Can my Wi-Fi slow down my internet browsing?

In this excerpt from
Answercast #52, I look at a machine with pages that are loading very slowly
and some possible causes.

Slow browsing

Well, ultimately, it really depends on exactly what kind of pages you’re
referring to. I’m going to assume you mean web pages. There are definitely
many, many, many different types of pages that aren’t web pages. But when you
describe “going to the next page,” that’s typically web-based activity.

The short answer is yes. It can kind of. But normally, it’s
something that breaks rather than slows down.

There are definitely many things that you might want to look at as
potentially causing the problem that you’re seeing.

Weak Wi-Fi signal

One, of course, is… indeed is a weak Wi-Fi signal. in other words, if your
Wi-Fi is, for whatever reason, not strong enough to reach the computer that you’re currently using or is so weak as to be able to work at only very, very low speeds.

One of the things most people don’t realize about Wi-Fi is that it does
decrease in speed the weaker the signal is. So, the stronger the signal you can
get, the better off you’re going to be.

Test your modem

It’s also certainly possible that the modem itself could be slowing things
down. That’s easily tested by simply rebooting the modem or your router.

Every once in awhile, depending on the make and the model of your router or
modem, things can in fact just sort of slow down. There’s many different
technical reasons for that. But like I said, it’s a very quick thing to test
and resolve, simply by rebooting that equipment.

What’s running on your machine?

Another thing that can definitely impact your wireless speed, or your
internet speed in general, is whatever else is running on your machine. If
you’re running other internet-based applications that are downloading things
while you are surfing the web, then yes, their activity is going to impact your
activity negatively.

Another less obvious case is applications that are downloading updates.
If your malware tool is downloading updates while you’re surfing the web, that
can slow down your surfing experience. Similarly, if your anti-malware tool is
running a scan, then the same thing.

The activity on your disk can in fact negatively impact your browser’s
ability to manage its cache and that can then manifest as slow browsing
speeds.

So, there are lots and lots of different things to look at. Wi-Fi is
certainly one of them, but I wouldn’t limit my investigations to just
the Wi-Fi.