There is nothing more frustrating than a slow and unreliable Internet connection. Didn't you want to tear your hair out when that stalled update wrecked your PC or immobilised your iPhone for hours? Did you try to update your apps only to be told that you need WiFi? And I am not even talking about a friend who bought a costly Mac but neglected to take a proper broadband connection.

Yet most of us make a big mistake when we choose the primary Internet service provider for our home. In our effort to cut costs - and the mistaken notion of installation hassles - we often opt for a dongle. We end up actually paying a lot more and feel cheated. There are many who have taken a 4G connection at home and are dismayed when their monthly quota is exhausted in three or four days. You should remember that the bigger the pipe, the faster the water flows out.

You can access the Internet in two ways - through a fixed landline or through mobile broadband. A mobile broadband works by connecting to a mobile network with a SIM card. You connect to the Internet with 3G or the faster, more recent 4G. Mobile broadband comes in the form of a dongle, portable WiFi hotspot, a SIM card in a tablet or laptop, or by tethering with your smartphone.

Mobile broadband coverage through 3G and 4G, however, is patchy, with most networks covering somewhere between 50 per cent and 70 per cent of the population. The rest are dependent on 2G, with pathetic speeds. In the hills it is even worse.

Fixed line broadband, on the other hand, is what we usually mean when we use the word 'broadband'. It is an Internet connection in your home, delivered through your phone line or through a cable provider. You will get it as either standard ADSL or superfast fibre optic. This connects to a router, which you can then connect to all your devices through WiFi or an Ethernet cable. In an ADSL (asymmetric digital subscriber line) connection your upload speed is significantly lower than the download speed. If you have a 4 Mbps connection, the upload speed will never go over 1 Mbps.

In large cities like Calcutta, providers such as Airtel, Reliance and BSNL have invested in fibre optic in many areas to deliver fast connectivity, but the problem is this fibre optic cable does not go right to your home. This limits the speed you can get to usually 4, 8 or 16 Mbps depending on the area you live in.

Most people still debate over whether to take fixed broadband or use a dongle. The thing is there is no debate. With cloud storage and updates to operating systems and apps delivered over the air becoming common, you will always need to download a lot of data. From downloading movies and serials, or watching them on services such as Netflix and YouTube, to gaming and video calls, you need a fixed line broadband. It has less lag and usually the speed is much more stable than even 4G.

If you try to do all of this on your 3G or 4G connection, you will finish your monthly Internet quota in days. You will probably need to top up every other day, and this can get very expensive.

There are a lot of advantages to fixed line broadband. If you can get a landline, you can almost certainly get a fixed line broadband. There are also several cable providers such as Alliance Broadband and Siti Broadband in West Bengal who offer a decent Internet connectivity at rates that suit your budget. They cover most towns in this state.

Monthly download limits for fixed line broadband are usually far higher than similar-priced mobile broadband. Some providers even offer packages with unlimited downloads. Mobile broadband plans, however, almost always have restrictive usage caps with high costs when you exceed them.

Switch to a fixed line broadband if it is available in your area. You will not regret it if you choose your provider well. Also, check the Internet speed you are getting at neutral websites such as Netflix's fast.com or speedof.me (which has a Html 5 interface rather than a Flash-based one) rather than speedtest.net. Internet service providers have a fast lane to the speedtest.net servers.

Send in your computer-related problems to askdoss@abpmail.com with bits and bytes as the subject line