What is Bandwidth Throttling and How Can You Stop It

Your bandwidth is vital to your everyday life. It is your access to the online world, which often means access to the outside world. Many of us need a certain amount of bandwidth to work, play, educate ourselves, and keep in touch with loved ones. Internet speed is an important part of our lives whether we realize it or not.

And yet, while bandwidth is great and your internet service is a wonderful part of your everyday life (we hope), bandwidth throttling is not. Anything that will decrease your internet speed is a problem, and throttling is one of the major reasons to look out for. Yet why is this the case, what is it, and what can you do about it? These are good questions and ones we’re determined to answer in this piece.

Keep on reading below to learn everything you need to about bandwidth throttling.

What is Bandwidth

Bandwidth, in short, is a measurement of how much data a connection can handle transferring at once. Think of it like how many lanes a highway has or how wide a pipe pumping water is. The more bandwidth you have, the higher the maximum internet speed you can have. It is usually measured in bits per second (bps) and referred to in Mbps or Gbps (megabits per second and gigabits per second). 

How Does Bandwidth Work

Bandwidth is more of a measurement than something that works, but plenty of technological developments have made greater bandwidth possible. While previously we had dial-up internet that only allowed for one “line” of data that was 56 Kbps fast (that’s a lot lower than anything else you will see today), we now have a range of technologies that allow for broadband internet using multiple bands. Fiber internet allows for incredibly fast internet speeds. Even DSL and cable internet before it allowed for much faster speeds. Yet the difference is actually how much data can travel over the connection at once.

Bandwidth can be measured by looking at the maximum amount of data that can travel through a connection. The more bandwidth a connection has, the higher the connection's maximum speed. Essentially putting it through a light stress test is a good way to measure it, but modern technology also allows devices to know how much bandwidth is available instead of making such a test. 

Bandwidth vs Speed

Internet bandwidth and internet speed are two terms that are often used interchangeably, but there is a slight technical difference, meaning that the idea that bandwidth measures internet speed is incorrect. Bandwidth is how much information a connection or device can receive every second. Speed is how fast information is received or downloaded.

Speed might not match bandwidth, but speed will never surpass bandwidth. Nonetheless, for the purposes of a total home connection, the bandwidth and the speed should be one and the same. If they are not, it might be time to upgrade a component of your network.

That is not to say that they are not related. In fact, they are affected by one another greatly. Improving your bandwidth should improve your internet speed greatly. One common way of thinking about the difference between the two is thinking of bandwidth like a pipe and internet speed as the speed of the water that comes through it. The pipe can get backed up if it is too small.

The Importance of Bandwidth

Without bandwidth, your internet connection won’t work properly or at all. However, bandwidth isn’t unlimited. It is determined mostly by the service plan you get from your broadband provider, and you may or may not feel those limitations as you use the internet now.

Essentially, more bandwidth allows you to take in more data simultaneously. And with the apps and use cases we have today, there are many cases where you need to have a minimum bandwidth to even use something. Think of how video calls can cut out without a good enough connection or the heavy buffering those streaming videos might experience when they have slow internet.

Increasing your bandwidth can lead to a host of benefits. It can mean you can do more while working remotely and make teleconferencing a breeze. It can make online gaming more smooth and allow you to download games (and whatever else you’d like) much more easily. It will make simple browsing more seamless, and loading photos, videos, and more on a webpage will feel instantaneous after a point.

Essentially, anything you do online or any connected devices you use will be more stable and can work at their best if you have enough bandwidth. And you’ll be able to use more devices at once, either with yourself or split amongst a household. This is just the tip of the iceberg, and there is absolutely no downside to having more bandwidth on your connection if it is an available option.

Understanding Bandwidth Throttling

While bandwidth is important and a key aspect of your internet service, there is throttling. Some providers might even offer such things as unlimited bandwidth (this is impossible) and then throttle it after the fact. Therefore, it’s important to understand throttling and what it can do so that you can make an educated decision on how to move forward with it. Here is what you need to know:

What is Bandwidth Throttling

You might be unfamiliar with bandwidth throttling or might be unfamiliar with it under that name (though you may have heard of data throttling). Bandwidth throttling is when a service provider intentionally and artificially slows down an internet connection or reduces the bandwidth of a given connection (whether in an area or for one user/household).

If we continue the pipe analogy from before, think of throttling as the service provider artificially shrinking the pipe for one of several reasons. There are several reasons why an ISP might throttle bandwidth, which we’ll talk about shortly. Just know that it is on purpose (or by algorithm) and that you aren’t helpless in the situation.



Reasons Why Internet Service Provides Throttle Bandwidth

There are several reasons why ISPs will throttle bandwidth, but some are more common and more relevant to you than others. Here are the top four you should know about:

Network Congestion

The infrastructure we use for the internet and bandwidth service isn’t perfect, and depending on your quality of service, we don’t need to tell you this. And despite the advertisements, ISPs know this as well. There are areas where more people are using the internet for the infrastructure to handle, and there are times when network congestion can be too much for what is installed in a given area.

