Suppose you have setup multi-homing and one of your internet connections is from an ISP which provides you with a broadband connection and the other is a slow dialup connection. Now,if you are using a dialup then your heavily loaded browser with lots of addons will take more time to load a particular site.You need to then do some tweaks for managing slow connections.
1.In Opera a feature like Opera Turbo comes up which optimizes the browser for slower connections
2.In Firefox you can create different profile by going to Start->Run->firefox.exe –P to create a new Profile.
3. Ads and popups enhance the loading time of the site.So,we should block them by some adblocker.In Firefox,an addon AdblockPlus can be used to block adds.
4.We should also minimize the excessive use of addons if we want to work in a slow connection.
5.Loading the mobile version of website(mobile version contains mostly texts and less images) can also help,a tool such as Google Mobilizer comes in very handy for this.
6.Enlarge the cache so that more of the data can be retrieved from cache itself.
7.Disable images from autoloading in a page.To do that Preferences > Content and uncheck the "Load Images Automatically" box(Firefox).
8.You can also use text based browsers in emergencies.Eg. lynx.
9.When you are using applications such as you tube,then in slow internet connections let the content stream fully.Then you may access the content from your browser's cache.Firefox has a plugin cache viewer which allows you to view browser's cache.
10.Recently,I too was having a problem of weak internet connection.My page never used to load in one go!.It used to display a message "Oops! Google chrome was not able to find www.google.com.Reload this page later".After reloading the page 2-3 times finally page google.com opened.I just pondered what the problem was, consulted my friend about it.Then came to conclusion that it may be problem due to "Name Server at the ISP being too slow in resolving names".So I went to tweak my internet connection settings by Control Panel\Network and Internet\Network and Sharing Center. Then I chose my internet connection.
Click on properties tab.In General Tab add Preferred DNS server add address of Open DNS Server.OpenDNS speeds up translation by handling the process in its own DNS servers.You can google 'OpenDNS server' to find open DNS servers present.Alternatively, you can also use Google public DNS server.http://code.google.com/speed/public-dns/.
11. Wireless Interference: The internet also perform slow due to interference of household applications or may be bad positioning of routers.In case of wireless connection, always check the signal strength that comes to your laptop.If the signal is weak, then reposition yourself or the router till you get a better signal.In industries, repeaters are used to amplify the strength of weak signal.
12.Malware: The internet speed may also be affected by malware that has infected the system.A trojan may be eating up your bandwidth by doing some covert operations, such as communicating the malicious web site and downloading some malicious scripts or sending your credit card information to someone.It is advisable that keep your computer free of worms of using antivirus.There are free antivirus like avast,avg etc available.
13. Problem with the ISP: There may be problem at your ISP;s end too. If you are not able to solve the problem by your own then you should call your ISP's customer care and report the problem.
14.Disable loading of images: You can manage slow internet connections by disabling loading old images in the browsers.(Please note that this is a compromise which should be avoided).You can visit this link to see how to disable loading of images in IE,Firefox,Google chrome http://www.techdreams.org/browsers/firefox/how-to-disable-loading-of-images-in-chrome-firefox-and-ie/5331-20101229.
15. Use of download managers: Some of your woes can be resolved by the use of download managers because download managers are able to download 2-3 times faster than the normal rate.Some of the download managers are : Flashget,DAP etc.
16.Use a good browser:Try different browsers, if your internet connection is slow.Modern browsers like google chrome has features like DNS prefetching which helps in rendering the pages faster.
17.Check network equipments: Check your network equipments like router, check whether cable is properly connected , check the phone line.You can also this link for troubleshooting slow internet connection.http://www.labnol.org/internet/fix-slow-internet-connection/13619/.You can in general configure your router by typing http://192.168.1.1. This provides an interface which allows you to configure your router.
18.Disable Flash: Disable loading of flash in browser.There is a addon in firefox which does that. Download and Install this addon at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/flashblock/.The similar script can be found out for google chrome too
19.Use firewall to block certain websites: In case of large no. of users suppose 400 but limited bandwidth eg. 4 Mbps, which when divided among these large number of users.So network admin can block those websites which take large time to load and consume lots of bandwidth.For. eg in our college youtube has been blocked.
Although there is no replacement for a high speed internet connection but these measures do come in handy when have no option but a slow internet connection.You can check your internet speed at http://www.speedtest.net/
