If you've been using the DD-WRT router firmware without clicking through some of the tabs you might be missing out on some awesome features. One area worth viewing are the real-time and historical bandwidth monitoring tools that can be easy to overlook.

I've helped all kinds of people troubleshoot "slow" Internet connections, and more often than not it has something to do with the twenty toolbars they have installed in their browser. Sometimes, however, there has been a legitimate concern with their ISP.

There are an infinite number of reasons as to why someone's Internet connection could stop working, but even with that in mind there are still a number of things we techies are "trained" to check first before banging our heads against the wall. I'm talking about things like releasing/renewing the IP address, flushing the DNS, and checking the Windows Firewall settings.

There are some situations where it's nice to monitor the amount of bandwidth that's being used by your computer. One reason would be if your Internet Service Provider (ISP) caps the amount of data that you're allowed to plow through in a given month.

Our internet connections have become faster over the years, but with that our need for speed increased too. And sadly, having a fast internet connection does not mean the server you're downloading from gives you the speed you pay for. That's where download managers come in.

We love unlimited. Everything is better when it's not limited, right? Then what's not to love about unlimited bandwidth? Actually it's bad for us consumers. Here's why.