Last week Raiqal kept complaining of slow loading when entering his Roblox account. At first glance, I thought it was probably due to issues at the Roblox servers. Then I noticed same thing also happened when loading into Netflix on the TV. I did a few quick speedtest and results were fine.
Wondering what went wrong, I did some troubleshooting and monitoring on the home network for the first time. The major setup was relocating the AP router to a new, open space.
For monitoring purpose, again for the first time, I went into the router. Here is where you can see some details of what is going on in your network. You will be able to see the devices connected to your AP and router, you can see how much data the devices are using, and few other more. For a more complete details, I would recommend you to use a firewall, which can give you a more specific details such as visited website, downloaded files, etc. And if you find any suspicious device connected to the network, you can simply disconnect or ban them from entering the network again.
For additional, I will also use a third party software to do the network monitoring. One of my favorite is Capsa. It provides users with great experience to learn how to monitor network activities, pinpoint network problems, enhance network security. Another good monitoring software is Wireshark.
In Windows, there is also a built-in application where we can use to see what is using your network through your computer. It is called Network Statistic, or most known as netstat. It is a command to evaluate all the network comings and goings on your system. For example, the command netstat -o will listing every active network connection on your computer, which port they’re listening on, the external address, and which process the network connection belongs to. Scan through the list and see if there are any unusual entries. You can copy and paste an address into your browser to search for it. The vast majority of entries are for servers or cloud servers of one kind or another because they’re the backbone of the internet. For a quick analysis, head to urlscan.io and pop the address in there. You get a short report on who the server or address belongs to. You can also note the PID (Process ID). Open your Task Manager, then the Services tab, and locate the equivalent process. If the PID has a lot of open network connections in the Command Prompt, and it is a service you don’t recognize, you can either stop the service and see if it clears your bandwidth issues or complete an internet search to figure out what the process is and if it’s something your system requires.
Another built-in application that I always use for a quick troubleshoot is the Resource Monitor. The Resource Monitor is a handy diagnostic tool you can use to check out what’s going on in your computer – the network, CPU, RAM and hard disk.
Good luck!