Over the last few days, the Internet has been widely used due to the massive increase of remote work and the use of streaming services. We have decided to prepare a series of articles to explain why with these changes the Internet can appear to slow down.
Here are some factors that may be responsible :
- A) More users on a less powerful WIFI router.
- B) More users on a service, such as Facebook live and Facetime.
- C) Internet congestion associated with the high consumption of high-resolution video during peak hours.
In this first article, we will address the last point and propose a first solution to remedy the situation.
The amount of time families spend on streaming platforms has increased steadily since the containment efforts are in place. As a set of interconnected highways, the Internet, during peak video viewing hours, from 7:00 to 10:30 pm is congested.
This congestion would be less if the millions of viewing applications, whether from Netflix, Youtube and others, were not behaving like reckless drivers on these highways. Not knowing what the network can handle, they try by default to increase the resolution of the displayed image. This constant search for higher resolution is clogging networks, often for nothing, as they hit congestion. The maximum resolution of Netflix and Youtube requires 7 GB per hour of viewing, while HD only requires 3 GB and standard only 0.7 GB.
How can you watch without interruption and do your part to relieve Internet congestion?
A first step to reduce your bandwidth consumption and reduce the chances of having your videos cut is to lower the resolution of the movies and series you want to watch or download them at higher resolution in advance.
That’s why Netflix and Youtube decided this week to put in place measures to avoid Internet congestion as much as possible.
Both platforms have announced that they will lower the default resolution of their videos for the next few weeks. Netflix has decided to reduce the resolution of their content by 25% and Youtube now offers their videos in 480p.
We encourage you to limit the visual quality of your videos on other streaming platforms such as Amazon Prime Video, Tou.TV and Disney + by browsing in your account settings.
Here are examples of instructions to do so for the Amazon Prime Video and Disney + services:
Amazon Prime Video : https://www.trishtech.com/2016/12/stream-download-video-quality-amazon-prime-video/