Who's using all the bandwidth?

I share an internet connection with several other people. This means that if one person is downloading a heavy amount, the rest suffer from basically unusably slow internet speeds. As it stands currently, short of going around the house and asking each person individually if they are the one "hogging all of the bandwidth", the best way of seeing who's doing it is checking on the router.


My router has a small screen on the front that lists all the devices connected to it, and how much data each device is using. This is useful, but it's on the other floor and a hassle to go downstairs to look at every time I feel like the net is being throttled.


My question is simply, is there a software solution? Is there a program I can install on my own computer that can see where all the bandwith of my connection is going, similar to what I described on the front of my router? This would allow me to see who's hogging the bandwidth and therefore more efficiently address their evil wrongdoing.

Ask them to enable uTP in their Bittorrent clients.

Have you checked your router's ip address to see what kind of web serving functionality it offers? Maybe it has the same info in its server that it has on the physical screen.

Enable Qos feature in Router if its available.

Sorry Johnny.. just a comment.

I asked something similar a while back and didn't get any good answers. My step son's Wii and PS3 always gets fluent bandwidth while using a multiplayer game or watching movies. It's using my wifi. Thing is we are the same distance from the modem/router. If he's watching movies my downloads get cut way down - BUT it doesn't happen the other way around - If I'm already downloading something and he starts a movie, he does Not get the slower bandwidth. I wanted a way to adjust his allotted bandwidth so I could lessen his wifi bandwidth and boost my own for my laptop. Seems there is no way to do this - the modem/router does not have controls for such a function I was told.

I wondered, Why does this happen? Does the Wii and PS3 really have that much better of a wifi card than my laptop does? I cannot believe that at all. I think there must be something in else I'm missing here no one is willing to talk about.. a setting or something even if it's hard wired into the modem that effects these things. I reasoned it's My modem/router and My bandwidth and I should get the best use of it before any other devices like his wii does. It's not fair.

Viktik, how would enabling QoS in the router help his problem? Could that also help my problem?

Dark Rider said:

If he's watching movies my downloads get cut way down - BUT it doesn't happen the other way around

Click to expand...

His adapter is probably G and yours in N. When his G is active, it is knocking the router down to G speed for all clients.

Two ways to fix:

1) Definite: Update his computer to a wireless N USB device and disable the G.

2) Alternate possible: Try to update router firmware, but it is likely that the physical design of the router dictates how it works instead. Sometimes, an update can help and sometimes not.

Oh ya, I see...you're saying Wii and PS3...then ya, there's nothing you can really do about it because I think they're G. So, you can hope for an update to the router firmware to work, and if not, do some research and get a router that will not drop standards when a lesser device is active.