How to Find out if your internet is being throttled and put a stop to it
Have you ever tried to download something or load up a stream, only to find slow speeds and endless buffering? This may be because your Internet service provider is throttling your connection. Bandwidth throttling has become an increasingly publicized topic in the online world. From disgruntled online users to privacy advocates, people are starting to fight back their Internet service providers and their underhanded behavior. Read this week’s Zlog and find out if your ISP is throttling your internet speeds and learn how to put a stop to it.
What is Internet Throttling?
Internet throttling, better known as bandwidth throttling, is an intentional slowing of internet services by the Internet service provider. Internet throttling wasn’t really that known of a topic among online users up until the last few years, even though ISPs have been practicing it for a while. While it is unfortunately legal for ISPs to limit their user’s speeds, it certainly is a deceptive tactic that limits the customer’s online experience and one that must be stopped.
Why do ISPs Throttle Your Internet Connection?
The providers undertake this type of activity mostly to regulate network congestion or reduce the cost of operating the network. When they decrease the congestion of their network, the amount of data they have to process lowers, which means that the machines supporting the traffic are better at handling the task.
Besides the main reason we just mentioned, ISPs might throttle your connection if they notice that you’ve been using it heavily to torrent, share files or have been uploading and frequently downloading in general. Sometimes, your ISP will throttle your bandwidth simply because they think you’ve used up too much data and they want to encourage you to upgrade your subscription plan.
How to Know if an ISP is Throttling Your Internet
If you’re suspecting that your ISP is throttling your bandwidth, there are a couple of ways to tell if this is the case. If you feel like your ISP is doing this because you’ve passed the monthly threshold they set for their users, there’s a simple way to check it. Just do an internet speed test a couple of times throughout the month. If you notice that your bandwidth has significantly decreased at some point of the month, high chances are that your ISP has set limits on your connection speed.
If you want to test if your ISP is only throttling your connection based on the type of traffic, like file-sharing or streaming, you can do an Internet health test to check this, as there are several free traffic-testing sites available online.
Is there a way to Stop Bandwidth Throttling?
Even though bandwidth throttling can be a pesky nuisance, luckily you can get rid of it pretty easily. With that in mind, the most efficient way to stop bandwidth throttling is to use a VPN service. VPNs are getting increasingly popular, mostly because they are a cheap and very effective way to use unrestricted and unlimited Internet.
How can a VPN Go Around Bandwidth Throttling?
Now that we know how and why ISPs throttle your connection speeds, we should also understand how a VPN helps you go around this. When you connect to one of the VPN servers of your choice, the DNS request that normally goes through your Internet service provider is now routed through the company’s server network. This makes it impossible for the ISP to track and throttle your connection through your IP address, as your IP will be replaced with that of the remote VPN server.
Sign up with ZoogVPN today!
Checking to see if your ISP is throttling your bandwidth is easy, and putting a stop to it is even easier with the right VPN service. With ZoogVPN, you can bypass ISP throttling on Windows, Mac, iOS, Android or any other operating system and enjoy the maximum connection speeds you’re paying for. Not only this, your traffic will be encrypted, private and not possible to track, as we have a strict no-logging policy. Sign up with ZoogVPN today and enjoy unlimited Internet, as it’s meant to be enjoyed.
- Yaroslav S.
