Broadband providers have been under scrutiny recently, as it has come to light that broadband speeds advertised by ISP's (Internet Service Providers) are not matching actual broadband speeds that customers receive.

It's proving to be a frustrating time for many customers. Many have been promised speeds of up to 8 Meg, but they are finding themselves with connection speeds, that in some cases are only marginally better than dial-up.

So, what are the contributing factors that affect broadband speeds? There are in fact numerous conditions that exist that can hamper your connection, and unfortunately there are no quick fix solutions to any of the problems.

Conditions that can cause poor internet speeds include:

The distance from the exchange

This is probably the single biggest contributing factor to broadband speeds. The closer you are to the telephone exchange the better your chances are of getting faster internet speeds. Only those living close to an exchange will be able to get anywhere near the 8meg download speeds promised by many of the providers.

The number of computers on a network

If have a number of computers in your household hooked up to the same router, then this will affect your broadband speeds as each computer will be sharing the one connection.

Quality of cables

Your ISP should provide you with high capacity modem cables as part of their package. But, if they haven't then it's wise to check that the cabling you are using is up to the job intended. Also, poor quality internal telephone cabling can affect the quality of your service.

Weather Conditions

Severe weather conditions can cause problems with the ADSL signal which in turn affects internet speeds.

Viruses

Always use good virus protection software. A computer that is poorly protected from viruses and spyware will inevitably begin to lose performance. Virus programs running in the background hog your bandwidth.

Time of day

The peak times when people surf the internet are between 6pm - 11pm. During these peak times it's common to experience slower internet speeds.

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Broadband Internet access, which most often shortened to just "broadband", is high-speed Internet access contrasted with dial-up access over a modem. Dial-up modems are usually capable of only a maximum bitrate of 56 kbit/s and require the full use of a telephone line; while at the same time broadband technologies supply at least twice this speed without disrupting telephone usage.

Even though various minimum speeds have been used in definitions of broadband, ranging up from 64 kbit/s up to 1.0 Mbit/s, the OCED report is typical in counting only download speeds equal to or faster than 256 kbit/s as broadband. Speeds are defined in terms of maximum download as several common consumers broadband technologies such as ADSL are "asymmetric", supporting much slower maximum upload speeds than download.

Broadband internet is sometimes called high-speed Internet, as it usually has a high rate of data transmission. Generally, any connection to the customer of 256 kbit/s (0.256 Mbit/s) or more is considered as broadband Internet. As per the International Telecommunication Union Standardisation Sector recommendation I.113, broadband is defined as a transmission capacity which is faster than primary rate ISDN, at 1.5 to 2 Mbit/s.

Practically, the advertised bandwidth is not always readily available to the customer; ISPs generally allow a greater number of subscribers than the backbone connection can handle, under the assumption that most users will not be using their full connection capacity very frequently.

This aggregation strategy works in a way making the users typically burst to the full bandwidth most of the time. As there is an increase in the bandwidth delivered to end users, the market expects that the video on demand services streamed over the Internet will become more popular, though at the present time such services generally require specialized networks.

Raina Kelsey is an expert author, and writes about latest gadgets.
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