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Forum Discussion
How can I monitor bandwidth when downloading large files over Wi-Fi?
Hi everyone,
I'm trying to better understand how my home network handles larger downloads over Wi-Fi. I'm particularly interested in how to monitor bandwidth usage from a connected device and determine whether the limitation is coming from the Wi-Fi connection, router, internet connection, or the client device.
As part of a real test, I used a publicly available video and fdown.media from a browser and compared the network activity while the file was being transferred. I'm mainly interested in the networking side of the test rather than the particular website.
For NETGEAR users, what tools or router features do you normally use to monitor this type of traffic? Is there a recommended way to compare normal video streaming with a larger browser-based download and identify which device is consuming the most bandwidth?
I'd appreciate any suggestions for practical monitoring methods or settings I should check.
1 Reply
Netgear doesn't provide any stats that let you see how much bandwidth each client is using at the moment. And this would need to be done by the router.
As far as streaming goes, the bandwidth use is dynamically adapted - the quality (including resolution) is dropped if the playback can't keep up. While this is often due to congestion on the connection (either wifi or somewhere else on the path), it can also happen if the PC or streaming server is loaded down with other activity.
The web download can similarly be throttled by either client load, the server or the connection speed.
In any event, if the download time is faster than the file's play time, then the download certainly is using more bandwidth than streaming would use.
