What’s more annoying than having a great wifi or Ethernet connection, but slow internet speeds? Nothing. Nothing is more annoying than that. When it happens to you—and it will, especially if you jump onto wifi access points at your favorite local businesses—you’re going to wish you could do anything to speed up your connection.

While we can’t reach out from Lifehacker Headquarters and tell your public wifi point to speed things up, nor can we tell that person next to you at the coffee shop to maybe go easy on the BitTorrent today, we can give you a few suggestions to troubleshoot, fix, or simply survive a slow internet connection.

10. Check your speeds (and your internet plan):

Sometimes, your internet connection is slow because you’re paying for crappy internet. Log onto your provider’s web site (or give them a call) and find out what plan you have. Then head on over to fast.com (or any number of alternative sites) and run a speed test. If what you’ve measured is close to what you’re paying for, then your network is working fine and your internet plan just isn’t very fast—the best way to speed it up will be to upgrade.

9. Give your hardware the universal fix

Before you go cursing your internet provider, give your modem and router a quick reset (i.e., turn them off and on again) and see if that helps. Check the other computers in your house to see if their internet is slow, too. If the problem only happens on one computer, the problem is that computer, not your router or modem.

8. Fix your wifi signal 

Speaking of wifi, you might find that your router and internet are fine, but your wireless signal is weak. This can cause a slowdown—or, at minimum, a latency-filled browsing experience. In that case, you may need to reposition, tweak, and boost your router with a few tricks.

There are more than we could share in one paltry paragraph—in fact, we have a whole top 10 list just for fixing wifi, so check that out if you suspect your wireless signal is the problem. (And, yes, there are plenty of free apps you can use to check signal problems and see how well your router handles the rest of your concrete house.)

7. Turn off or limit bandwidth-hogging apps 

If your hardware seems to be in working order, see if any other programs are hogging the connection. For example, if you’re downloading files with BitTorrent, regular web browsing is going to be slower. You should also try installing extensions like AdBlock Plus and Privacy Badger, which will block some of the bandwidth-hogging ads, animations, and videos that can use up your connection. (You can also try a different browser entirely, like the privacy-minded Brave.)

6. Use Internet Download Manager

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5. Try a new DNS server

When you type an address into your browser, your computer uses something called DNS to look up and translate that into a computer-friendly IP address. Sometimes, though, the servers your computer uses to look up that information can have issues, or go down entirely. Thankfully, you have plenty of faster, free options to use, like Google DNS or Cloudflare (to name two of our favorites). Or you can use a utility like Namebench to actually test what’s the speediest for your location and go with that.

A better DNS might not speed up average webpage loading time enough for you to notice, but you never know—milliseconds are milliseconds.

4. Call your internet provider

If you’ve gone through all the necessary troubleshooting steps and your internet is still slow, then it’s time to call your internet provider and see if the problem is on their end. Remember: don’t just assume they’ve done something wrong, and treat your customer service representative with respect. You’re much more likely to get good results.

And while you’re at it, you might want to see if you can get a better deal on your internet—especially if they’ve been giving you the wrong speeds all this time.

3. Optimize your web for a slow connection

Troubleshooting slow internet can take awhile, and in the meantime you still need to browse. Or maybe you’re at a coffee shop or on a plane, and there’s nothing you can do about your slow speeds. In that case, it’s time to optimize your web for a slower connection. Try a data-saving-themed browser like Opera Mini, or look for features like Opera Turbo or Chrome’s Lite Mode (Android-only). You can also try changing your browser’s user agent so that you pull up a mobile-optimized version of a website instead of its data-heavy desktop experience—or switch off images, for example, to save yourself from painful page-loading times.

If your wifi or Ethernet connection is suffering on your laptop, and you really need to get online, you can always tether your smartphone—just be mindful of your mobile data limits. (Now is probably not the time to start burning through your Netflix queue.)

2. Work smarter

If you need to get work done on your slow connection, you may have to prioritize tasks differently than if your internet were super fast. Separate your tasks into bandwidth-heavy and bandwidth-light ones. Get the light ones done when you’re on your slow connection, and group all the bandwidth-heavy tasks together so you can do them if and when you get a speedier connection.

Also, don’t forget about your apps’ offline modes. Some services might require you to set this up in advance (Steam, Google Docs, and OneDrive’s “Files On-Demand mode” come to mind, as does Spotify’s download feature), but doing so will ensure that you’ll be able to access whatever you need—be it games or documents—when your connection is terrible or nonexistent.

1. Don’t worry about it

If you’re lucky, you can get your internet speeds back up to snuff quickly and stress-free. But, if not, you can at least try to put a good spin on it: As long as your work isn’t too bandwidth-intensive, slow internet could actually make you more productive. After all, if Facebook takes a minute to load, you’re a lot less likely to pop over for a “quick break” (that turns into an hour-long photo-fest) when you’re supposed to be working on that term paper.