That means that customers cannot always get what they were promised in terms of bandwidth, leading to rightfully unhappy customers. The congestion can be more or less severe depending on a few different factors, and the throttling can be more or less severe as well. It can also vary based on the hour of the day.

Data Caps

Depending on the provider and the service plan someone uses, there may be a cap on the amount of data someone can use each month. You might be familiar with it in the context of a mobile data plan, but the caps also exist for broadband service. They are most common and most strict with high-altitude satellite internet plans, but there are data caps with many plans all over the country, regardless of service type. However, data caps are pretty large compared to the average user’s usage for most plans (one terabyte is the most common limit).

Yet if a user goes over their data cap (usually for the month), their connection will be throttled for the rest of the month (or service period). There may be ways to get more data, but it might be costly. We’ll talk about this more later.

Paid Prioritization

When there are limited resources (the resource being bandwidth in this case), who should get priority of service? If you ask the market, it is whoever is willing to pay the most. This often means that ISPs will throttle people on lower-paid plans or will throttle some places or sites that aren’t as important (revenue-producing) as others. 

In general, you see this a bit more with data throttling than with bandwidth throttling, but it can still occur. There’s a bit more to the subject, and it’s the center of more than one hot debate, but just note that the plan you have and your geographical location can determine whether your connection is being throttled or not.

Restricted Activities

There are some things that ISPs don’t like or feel obligated to act upon due to government mandates or intervention. They might entail going to suspicious websites, downloading certain content (often illegally), or using a massive amount of bandwidth quickly. And while there are legitimate reasons to restrict or be careful about such activities, there can be false positives, and there are circumstances where such activities can be perfectly fine in context.

Nonetheless, this means that you could find your connection throttled on certain websites, or you might find your connection throttled entirely temporarily or permanently, depending on what you were doing online.

How to Tell if Your Internet Service Provider is Throttling Your Bandwidth

Sometimes your ISP will throttle your connection, but that doesn’t mean they’ll drive by your house shouting that they’ll do so through loudspeakers. You may need to check on this by using a few tools. Our recommendation for this is to use a speed test and a VPN. There are a few steps to this process:

1. First, use a speed test to check your current internet speed (upload, download, and ping). This takes only a minute. You can go to any speed test (though our speed test is perfect for this purpose) and hit the start button. There are specialized settings on some of them, but they won’t be important right now.

• When conducting the speed test, try using a few different devices. Additionally, test from multiple parts of your home. Also, use both a wired and wireless connection if possible. You want to rule out any causes of a slow connection outside of throttling.
• Make sure to take notes on your results. Some speed tests allow you to save results, though a screenshot of your results or even using a pen and paper will work just as well.

2. Connect to a VPN. We’ll talk more about VPNs later in the piece, but in short, it is a Virtual Private Network that will mask your IP address and what you are doing online. All someone can tell is that you are using a VPN. To connect to one, you need to have one installed on your device either as a separate application or as part of a larger security or private suite. Then open it up, select your server, and connect. It is an easy process, and there are usually instructions with the VPN (there might be slight variations in the process from one VPN to another).

3. Perform the same process as described in step 1 to check and record your internet speed. Note the results and compare them to your previous speed test. Make sure you also check the same websites you were using before to see if things are slower or faster.

4. If you see an improvement in speeds on some websites and in general, then your connection is being throttled.

• However, as we’ll explain later, the VPN might tell you that you’re being throttled only on certain services or on certain sites. If your entire connection is being throttled, a VPN will not help you determine that, and you’ll want to simply consider the speed test results compared to the broadband internet plan you have. 

On the other hand, sometimes your ISP will tell you if your connection is being throttled, if service is slow, or expect to experience difficulties in an area. You might receive a message or email from the rarely used ISP-provided email account. It is possible, though rare that you receive some notice in the mail. They might warn you against certain activities that go against their terms of use. There also might be local issues and heavy congestion that force throttling temporarily, and there could be a message about that. If you’re experiencing problems, keep lines of communication open and examine them.

And if you’re unsure still but suspicious, call your internet service provider and ask outright if your connection has been throttled for any reason. If they say no, ask why your connection is slower than it should be. If they say yes, ask why and see if a solution can be determined.

How to Stop Bandwidth Throttling

So bandwidth throttling is best avoided, but how do you do so? What is in your power to change that might stop bandwidth throttling? It can be tough to avoid or stop it completely, but there are ways to minimize the effects. Let’s take a look at options for some of the more common causes and most used solutions:

Stopping Bandwidth Throttling Caused by Network Congestion

As mentioned, one of the reasons you might experience throttling is that network congestion is forcing ISPs to throttle some users' bandwidth. This most often happens in the busiest areas and during peak usage hours. Yet you are not without recourse in this circumstance. Here are some of the things you can do:

• The simplest thing to do is upgrade to a faster plan. While it may not stop the throttling completely (depending on how the ISP prioritizes its different customers), you will be able to get more bandwidth overall. Having 50 percent of 300 Mbps is much better than having 50 percent of 100 Mbps. However, make sure you do your research and understand that you might be paying more per month as a result of your upgrade, with no guarantee everything will be fixed.
• Depending on your usage habits, you may want to use the internet less during peak hours and more during off-peak hours. We aren’t necessarily telling you not to use the internet at times, but mostly adjust your usage. Browsing and social media usage should likely be fine no matter when you’re doing them. On the other hand, you may want to switch that massive download of the latest and greatest game overnight.
• While this won’t prevent bandwidth throttling, do whatever you can to improve your network and connection. If you’re mostly working on one device, consider using an ethernet cable to connect to the internet if possible. And try to remove as many background processes and downloads that you aren’t using or aren’t using right now, scheduling them for times you aren’t online. It doesn’t matter if a download and update are slow if you’re out shopping or at work while it’s happening.

