Question Internet spiking to huge pings because of 1 device?

Jun 7, 2022
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So whenever my brother watches netflix or youtube ping in game spikes to sometimes 2000, why is it like that? When other family members watch netflix, twitch or anything else it does not do that, only when he watches. He has a cable from the router to his PC, could the cable be defect? Maybe his LAN cable socket needs to be updated? Does anyone have an idea?
 
Yup that is pretty small. I have seen different numbers on netflix but if he is say trying to watch 4k video he will max out the connection and leave no bandwidth for anyone else.
I forget how much 1080p uses but I suspect 2 people running even 1080p would max out a 15mb connection.

There really is no solution for this other than to buy more bandwidth or limit the usage of high definition video. Their might be technical ways to limit the bandwidth usage but in the end it will come down to some agreement between everyone in your house as to which traffic is actually more important and how you share it. Unfortunately some streaming devices you have no ability to set the rate it uses, it will always try to use the maximum. Maybe there is some way on a netflix account itself to limit it.
 
Jun 7, 2022
4
0
10
Yup that is pretty small. I have seen different numbers on netflix but if he is say trying to watch 4k video he will max out the connection and leave no bandwidth for anyone else.
I forget how much 1080p uses but I suspect 2 people running even 1080p would max out a 15mb connection.

There really is no solution for this other than to buy more bandwidth or limit the usage of high definition video. Their might be technical ways to limit the bandwidth usage but in the end it will come down to some agreement between everyone in your house as to which traffic is actually more important and how you share it. Unfortunately some streaming devices you have no ability to set the rate it uses, it will always try to use the maximum. Maybe there is some way on a netflix account itself to limit it.
No, when he is the only one watching and using the internet, with me playing games, it still spikes to a huge ping no one else is watching anything. Also, shouldnt the ping stay on a higher number and not spike when overusing the internet?
 
I guess if he was 100% maxing it all the time the high ping would be constant. But lets say your game and the netflix is 95% constant usage. It only take a small amount of other traffic even a web page update of advertising to max it. Every time this happened it would cause a ping spike.
So maybe it is not 100% but you are close enough that it causes large problems. Netflix does not actually transfer at a fixed rate it sends the data in chunks and keeps a buffer to avoid stalls.

It is not a bad cable. Cables cause packet loss not delays and it would not affect other machines. It would have to be your cable that was bad and it should cause issues no matter what other people are doing.

This is one of those how much effort do you want to do or is it just simpler to buy more bandwidth. If you are in the unfortunately situation that there is no ISP that offers faster then you must find a way to limit traffic.

Your first step though is to try to find out what is actually running. Some routers might show you how much bandwidth each device is using and what they are talking to. Your other option would be to look at the resource monitor on all the machines and then combine the data yourself to get some idea.
 
Jun 7, 2022
4
0
10
I guess if he was 100% maxing it all the time the high ping would be constant. But lets say your game and the netflix is 95% constant usage. It only take a small amount of other traffic even a web page update of advertising to max it. Every time this happened it would cause a ping spike.
So maybe it is not 100% but you are close enough that it causes large problems. Netflix does not actually transfer at a fixed rate it sends the data in chunks and keeps a buffer to avoid stalls.

It is not a bad cable. Cables cause packet loss not delays and it would not affect other machines. It would have to be your cable that was bad and it should cause issues no matter what other people are doing.

This is one of those how much effort do you want to do or is it just simpler to buy more bandwidth. If you are in the unfortunately situation that there is no ISP that offers faster then you must find a way to limit traffic.

Your first step though is to try to find out what is actually running. Some routers might show you how much bandwidth each device is using and what they are talking to. Your other option would be to look at the resource monitor on all the machines and then combine the data yourself to get some idea.
I might have fixed it, it was like you said buffering and downloading 50 mb/s sometimes while watching netflix atleast thats what it said on task manager. What i did was go on Ethernet -> adapter options -> select ethernet cable -> properties -> configure -> search for speed duplex, and just try out what has least usage.

Im from germany so buying more bandwith is not an option in the most cases, the internet sucks here.
 
Does your brother have a 4K TV and the rest of the tv's in the house are 1080p? 15mbps is enough to stream 4k netflix, but just barely. So your internet will spike. 1080p will use about 6-8mbps.

Perhaps figure out a way to limit your brother to 1080P on his TV if he's using a smart tv stick/box or limit the resolution on his TV somehow. Or on the netflix family plan, figure out a way to limit it to 1080p.