D. Install a filter on your phone socket.

Most standard BT NTE5 linebox/phone sockets (see the picture for 'B') come with an easily removable frontal faceplate but still fail to filter out interference from the old bell wire inside. Not even a Microfilter will resolve this and fixing it can give your broadband connection a noticeable speed boost (my own line went from 2Mbps to 3.2Mbps, although experiences do vary).

You can temporarily resolve this problem or test the potential performance improvement by just removing the two-screw faceplate and plugging directly into the test socket behind with your Microfilter. However it is not advisable to leave the socket exposed like this and you should consider installing a special filtered faceplate instead.

Assuming you have a BT NTE5 phone socket, as pictured earlier (usually the master socket), then BT offer a 'Broadband Accelerator' (iPlate) device that is cheap and easy for anybody to fit (check the video below). Those with Linebox/Mastersockets that come with the BTOpenreach logo on top do not require a filtered faceplate because it has one built-in.

There are also plenty of other filtered faceplate solutions out there for non-standard linebox/sockets and more on those can be read in our Broadband ADSL Connection Tips article. However, unless you're familiar with phone wiring, you might want to ask a qualified phone expert to fit it for you.

E. Use OpenDNS.org (link).

Every time you try to view a website your ISP has to convert the human readable domain name (e.g. ISPreview.co.uk) from a raw IP address (e.g. 123.35.23.89), which is known as the Domain Name System (DNS). In some cases your ISP might have slow DNS servers and one solution can be to perform a fairly simple tweak by using the FREE third party OpenDNS system instead.

You can find plenty of information and guides on their website that cover several ways in which this can be done and, while it will not make your physical connection faster, it might help browsing the internet to feel a little snappier than before and can often improve security too. Remember to make a note of any adjusted settings, just in case you need to revert it back later.

F. Use Opera 10+ with Turbo Mode enabled.

The Opera 10 Website Browser, and most likely any future versions too, all include an Advanced 'Turbo Mode' setting in the Preferences. Enabling this on slow connections could improve your website browsing speed by compressing the content (making it smaller and faster) before it arrives at your computer. This will not improve the physical speed of your connection but the web could feel faster and you will use less bandwidth. Connections of above 2Mbps are unlikely to reap any hugely noticeable benefit.