Stopping Bandwidth Throttling Caused by Data Caps

If you frequently run into your data caps and have your connection throttled as a result, you have a few options:

• You can look for ways to reduce your monthly usage of data. There might be people using your network or downloading things you aren’t knowledgeable about, leading to much more usage than you anticipated. You can download or stream lower-resolution content when the quality doesn’t matter so much to you. 
• There are tools you can use to track your data usage and help you figure out what apps and programs are using the most data. You can also likely use your task manager or an equivalent tool to see real-time data usage. Over time, options have expanded in the world of data management.
• Depending on your ISP, you can pay for more data to effectively increase your cap. Note, however, that if you’re doing so after you’ve hit your cap, you might be paying a high rate for additional data. Paying for more data upfront if you know you will use it is usually the better option.
• Upgrading your plan that either has a higher data cap or unlimited data might be what you need to do if you use a lot of data and can’t reasonably reduce that amount. At least check to see what plans your provider has available.
• And if there are no reasonable options to upgrade your plan or switch to unlimited data, it might be time to switch to a different provider that offers a plan with unlimited data. They are becoming more common as infrastructure improves across the world, and ISPs are becoming more competitive with each other in some regions.
• It is very important to note, however, that while some plans and providers might offer unlimited data in their advertising, they might not offer it in practice. Many “unlimited” plans will still throttle a connection after a certain amount of data is used (often 1TB), they just don’t charge you extra if you go over the data cap. Be on the lookout for the fine print about this.

Stopping Bandwidth Throttling Using VPNs

Another option that you have that might work is using a VPN. It is an option, and perhaps the best option when throttling is implemented for specific websites and services.

Yet what is a VPN? One of the most popular online tools of the last decade, whether for access or security reasons, has been the Virtual Private Network (VPN). To put it simply, it is a tool that will encrypt your connection and route it through a remote server. This has a few practical effects. The first is that it adds a layer of security to your connection, meaning that you can use public networks without worry and feel safer in what you are doing. The second is that it provides a strong layer of anonymity. If anyone tries to snoop around and take a look at what you are doing online, the most that they’ll be able to determine is that you’re using a VPN. Finally, it can make it appear as though you’re in a different location, which can help access regionally restricted content (though it isn’t as related to bandwidth throttling).

An ISP might try to throttle certain sites or services for various reasons. They might object to the site, or they might think that it uses too much data. Depending on net neutrality laws, this may or may not happen to you, depending on where you live. Regardless, it can occur, and a VPN can help. 

The usage of a VPN to stop bandwidth throttling is no different than using a VPN for anything else. First, select your VPN of choice and log in (or activate the VPN feature). Then you select a server or have a server automatically selected for you. Then you activate the VPN (if this hasn’t happened already) and ensure it’s going in the background while browsing as normal. You'll notice if the VPN will help bandwidth throttling quickly, but performing a speed test before and after activation might be helpful for you.

Now, if your connection is being throttled in general, you might not have much luck using a VPN. However, if your connection is being throttled, blocked, or hindered in any way for specific usage, then a VPN can help. Similarly, if you know your ISP will throttle traffic from certain sites in advance, using a VPN might be able to help (though it may be possible that VPN traffic itself gets throttled in the future).

The use of a VPN is also a great way to maintain your privacy in general when doing most things online. If your concerns are less about the throttling and more about your ISP and other people watching what you do online, we still recommend you use a VPN when doing most of your browsing. 

One last note: depending on the VPN you use and which location you set the server to, you might experience something of a slowdown in your connection if you use a VPN. Routing your connection through a distant server increases your latency and does use up a bit of bandwidth. It isn’t nearly as much as the throttling you’d experience from your ISP if they are throttling your bandwidth on certain sites, but it is an effect. 

Summary

Your bandwidth is important; if you can stop the throttling of your connection by your ISP, you should. Bandwidth is closely tied to internet speed, your overall quality of service, and much more. And while you might be able to get by reducing your data usage and timing your usage, bandwidth throttling can severely impact your quality of life, especially if you didn’t have much bandwidth, to begin with.

Remember to use the tools you have available to you so that you can know your situation. Then make sure to react accordingly. If you are getting throttled, you owe it to yourself and your household to see if there is anything you can do about it and then take action if you can. You deserve the best connection possible.

We hope that this piece has helped you better understand both bandwidth and bandwidth throttling and given you some ideas on what to do about it. We wish you the best of luck and invite you to return to this page if you need to reference it again.