EXPERTS have revealed a Wi-Fi hack that means households relying on streaming apps won’t have to suffer through buffering movies.
It’s easy and free, but it does require a little forethought.
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According to lecturer James Jin Kang and Paul Haskell-Dowland, associate dean of computing and security at Edith Cowen University, planning your internet usage is the simplest way to avoid buffer.
It’s a tip the pair recommended during the first UK Covid-19 lockdown, when much of the world went online.
So, the trick will become increasingly more useful over the winter months.
This is when members of your household and the neighbours are more likely slink off inside for internet-based entertainment to escape the gloomy weather.
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“If multiple people are streaming video at your home, which often requires ten times the daytime demand, a limited internet connection will soon be fully used,” the pair wrote in The Conversation in 2020.
Bandwidth is the maximum amount of data that can be transmitted over an internet connection within a given period.
It is shared by all internet users in a particular area.
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And it gets eaten up quickly when more people in the area are at home using Wi-Fi.
To watch a movie pain-free during heightened bandwidth activity, the experts say households should think ahead.
“Try to plan your and family members’ online activities around peak times,” they wrote.
“Outside your home, connectivity is likely to be on a ‘best effort’ plan, which shares a fixed bandwidth with other users.
“In other words, your mobile internet bandwidth is shared with others in your area when they access the internet at the same time.
“A shared bandwidth results in slower individual speeds.
“You can’t control how many people access the internet, but you can manage your own internet activity by downloading large files or content overnight, or outside of peak hours (when there is less traffic).”
Streaming apps like Netflix and Prime TV let subscribers download content for watching on-the-go.
But the feature can also be used to download a movie or the next few episodes of a series to be watched when internet activity is high.
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