Question Is there any way to block automatic iCloud backups through my router rather than going on each individual device?

[mynamesnotleo]

So for starters, I have a rather large family and a very slow internet connection due to where I live. Recently I've been having an issue where late at night my internet drastically slows down to the point where it's almost unusable. I figured out that if I turned off my router (Netgear R6900P), everything else that's connected directly to my modem (Actiontec T3200) goes back to normal almost instantly, and as soon as I turn my router back on it slows down again. The only thing I can think of that would be causing this issue would be automatic iPhone backups. I'm wondering if there's a way I can block these from happening through my router rather than going on every single device that my family has connected. Thank you for the help.

 

[bill001g]

You actually have 2 router. Both devices are routers. Unfortunately both are pretty stupid from what I can tell.

Although some routers have a feature to limit traffic rates under parental controls or firewall most it is in QoS.

From a quick look at the manuals it appears the actiontec has pretty much nothing and the netgear is extremely limited. Maybe I got the wrong manuals so you can check again. The netgear does seem to have a screen that lets you see the traffic so maybe that would help even if you can't limit it you would know which device is guilty.

Really you want the limitation on the actiontec because it is the only one that can see all the traffic from all devices. Even if it had the feature it would be tricky to limit some devices because the netgear router is hiding the ip addresses of the devices connected to it because you have 2 routers.

What MIGHT work but you have to experiment. The netgear has some silly auto QoS. It try to share the bandwidth to the devices connected to it. What you can maybe do it lie to it and tell it wan bandwidth is low than it is. Say you actual internet is 50mbps you could tell it that it was only 20m. That way all the device on the netgear together would only attempt to use 20mbps. Problem is they are hard limited to this value even if the rest of the bandwidth is not actually being used.

If you suspect it is the backups doing this it is the UPLOAD rates that will be the most important. You want to verify and maybe limit the download rates also.

You may end up having to replace your router. Asus and tplink and likely other netgear models have more advanced QoS. To be effective you want to run the actiontec as only a modem and run all your traffic though the new router so it can see all the traffic and have a better chance to correctly limit it.

 

[hang-the-9]

So for starters, I have a rather large family and a very slow internet connection due to where I live. Recently I've been having an issue where late at night my internet drastically slows down to the point where it's almost unusable. I figured out that if I turned off my router (Netgear R6900P), everything else that's connected directly to my modem (Actiontec T3200) goes back to normal almost instantly, and as soon as I turn my router back on it slows down again. The only thing I can think of that would be causing this issue would be automatic iPhone backups. I'm wondering if there's a way I can block these from happening through my router rather than going on every single device that my family has connected. Thank you for the help.

Question is, how did you go from disconnecting one of the routers fixing the issue to thinking it's the iPhone backups causing this? Unless the backups are done constantly all day every day making this correlation is a bit odd. I suggest you turn of backups on the phones, connect that second router again and see if that actually fixes the issues.

 

[mynamesnotleo]

Question is, how did you go from disconnecting one of the routers fixing the issue to thinking it's the iPhone backups causing this? Unless the backups are done constantly all day every day making this correlation is a bit odd. I suggest you turn of backups on the phones, connect that second router again and see if that actually fixes the issues.

Well, I don't know for certain that this is what's causing the issue. It's the only plausible reason I can think of this happening, and the reason it wouldn't be happening all day would be because these backups only occur when the device is locked for a certain amount of time (I think). I just couldn't figure out why disconnecting the Netgear router causes my wired internet to fix. It doesn't happen constantly either, it's fine throughout most of the day and at night it happenes everyone 10 minutes or so for about 5 minutes at a time. I haven't stayed up late enough to see if it stops happening at at a certain time of night.

 

[hang-the-9]

Well, I don't know for certain that this is what's causing the issue. It's the only plausible reason I can think of this happening, and the reason it wouldn't be happening all day would be because these backups only occur when the device is locked for a certain amount of time (I think). I just couldn't figure out why disconnecting the Netgear router causes my wired internet to fix. It doesn't happen constantly either, it's fine throughout most of the day and at night it happenes everyone 10 minutes or so for about 5 minutes at a time. I haven't stayed up late enough to see if it stops happening at at a certain time of night.

To find out what is causing the issue you need to do a bunch of testing, like what is connecting to that second router and what those devices are doing when the issue happens. It may be the updates but to actually say "it's the updates" you need to see those updates run at every time you have the slowness issue. Or turn off backups and updates on the devices for a few days and see if the issue still happens.

 

[mynamesnotleo]

To find out what is causing the issue you need to do a bunch of testing, like what is connecting to that second router and what those devices are doing when the issue happens. It may be the updates but to actually say "it's the updates" you need to see those updates run at every time you have the slowness issue. Or turn off backups and updates on the devices for a few days and see if the issue still happens.

Is there a program or something I can run on my laptop/phone to be able to tell what's eating the bandwidth on the router? When I go in and look where I go to configure settings for my router, it's all very basic and doesn't tell me what is actually being run, only how much data is being used.

 

[hang-the-9]

Is there a program or something I can run on my laptop/phone to be able to tell what's eating the bandwidth on the router? When I go in and look where I go to configure settings for my router, it's all very basic and doesn't tell me what is actually being run, only how much data is being used.

You need to check it from the router, the laptop will only see what is coming through the laptop.