Wireless broadband 'slows the connection'

Computer users with large volumes of data to transfer or connection-intensive activities planned may want to plug their PC or laptop into a wired broadband connection.

Figures from Epitiro, which researches broadband performance, indicate that simply plugging directly into a router or modem could improve top speeds by 30 per cent.

The findings are based on a study which measured connection speeds of more than 14,000 participants in Spain, Italy, the US and the UK.

However, in many cases the degradation in performance may not be as significant as the statistics suggest.

According to the firm, many regular web users are unlikely to notice the difference when using their connection for normal browsing activity.

For those who watch large amounts of streamed video, the findings could be more important.

Data from comScore suggests this could affect 34.7 million internet users in the UK alone, who between them watched six billion 'content videos' - which excludes advertisements - in November 2010.