband speed can help businesses optimise their networks, avoid downtime, and maintain productivity.
What is Business Broadband?
Business broadband is a high-speed internet connection for businesses that are designed to meet their needs. It’s usually faster and more reliable than residential broadband and often comes with additional features and services.
Do I Need Business Broadband?
While getting business broadband is not a requirement, it can make a huge difference in ensuring operations run smoothly and efficiently.
Most businesses today use Cloud services such as video conferencing or Microsoft 365, so a fast symmetric service is increasingly necessary for everyday work.
7 Factors That Affect Business Broadband Speed
Making sure your business broadband speed is at its peak is important for business efficiency. Unfortunately, there are a few external things that can affect your business broadband speed. Let’s take a look:
1. Distance from the Router
Signal strength decreases dramatically as you travel away from your router, making it one of the most prevalent causes of slow broadband speeds. The distance between your device and the router can make or break your internet connection. The farther you are, the more likely you’ll encounter issues like slower downloads and frequent disconnections.
2. Number of Connected Devices
From smartphones and laptops to smart TVs and IoT devices, each connected gadget consumes a slice of your bandwidth. The more devices you have connected, the less bandwidth there is to go around, leading to decreased internet speeds.
3. Old Hardware
Outdated routers and modems can become the bottleneck of your network, holding back your internet speeds. As technology advances, new protocols and greater speeds become the standard, but older hardware may not always support these developments.
4. Physical Obstacles
Concrete, metal, and wood can obstruct Wi-Fi signals as they move through the property. It’s not just walls and flooring that might interfere with network speed; huge furniture pieces and even some appliances can do the same. The result is a weaker connection and slower speeds in rooms that are not in direct line of sight with the router.
5. Poor Quality of Service Settings
Quality of Service is a feature included in many routers that allows you to prioritise some types of internet traffic over others. This ensures that critical activities such as video conferencing have enough bandwidth to work properly.
However, improper QoS settings might degrade network performance. If not configured correctly, lower-priority tasks may consume more bandwidth than they should, causing video calls to stutter and lag.
6. Software Running In the Background
Software updates, cloud backups, and various background applications can quietly consume a significant portion of your bandwidth. While you might be actively using the internet for tasks like streaming or web browsing, these background activities are also using up resources, potentially slowing down your broadband connection.
7. Network Security Issues
An unsecured Wi-Fi network is like an open door for anyone looking to piggyback on your internet connection. Unauthorised users not only pose a security risk but can also hog your bandwidth, causing a slowdown in your network speeds.
