How to improve Internet browsing speed and reliability

The Internet, rather like many of the world's large and wonderful cities, is a wonderful place to spend time in -- unless you're stuck in traffic. Luckily, there are a few things you can do to stop your browsing experience becoming slower than a hedgehog wading through treacle.

To start off, it helps to understand just what slows you down in the first place. There is a misconception that your Internet connection needs oodles of megabits per second (Mbps) to browse websites quickly. It doesn't -- despite modern websites being more complex than ever, with Flash, HTML5 and other plug-ins generally increasing site loading times, a downstream connection speed of 1-2Mbps is sufficient for smooth, quick browsing.

More important is the quality and stability of your connection. It's possible for your router to lose connection to your ISP (known as packet loss) many times in a minute without you even noticing. You don't see the disconnection because the router reconnects in time to prevent a 'page not found' error -- a 404. It just takes much longer to load the page.

This guide will start off showing you how to run a quick stability check, before looking at finding the quickest DNS servers with a program called namebench.

Checking the stability of your connection

Connecting your computer to your router via an Ethernet cable will rule out any inconsistencies you may face being on a wireless connection. If you want to use Wi-Fi, it's worth checking this guide first to make sure you're on the best possible frequency.

Windows
1. Click on Start and type 'CMD' (without the apostrophes) into the search bar. Click on the CMD icon in the programs list. Type in the black box 'ping

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