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You are here: Home / Tech Questions & Answers / Q&A: Is it normal for Netflix to use almost all of my Internet download bandwidth?

Q&A: Is it normal for Netflix to use almost all of my Internet download bandwidth?

Posted on August 13, 2014

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netflix-logoQuestion from Heather E.:  Hi Rick. I hope you can help me out with the answer to a question that’s been bugging me for a while.

The download speed for my Internet connection is supposed to be 30 Mbps. When I check it with Speedtest.net like you suggested in one of your previous posts, it almost always says it’s running around 28 Mbps. I can live with that.

But when my boyfriend is watching a movie on Netflix (he does it every night), Speedtest.net says I’m only getting around 6 Mbps. Is this normal? I know that Netflix uses a lot of bandwidth, but that seems excessive to me.

Rick’s answer:  Heather, that does sound like a lot of bandwidth usage, but since I had never really given this much thought I decided to do a test.

While signed out of Netflix, I checked the download speed on my PC three times with Speedtest.net. The number it gave me every time was in the neighborhood of 28.5 Mbps.

Next, I began streaming a movie through an Xbox 360. With Netflix in use, the download speed on my PC dropped to less than 8 Mbps.

Those results are pretty close to yours, and since I also have a 30 Mbps plan (through Xfinity) it’s a pretty safe bet that we’re comparing apples to apples.

Bottom line:  Netflix indeed hogs a huge chunk of our allotted Internet download bandwidth.


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