Software tower · floor
How to fix slow internet, starting with what is enough
“Slow” is a comparison, and the second half of it is usually missing. Before changing anything, it is worth knowing what the connection is being compared against — and a US regulator publishes exactly that, for free, with no product attached.
Minimum download speed in Mbps, from the FCC’s Broadband Speed Guide. General usage Watching video Video calls GamingWhat the regulator says each activity needs
Read down that list and the striking thing is how low the numbers are. High definition video is 5 to 8 Mbps. A personal video call in HD is 1.5. Browsing and email are 1. The figure that stands out is Ultra HD 4K at 25 — which is more than everything else on the list put together, and worth knowing before assuming a connection is at fault.
So a connection that struggles with an HD video call while sitting on a plan many times larger than 1.5 Mbps is not a connection that needs a bigger plan. Something between the line and the device is taking the difference, and that is a different problem with different remedies.
That single caveat is what stops the table above from being the whole answer, and it is the
reason a connection can meet every number on it and still feel slow. A household does not
run one activity at a time. The FCC publishes a second guide for exactly that, and it works
in bands rather than in single figures.“Speeds are based on running one activity at a time.”
The FCC’s Household Broadband Guide, with its own definitions of the three bands.The same question for a household
That second table is the more realistic one, and it changes the picture. A single person doing one thing at a time needs Basic — three to eight megabits. A four-person household with more than one demanding application running at once needs Advanced, which the FCC puts at more than 25. The gap between those two households is the whole argument about broadband plans, and it is a question about how many people are doing what, not about how fast the internet ought to be in general.
It is worth being exact about one word in the FCC’s definitions, because it does a lot of work. “Moderate use” means basic functions plus one high-demand application. “High use” means more than one at the same time. So the difference between the two is not the size of the household — it is whether two demanding things overlap. An evening where one person streams in HD while another is on a video call is a “high use” evening, whatever the household usually does.
The FCC’s consumer guide names them alongside download speed. Any of the three can be the reason a fast plan feels slow.Three things a plan does not advertise
The regulator puts that on both guides, and it is worth repeating rather than burying. These
are reference points, not measurements. They are still the most useful thing available for
this question, because they come from a body with no plan to sell you — but they are offered as
a starting frame rather than as a specification, and the FCC says so itself.“These numbers are rough guidelines and are not based on surveys or experiments
conducted by the FCC. You should use your best judgment when choosing your broadband
service.”
What the table is for, in practice. Work out which row you are in, then compare it with what you are paying for. Three outcomes, and they lead in different directions. If your plan is well above the number, the problem is inside the house rather than on the line, and the neighbouring floors below are where to go. If your plan is at or below it, no amount of moving the router will fix a plan that was never large enough. And if you do not know what you are paying for, that is the first thing to find out, because every other step depends on it.
Both tables above are about download speed, and that is only one of the four things a connection has. The FCC publishes the other three in a separate consumer guide, and any of them can explain a connection that meets every number and still disappoints.
What this page will not do is tell you which plan to buy or which provider is faster. That depends on what is available at an address, and no page can know that. What it can do is give you the number to hold the offer against, from a source with nothing to sell — which is the part the offer itself will not supply.
The floors below take it three ways: the connection itself, the machine at the end of it, and the settings on the devices that share it.
Where to start
Three ways in. Work out your row first; it decides which of the three you need.
- “My plan is much bigger than the number.”
- Then it is inside the house — inside the house
- “The wifi drops or will not connect.”
- That is a different fault — the connection
- “Everything on this machine is slow, not just the internet.”
- Go to the machine
The connection
When the line or the wifi itself is the problem rather than the plan. These floors are about faults and settings rather than about speed figures.
The machine
Sometimes the internet is fine and the computer is not. The symptoms overlap, and the tests that tell them apart are quick.
Inside the house
The devices sharing the connection, and the settings on them that decide how much they take. Where to look when the plan is clearly big enough.
What this tower will not do
It will not recommend a provider or a plan. What is available depends on the address, and no page can know yours.
It will not present the FCC’s figures as measurements. The FCC says they are rough guidelines not based on its own surveys or experiments, and that sentence belongs next to the numbers.
And it will not answer a question about upload speed. These guides publish download minimums, and a complaint about sending rather than receiving is a different question. What holds instead is simple: the per-activity minimum download speeds, the note that they assume one activity at a time, the household bands with their Basic, Medium and Advanced definitions and the light, moderate and high use categories, the definition of Mbps, the descriptions of upload speed, latency and data limits, and the statement that these numbers are rough guidelines not based on FCC surveys or experiments are quoted from the Federal Communications Commission’s consumer guides, listed below.
Where this page got its facts
- Federal Communications Commission, Broadband Speed Guide (the table of minimum download speeds in Mbps for typical online activities — general browsing and email at 1, streaming online radio and VoIP calls at less than 0.5, social media at 1, file downloading at 10, student and telecommuting at 5 to 25, standard definition video at 3 to 4, high definition video at 5 to 8, Ultra HD 4K video at 25, a standard personal video call at 1, an HD personal video call at 1.5, HD video teleconferencing at 6, a game console connecting to the internet at 3 and online multiplayer at 4; the note that additional speed may enhance performance and that speeds are based on running one activity at a time; and the statement that these numbers are rough guidelines and are not based on surveys or experiments conducted by the FCC) — www.fcc.gov, read 22 August 2026.
- Federal Communications Commission, Household Broadband Guide (the chart comparing minimum download speed needs for light, moderate and high household use with one, two, three or four devices at a time; the definitions of light use as basic functions including email, browsing, basic video, VoIP and internet radio, moderate use as basic functions plus one high-demand application such as streaming HD video, multiparty video conferencing, online gaming or telecommuting, and high use as basic functions plus more than one high-demand application at the same time; the service bands of Basic at 3 to 8 Mbps, Medium at 12 to 25 Mbps and Advanced at more than 25 Mbps; the definition of Mbps as the standard measure of broadband speed, referring to the speed at which information packets are downloaded from or uploaded to the internet; and the same statement that the numbers are rough guidelines not based on FCC surveys or experiments) — www.fcc.gov, read 22 August 2026.
- Federal Communications Commission, Broadband Service for the Home: A Consumer’s Guide (the description of upload speed as the speed at which information is sent from a computer or device to the web, its importance for video conferencing, sharing larger files online, interactive learning, medical applications using HD imaging and two-way online gaming, the note that these applications would work best if upload speed were as high as download speed but that service providers generally do not offer that option, and the advice to find the needed download speed and look for a service with upload speeds reasonably close to it; the description of latency as time lag in how packets travel and the note that high latency can be a problem for applications requiring real-time back-and-forth communication such as online phone calls, video conferencing or gaming; and the note that some providers limit total data, for example to 150 or 250 gigabytes, with the scale that a standard definition movie is typically between 1 to 2 GB while an HD movie may be 3 to 5 GB) — www.fcc.gov, read 22 August 2026.
Written by Alberto Gulotta
Founder and editor of AI Tools Primer, writing from Palermo, Italy. Thirty-five years of taking computers apart, starting with a Commodore 64 — the long version is on the about page.
Something wrong on this page? Write to aitoolsprimer@gmail.com and it gets fixed.
Written on 22 August 2026.
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