Quality Internet performance is essential for the health and well-being of your company. SMBs and Fortune 500 alike are allocating an ever-increasing portion of their budgets toward strengthening their web assets, cloud-based services, content acceleration and SaaS-based applications to keep their customers' Internet access fast, secure and uninterrupted.

But the question is: Does all this investment really translate to better access to products and services for end users? For many top financial, retail and social platforms, the answer is a resounding "no."

From the time a potential customer enters a domain and the page opens, a tremendous amount happens between the business connection and the end user. Errors can occur within the network, at the CDN or ISP level, or with a customer connection. A website can be slow for many reasons as well, and most consumers — and companies, for that matter — have little insight into the 'how' and 'why' of their performance issues. Understanding these connections — monitoring, controlling and optimizing these connections — is the true test of Internet performance.

In this slideshow, Michael Kane, senior product marketing manager at Dyn, discusses some of the factors that affect Internet performance and provides tips for improving service.

Michael Kane is the senior product marketing manager at Dyn, a cloud-based Internet performance company that helps companies monitor, control, and optimize online infrastructure for an exceptional end-user experience.