Improving the throughput of your Internet connection

What bandwidth do I need for video conferencing in the home office?

Some time ago, it was unimaginable on this scale, but now it is increasingly becoming the standard: home office. The Corona pandemic has led to an enormous increase in the number of people working from home. As a result, last year home office, homeschooling and videoconferencing even caused the data volume at Germany’s largest Internet node, DE-CIX in Frankfurt am Main, to grow by almost a terabit – per second! While nationwide network capacities still Read more…

By franzi, ago
SpaceX-Starlink-bandwidth

What is the bandwidth of SpaceX’s Starlink?

Imagine being able to receive broadband internet anywhere in the world, no matter where you are. It doesn’t matter if you’re on a plane, on a ship, or in the most remote places in the world. Internet reception would be equally good everywhere. Sounds like a utopia? It may soon no longer be, because such a connection is now set to become a reality through a network of satellites in space. The SpaceX company’s project, Read more…

By franzi, ago

How to limit Netflix’ bandwidth

Streaming services like Netflix require a lot of bandwidth. This quickly leads to problems, especially in a large home network where many different devices and users simultaneously claim Internet bandwidth for themselves. Then it can happen that the available bandwidth is no longer sufficient. The current Corona pandemic in particular has led to increased use of the Internet. This is shown above all by the increase in video conferencing, home office and also streaming use. Read more…

By schakko, ago

How the Coronavirus increases the overall Internet throughput

Due to the spread of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) the overall Internet throughput is much higher in 2020 than it has been in 2019. Increased throughput at the internet exchange points In a previous blog post we already wrote about the throughput at various internet exchange points. In Germany, on Monday 16th March 2020 all kindergartens closed. The previous throughput peak of around 6.7 TBit/s at the Frankfurt DE-CIX increased to more than 8 TBit/s. Carsten Read more…

By schakko, ago

Why does my internet slow down at night?

The most common reason for slow internet at night are scheduled tasks of your PC or consumer electronics. Most of the tasks, like updates for the Windows operating system, are scheduled to run outside the working hours.Due to the peak overall internet usage at night, this will immediately effect your own internet bandwidth. The evening between 7pm and 9pm is known as the Internet Rush Hour, when most of the people in your country are Read more…

By schakko, ago
Windows 10 Task Manager

How to find background downloads in Windows 10

Background downloads and uploads in Windows 10 can be easily found with the Windows Task Manager and Windows Resource Monitor. When you are trying to fix a slow internet connection, you should at first always look out for background downloads on your PC or notebook. It is often that some applications are currently downloading updates or patches in the background. Most of the applications with a background downloading functionality are configured to use the complete Read more…

By schakko, ago
windows-update

How to schedule downloads of Windows 10 updates?

Downloads of Windows 10 updates can not be scheduled but their download bandwidth can be throttled during work hours by configuring the Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS). I have no idea how many times I had been annoyed while playing one of my favorite games and suddenly the Ping spiked. After a quick lookup I saw that the application BITS caused the spike by downloading a lot of data. Windows Update Services Windows Update Services Read more…

By schakko, ago

How to stop Valve’s Steam from downloading in the background

Valve’s Steam can be configured to limit the bandwidth of background downloads and to only download during a configured timespan. Like EA’s Origin, Valve’s Steam platform can also be configured to change the default download behavior to a more restrictive setting. By default, Valve’s Steam has the following settings enabled: Only auto-update games between: Disabled Limit bandwidth to: No limit Throttle downloads while streaming: Enabled This configuration uses all available bandwidth of your internet connection. Read more…

By schakko, ago
Origin

How to stop Origin from downloading in the background

EA’s Origin can be either configured to throttle downloads or just to notify the user about new downloads but without downloading them. With sizes of multiple GBytes for a new patch or release of a game, the download of new patches can eat a lot of your download bandwidth.By default, Origin has the following settings enabled: Automatic game updates: Enabled Automatically update Origin: Enabled Maximum download rate when out of game: No Limit Maximum download Read more…

By schakko, ago

Why is my WiFi so slow?

Poor physical conditions are the most common reason for a slow WLAN connection: bad weather, thick walls, poorly aligned antennas or other devices that interfere with the functional connection. This article will help you troubleshoot possible causes. Is your internet connection generally slow or just your wifi connection? If your internet connection is slow even without WiFi, please have a look at the article Why my internet is slow? About WiFi WiFi networks are operating Read more…

By schakko, ago