Dealing With Slow Wi-Fi? Understand What’s Hogging Your Bandwidth

If you are dealing with slow Wi-Fi, you need to understand that your bandwidth has been stressed due to various issues. As the pandemic situation has forced many people to work from home, the bandwidth has been stressed across the globe for millions of users. Apart from that, your device or some application you are using may be affecting the bandwidth more than any other thing at your home.

Dealing With Slow Wi-Fi? Understand What’s Hogging Your Bandwidth

If you are working on Windows, you can go to the settings, open the app, and search for ” data usage” to understand which apps have used the most bandwidth in the last month. This can give you some idea about where your bandwidth is getting stressed, and you can manage those applications according to your requirement. However, if you are working on a Mac computer, you may not get such facilities.

On the other hand, you can choose the network tab in the activity monitor app and get a glimpse of the data usage in real-time. You may also want to consider specialized Network Diagnostic programs like Little Snitch or GlassWire if you want advanced details about the usage of bandwidth in your network. However, the data is complex and has a lot of networking jargon, which is not suitable for the common public.

It is also essential to have good antivirus software that can detect the presence of Malware on your computer. In some cases, Malware can connect to a different proxy every few minutes, and this can slow down your computer. Even though this appears like a network issue, the root cause of the problem is the activity of the Malware. In some cases, even legitimate software can also create problems if it is not coded to work properly in sync with other applications running on your computer.

Streaming services are one of the most used applications in the last few months as most people are sitting at home and watching movies and web series on these platforms. The streaming services have advanced software that can adapt to the available bandwidth. The rate-adaptive software drops down to a lower bitrate encoding till it is able to stream at a higher rate. In this way, they plan to keep the streaming running without any interruptions.

Experts can try to use the router companion programs to get advanced data about network usage. However, this requires technical knowledge, and you have to configure the router properly and identify the apps by their network addresses. This can provide the most accurate data about which programs are consuming most of your bandwidth at your home. In some cases, you will be surprised to see that the games and videos your kids watch at home may be clogging your network.

It is also a good idea not to use multiple devices on your network at a time as this can unnecessarily clog the network. Remember that most of the devices have various applications that keep running in the background even when you are not actively using them. In this regard, it makes sense to disconnect your mobile devices from the Wi-Fi unless you need them at home.

In this way, your computer will get enough bandwidth, and your mobile devices will not compete unnecessarily with your computers. It is essential to log out from social media accounts after using them, as this will help you avoid getting continuous updates. You need to understand that various apps on your computer and mobile devices constantly use the network even without your active involvement to check for new messages.

This can slow down the bandwidth and make it difficult for your regular activities online. If you face this situation, logout from all your social media accounts if you are not actively using them, and then try to work on the essential apps. You will notice a  significant difference in the speed of your network with this simple trick.

You can also download movies whenever possible and avoid streaming them multiple times on your computer. In this manner, you can even schedule the downloads for night time so that more bandwidth will be available for your everyday activities during day time. Also, remove all unwanted applications from your computer and mobile devices to improve the speed of your network.