More often than not the reason most people have slower-than-usual internet connections is probably because you have too many apps making too many network requests. When you cut down the network requests, more bandwidth is made available to you.
Using a multi-protocol IM client
IM clients Yahoo Messenger and Windows Live (formerly MSN) Messenger not only connect to their respective networks but also display ads when open.
Multi-protocol clients like Trillian and Pidgin do not show ads and also don’t load any extra "fluff". It is speedier to use these and frees up some bandwidth.
Use an email notifier instead of having an email client or separate browser window open
The same multi-protocol IM clients mentioned above also make great email notifiers. They will check accounts from Yahoo, Hotmail, Gmail, POP and in some instances IMAP.
Checking mail in this fashion takes up much less resource and bandwidth.
Use Google Earth instead of Google Maps
Heavy users of Google Maps have probably experienced the situation where your internet connection appears to randomly "shut off" for no reason when using this site. There’s a reason for it. Google Maps in the way it displays map data makes a ton of browser network requests. As such it times out your network connection for around 60 to 90 seconds before it comes back. No, there’s no problem with your modem or router; Google Maps has always had this issue.
Google Earth, a standalone application, does not have this problem. The way it renders its maps doesn’t "choke" like the browser version does. It also loads map data faster.
Try not to use browser toolbar add-ons
This doesn’t necessarily speed up your internet connection, but rather makes your web browser use less resource. When your browser "thinks less", it loads pages faster.
The reason I say try is because I know some of you out there really like particular toolbars (like the ones from Google and Yahoo), but if you can, try without.
Surf when others aren’t surfing
Yeah, I know, sounds a little too simple, right? You’d think with all this advanced ISP tech out there we’d have really fast internet connectivity all the time. Not true. Certain parts of the day are slower than others, particularly evenings and weekends.
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People in the uk should buy one of these if they have one of the old style BT phone sockets. http://www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk/Shop/ShopDetail.asp?ProductID=7256 I bought one and it increased my downloading speed by just under a third. Well worth a tenner.
If 60-90 open connections (not half-open) makes your internet connection “stall”, then you do have a serious problem with your router. the WRT54G can handle 4000+ concurrent connections before it runs out of memory, and that’s a WAY old router. any directly connected service should be fine for this unless it is excessively high latency.
That said, google earth is a good idea if you have RAM to spare, its cache is a lot more effective.
The router is never the problem, it’s on a software level (the OS) where the choke happens. Windows XP in particular has a predefined setting for maximum concurrent connections that was introduced in SP1 and can only be changed via changing tcpip.sys:
http://www.trustyfiles.com/help-sw-xpsp2.php