Bandwidth Troubleshooting
Slow internet? Here are some things that might help.
Check your speed in different parts of your living space. Google “Speed Test”. Zoom works best with 1.5 mbps upload and download speed. Being closer to a modem can also make a big difference. Watch this video for some tips on where to place your modem.
If there are other people using the same Wifi, ask them nicely to find an offline activity to stop while you’re on Zoom. Things like Netflix tend to eat up a lot of bandwidth.
Close other tabs. If you have email or social media updating in the background, this will be taking some of your speed.
If you have any backups running, put them on pause.
Delete and re-install Zoom. Weird, but it seems to help sometimes when people record very low speeds when using it. With all the demand for Zoom these days, it’s possible that it doesn’t always get installed perfectly the first time.
Clear the cookies from your computer. Cookies are small bits of data, saved on your computer that tell websites what you did there last. They can jam up internet flow like barnacles in a pipe. How to do this depends on your web browser (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, etc) so give it a Google. It won’t take long.
Sign in from your phone instead. You can download the Zoom app on any smartphone and call in using that interface. If you’re using a data plan, instead of your home Wifi connection, you may find you have better speed on a phone than on your computer. You can always run a speed test on your phone to check.
Sigh and try again later. The Internet, like all of us, is a moody animal these days. We’re all using it way more than usual and in very different ways. Sometimes it’s a cheetah, sometimes it’s a sloth, it may well have nothing to do with you.
We hope that helps!
Warmly,
The whole team at Firefly