It is important to know and understand what is happening on your network of computers, tablets, phones, routers, etc in your home. One of the major factors impacting internet performance is data going in and/or out over your internet connection in the background that you are unaware of. Cloud and Torrent programs (for example: DropBox, iCloud, OneDrive, uTorrent/BitTorrent, Cobalt, Carbonite, iShare, Google Drive, etc) are often the culprit when people are having lower than expected performance.
Furthermore, starting in Windows 10, Microsoft has begun doing a ''Torrent Like'' or a ''Distributed Cloud'' Windows Update system. What this means is that updates for Windows 10 may be downloaded not just from Microsoft themselves, but from other people's computers on the internet who already have Windows 10. This means that once you get Windows 10, OTHER PEOPLE MAY BE GETTING THEIR WINDOWS 10 UPDATES FROM YOU forevermore, and without you knowing about it - which will steal your internet capacity and slow down your network.
To use an analogy, with any of these automated cloud storage type applications, it would be kind of like having all your hot water faucets turned on full blast downstairs. If you did, that would absolutely impact your water pressure and your availability of hot water. There wouldn't really be anything wrong with the water supply and your hot water heater would be operating fine - it would simply be that it's all being used up all the time, and if you were not aware that all these faucets were wide open down stairs, you wouldn't know why the water pressure and hot water availability (and your water bill too) was out of whack.
So - as I mentioned, it is important to know and to understand what is happening on your network in your home. At least with the water analogy example, you would probably hear or see the water running and you'd be aware of the problem. With internet data, it's invisible and if you are not as easily or obviously aware of what is going on, but it is no less real an issue for your internet performance.
To compound the problem, many devices and applications turn the 'Cloud' storage on by default. So if you have any Apple phones or tablets in the house, it's likely that they are doing iCloud storage by default now. Likewise, most Android phones and tablets have DropBox or some other cloud storage application. Cloud storage can be very convenient and is great in many ways, but having it turned on with all default settings, and having it running on all the devices in your home, and being unaware what is using your network will impact your performance. These applications will use the internet whenever they choose, and they will try to out-complete your other data.
With most of these applications, there are ways to either un-install them altogether, or to turn on schedulers so that they only run during off-peak times, or only at 4-5AM when you are not also trying to use the internet for other uses, or only when you manually tell them to 'sync', or some other non-automatic method.
Knowing and understanding your devices and what is going on inside your network is key to having the best possible network and internet performance.
|