We all have been victims of streaming sites that load videos very slowly that it becomes boring just looking at the screen. This problem can be caused by so many problems, some of which you have complete control while others are beyond your reach. There are some steps that you can take to improve your streaming experience as far as internet connectivity speeds are concerned. In this article, I will highlight some of the most common factors that usually lead to slow streaming speeds and what you can do to solve or avoid some of them. These factors can be categorized into two groups, that is, network-related factors and user-side-related factors.
On the network side
On the network side, there are two main factors that can lead to slow streaming speeds, that is, network latency and network congestion. Network latency is caused by so many problems that are completely beyond your reach. The best you can do maybe is to switch the streaming service you are using if you determine that network latency is the main problem. One of the main causes of network latency is location where the content you are streaming is stored. If the device from which the content is being streamed is very slow, then there is nothing you can do.
Secondly, slow streaming speed can be attributed to network congestion. This is also beyond your reach. Streaming speed can drop substantially during traffic spikes where there is a huge number of people accessing the website at the same time.
On the user side
On the user side, there are three main reasons that can slow down your streaming connection. These three factors are WiFi problems, slow devices, and not enough bandwidth. When your WiFi has a problem, chances are that your favorite videos are not going to stream efficiently either. This could be a problem related with your router and you can correct such problems by simply restarting your router. Secondly, you can also solve your WiFi problems by switching to Ethernet connection instead of WiFi. WiFi tends to be slower in comparison to Ethernet.
Besides WiFi, the device you are using to watch your movies could also just have performance issues. Streaming a movie is a very intensive activity that requires a lot of processing power. If the device you are using doesn’t have enough processing power or if it has so many processes running, it may impact the speed of the streaming video. Thus, you can upgrade your device or close some processes.
Insufficient bandwidth
Like stated above, streaming movies requires a lot of processing power. Besides that, it also requires a lot of bandwidth. Your home network needs to be able to achieve a bandwidth of at least 4 megabytes per second. If the content you are streaming is High-Definition, you will probably need more bandwidth.
Major streaming services are heavily invested in distributed content delivery networks to ensure that their content is available to people in all corners of the world. That is why content streamed from major streaming services doesn’t have a lot of glitches when you watch online movies online.
