[SOLVED] How can I find out what's hogging my bandwidth?

[al92]

As mentioned elsewhere, I often stream my xbox via wifi to my laptop to play games at home. This usually works flawlessly. My laptop is gaming spec and has no problem handling the graphics etc, but from time to time the signal is really pixelated and laggy. Sometimes this makes sense - the wife may be watching netflix for example, but at other times there's literally nothing else using the wifi in our house and I'm usually only sitting around 6 - 8ft from the router.

I don't understand what causes these issues; does anyone know how I can find out what's taking up all the bandwidth? Can I see for example a log of which devices are using the wifi at any given time?

Thanks

 

[COLGeek]

When you set up your router, did you scan for neighboring wifi networks and then choose a channel that was free (or less congested) of others?

 

[jsmithepa]

if u are 6-8 ft away, u should be using an ethernet cable.

 

[al92]

When you set up your router, did you scan for neighboring wifi networks and then choose a channel that was free (or less congested) of others?

No - my ISP simply sends out a router with an engineer who sets it all up & its ready to go. How would I do this?

if u are 6-8 ft away, u should be using an ethernet cable.

The thing is, I've sat further away plenty of times and had perfect signal. It's only recently that it's started to be an issue. There must be something interfering with the signal now.

 

[bill001g]

Why would you think it was only caused by some other device in your house. It more likely is your neighbor using his wifi router and enough of the signal is bleeding into your house. It may not even be wifi it could be anything the runs on the same radio frequencies like old baby monitors or cordless phones.

There is no realistic way to even think to prevent this interference. You could agree with all your neighbors what radio channels you were going to use and someone with one of those fancy cars that has a hotspot in it can drive by and interfere.

Wifi is the worst possible choice for games. Almost any other form of wifi usage tolerates these issues. You only real option is to go to ethernet or just accept that wifi will have this issue from time to time.

 

[failboat]

If you have an all in one device you can check if the iftop package is available. monitoring needs decent resources so it's not a common feature.

 

[al92]

Right, so I've tried with a cable direct from router to laptop. I'm pulling in 40mb download speed which is marginally better than Wifi. When it comes to streaming the game, it has improved but there are still momentary freezes and glitches. I'd accept it if I hadn't previously experienced it being more or less flawless for 2 - 3 hours at a time earlier in the year.

 

[bill001g]

So turn off the wifi and unplug everything except your PC. If you still have issue when running in this configuration you likely have some issue with your internet connection or less likely the pc or maybe the router/modem.

If it runs fine then one by plug in any ethernet. After that you turn on the wifi. If there are multiple devices sharing the wifi it is going to be hard to see which is causing the issue.

Still the only way a wifi user can hurt a ethernet user is if you are exceeding the bandwidth you purchase from your ISP. If your router has good QoS settings you should be able to dedicate bandwidth to your PC.