My computer isn’t working.
Or it is, but there is a problem — a considerable problem. The internet is slow. I type in a website address, and then I wait, and I wait, and I wait.
I wait a long time. And “a long time,” in this case, means about 30 seconds. But sometimes longer. Like a minute.
My computer is useless.
You have probably experienced this, for who knows what reason — an unknown technical glitch, an overloaded hard drive, or a problem with your internet service provider. Whatever the cause, you realize how stymied you can feel — how lost — when the internet is crawling. High-speed internet access, also called broadband, was once a luxury, but now it’s the norm. About 70 percent of Americans now have broadband access, according to the Pew Research Internet Project. The faster the access, the more people use the internet — and rely on it.
That’s a big shift from 2000, when, according to Pew, just 3 percent of American households had broadband.
Fast internet access is what we expect now. What’s YouTube without broadband? What’s Netflix? Not much use.
Slow internet access almost seems like no access. You need to fix it. What should you do when you find yourself in this situation?
To see if your connection is genuinely slow, try an online speed test. You can visit the Speakeasy Speed Test, or look for the ones provided by Comcast, Verizon and other internet providers. You just click a button, and the test will download and upload data to determine your speed.
My plan, with Verizon FiOS, should deliver speeds up to 25 megabits per second (Mbps). But I was just getting a fraction of that. Yes, my connection was slow, and it was slow for days.
In my experience, you can often fix this situation by powering down your internet router and any other wireless devices, such as a separate wireless base station. Advice on how to do this varies from one internet provider to another, but over the years (and various providers), I have found it best to unplug the devices, leave them unplugged for a minute or two, and then power them on.
If that doesn’t work, consider whether you’ve altered something in your home environment to cause the problem. Did you move the location of your internet router? Put another electrical device next to it? You never know what can cause interference with the wireless signal.
You should also make sure your computer isn’t the problem. The easiest way to check that? Either try with a different computer, or else, if you have a laptop, bring your computer to a library, workplace or other location and run a speed test there to see if it fares any better.
Of course, another household member may be the culprit: Is your kid streaming video full-time in her room? Is your spouse backing up her computer at the moment? Any of those can cause a slowdown.
Next option? Call your internet provider and ask for help. A techie will probably ask you to try all of these things, and may have a few other tricks to try.
Which brings me back to my situation. Have I fixed my slow internet connection? I have not.
I called Verizon, and I was told I needed to use an Ethernet cable to connect my computer to the router and test it with a wired connection. But there was a problem: Of the various internet-connected devices in our house, including several Macintosh computers, iPads, and iPhones, none have an Ethernet port. (Apple obviously thinks you should just connect with WiFi.) I needed a special adapter to connect with an Ethernet cable, and I don’t have one. And because of this, I was told, Verizon wouldn’t be able to send a representative to my house to assess — or, I would hope fix — my situation.
So I have slow internet. For days? For weeks? Until I switch internet service providers? I’m still working on a solution.