One would think that buffering, low quality, and lags while trying to watch a video are a problem of the past, but unfortunately, they truly aren’t. While these and similar problems are less frequent these days, they can still be quite irritating while trying to watch a video and may have even caused you to just rage quit and do something else at some point. On that note, here are some tips that can help you with being able to stream your videos in optimal quality.

What Type of Internet Connection are You Using?

Is it a wired Ethernet connection or is it WiFi? WiFi connection tends to be a better option since even though the wireless connection is a lot more convenient since you are able to move your laptop anywhere you want, an Ethernet connection does give you a certain edge when it comes to your streaming quality and internet speed in general. If you are willing to sacrifice speed for convenience though, you can always turn to downloading videos in advance. Either way, the wired Ethernet connection is just plain faster than the wireless connection, there’s no getting around that, so keep that in mind and switch to a wired Ethernet connection if you experience buffering and lagging!

Free Up Your Bandwidth!

If you are not familiar with the terminology, bandwidth is basically the amount of data that can be transferred from one point to another within a certain network in a specific amount of time, so, it is heavily related to your streaming issues if you are experiencing them. What is affecting your bandwidth? Pretty much anything that is connected to your network, and is, therefore “using up” the speed of data transfer. On that note – be sure to close all the unnecessary applications, programs, tabs, and other browsers if applicable.

Remove Other Devices from the Network

This one is based on the same reasons as the step above – other devices that are on the same network are affecting your bandwidth. Even when you are not using them at the moment, Wi-Fi devices are constantly using up a bit of the highest possible bandwidth that your wireless router provides.

Computer Issues

This one is very important if you don’t have the strongest computer. Sometimes, the problems that you encounter while browsing the internet or while streaming videos aren’t even the result of bad internet connection. The problem can be that sometimes, your computer just doesn’t have the needed capacity to be able to stream videos as good as it would originally. For instance, there are a bunch of other tasks or programs that your computer is dealing with while at the same time trying to stream your video – it just won’t work. So, close everything that isn’t essential, because even if they are minimized, they still consume your system resources.

• Update your Graphic Card Drivers!

Since this also falls in the same category, let’s talk about it for a bit. If the movie or a video that you are watching is demanding more than your graphic card can provide, you should check out if the drivers of your graphic card are up to date. Companies like Intel and Nvidia for instance are constantly working on drivers in order to refine and optimize the performance regarding graphic cards, so, sometimes just a simple driver update can make an easy fix, as well as better overall performance.

Reset and Upgrade your Wi-Fi Device

This one is for everyone that has still chosen to use Wi-Fi and not the wired Ethernet. When have you had your router installed? Like any machine that there is, routers need maintenance as well, and yet people regularly tend to forget this. If you have forgotten about your router as well, you should call your manufacturer and ask them for firmware updates. Once in a while, a reset is needed as well, so, pull the power cord out, wait for about 15 seconds, and then plug it right back in. But if it so happens that this isn’t the solution and the improvement isn’t significant at all, you should consider if it is time for an upgrade. There are a lot of new Wi-Fi routers that will greatly increase both your download and your upload speed, but you should have in mind that new routers sometimes require the upgrade of some parts of your device.

Where there is a problem – there is a solution as well. There are many possible reasons that your streaming quality is compromised, but the possibility is that if you have followed all of the tips mentioned above, your streaming quality is going to rise in no time!