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We've all become addicted to broadband and its lightning-fast connections, enjoying streaming video and large file downloads. While it's a vast improvement over dial-up connections, though, there's always something to spoil our enjoyment. Whether it's fair-usage policies capping our data or slow connection speeds meaning we're not getting the service we're paying for, broadband isn't always as much fun as we'd hoped.

Fortunately, we're here to help. We've been investigating the problems and looking for ways to solve them. We're also launching the UK's biggest ISP survey so we can find out who offers the best service in the country, and we'll be revealing all in a couple of months.

The need for speed

Although it would be nice to think that the quality of technical support and reputation for customer service would be high on the list of priorities when choosing a broadband supplier, all most of us care about is the double whammy of price and speed. However, assuming that the promised 8Mbit/s download speed painted large in the advertising is what you will actually get can be a costly mistake. Look more carefully and you'll see that this figure is actually an 'up to' speed, and what you really get could differ.

There are many different reasons why your broadband doesn't live up to the speed that was promised, and we'll discuss these in turn. Once you understand the issues, our valuable advice at the end of this feature

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will help you diagnose and correct problems.

What you see advertised is a theoretical maximum. Industry watchdog Ofcom (www.ofcom.org.uk) suggests that the average broadband speed in the UK for 8Mbit/s ADSL services is actually only 4.6Mbit/s. It gets worse, and slower, in the real world. Follow our 'How To...' walkthrough to test your internet connection and you'll probably find that you're getting significantly slower speeds than you're paying for. This is because your broadband speed is affected by a number of factors, including how far away from the exchange your house is and how old the physical wiring is.

Before you believe the advertising and switch ISP to get a super-fast broadband connection, it's worth checking your telephone line to see what speed it is actually capable of supporting. The telephone line is the most crucial part of your broadband connection, and something of an immovable barrier. If you've got old cabling that won't support faster speeds, there's not much you can do about it as you'll have a hard job convincing your line provider to replace the cable. To check the maximum speed that your telephone line supports, you can use BT's ADSL broadband availability checker (www.adslchecker.bt.com/pls/adsl). By entering your telephone number you'll get a quick report on the quality of your telephone line and a maximum supported download speed for ADSL and ADSL Max.

ADSL Max supports download speeds of up to 8Mbit/s and uses Rate Adaptive ADSL to deliver your broadband. This works by remotely interrogating your ADSL modem for a period of 10 days after the connection has been activated to negotiate the Maximum Sustainable Rate (MSR) achievable. It will start with the fastest, 8Mbit/s, but negotiate downwards until it finds a stable connection speed. This means that a real-world maximum of 7Mbit/s could end up as low as 256Kbit/s, which starts to feel more like dial-up than broadband.