The Internet bandwidth that we have available is limited. Depending on the contracted rate, we can enjoy more or less capacity. But of course, each device you have connected is going to consume resources and can cause the speed and quality to decrease. In this article we are going to talk about some hidden devices that are consuming WiFi without you knowing it and can affect the network.
Devices that consume the Internet without knowing it
These devices are known as digital vampires , since they consume connection resources without our realizing it. They are basically devices that we have at home, that we are not aware of that can affect the network, but that are there and could be a problem if we have many or our bandwidth is limited. Not only will they be consuming bandwidth, but they could also spend our rate if it was limited.
Televisions and video devices
It is very common for modern televisions to have Internet access . We may even use that connection to view content. We can also browse, download applications, connect to a NAS server to watch series or movies that we have stored and much more.
There are also video devices, such as Apple TV or Chromecast. We can say that they are the main digital vampires, since they tend to consume a lot of bandwidth. Think of a series or movie that you see in Streaming and also in high quality. This is going to consume a lot of Internet resources, although on many occasions you are not aware of it. If you also have several devices of this type, things increase.
surveillance cameras
You have to name the surveillance cameras. They are working 24 hours a day, recording everything that happens. This will depend on whether or not you have cloud storage . In this case, it would be constantly consuming resources, since it would be uploading that content that it records to the Internet, so that we can have it anywhere.
Surveillance cameras sometimes go unnoticed, we think that they consume little Internet, but the truth is that in certain cases they can exhaust the bandwidth if we have many and the connection is limited.
game consoles
Game consoles can also lead to significant Internet consumption . We are not only talking about the specific moment of playing, where they are obviously going to need a connection, but also when it comes to updating video games. This can even last a long time, depending on the connection we have.
Therefore, if you have a game console and you use games to play online, every time they are updated they will consume resources and could affect your WiFi without you realizing it. They can be quite large packages in some cases.
General updates
On the other hand, updates in general of any device is a hidden consumption of the Internet. For example, a Windows computer may start updating at a time when you need the Internet connection to work properly and there are no interruptions or failures.
In this case, as was the case with game consoles, these updates can take a long time. During that time you may have trouble browsing normally with other connected devices.
In short, as you can see, there are devices that may be consuming the Internet without you realizing it and also affect the performance of the connection quite a bit. It will depend on factors such as the contracted rate or the number of devices connected to the network.