Ranata DeGennaro posted on April 08, 2020 07:53
The term “bandwidth” may seem intimidating to some, but it’s easy to visualize by comparing it to something else we all use every day in our homes; WATER.
Picture each connected device in your home like a water faucet. Each water faucet is fed by the water main coming into your house. You have a limited amount of water pressure (bandwidth) to serve your entire home, so the more faucets you turn on at one time, the lower the pressure becomes at each one. It is a shared resource.
Your water supply is like your Internet provider. Your network router (Wired & WiFi) is like your water meter. Every device that is connected and operating on your network is using up a portion of that “water pressure.”
When Zoom video meetings get choppy, browsing gets sluggish, Netflix videos stop to buffer, etc., these are all symptoms of not having enough bandwidth.
So how do we get more bandwidth for our devices when we need it?
- Turn off devices like gaming consoles, smart TV’s, home assistants (Alexa, Google Home) if you’re not actually using them.
- If you need to be on an important Zoom call, let others in your home know, so they can minimize their usage until you’re done.
- Whenever possible, plug your devices directly into one of your router’s LAN ports using an Ethernet cable. The wireless (WiFi) side of your home router also has a limited amount of “water pressure” it can deliver, so the more devices that are connected physically, the better.
If you have questions or would like to talk more about your home technology, please contact us at https://servicedesk.lemoyne.edu, or email us at [email protected].