Does watching netflix slow internet speeds?

[Cody]

,My brother is constantly arguing with me, even though my dad says not to download anything he'll go ahead and torrent huge files whenever he feels. When he does he slows the internet so bad that nobody can even go on it. His counter argument is that me watching netflix is what slows the internet. I'm looking for other people's answers and if you do please try to explain your answer. Also, how could I make it so when he torrents stuff it doesn't suck all the internet into it? Thanks!

[Steven]

yes watching Netflix costs bandwidth and this is slowing down the speed.

[Jason]

Watching Netflix will run slower and some downloads don't make things slower

[Bob]

No, on modern broadband networks using netflix won't slow your internet down.

[slin100]

Think of your Internet service as a water pipe. Watching Netflix or torrenting is like drawing water through the pipe. There is only so much water that you can push through the pipe over a given amount of time. If simultaneously watching Netflix and torrenting draw more water than the pipe can handle, then usually one or BOTH activities will slow down. So, you and your brother may both be right.

Now, the interesting thing is that you may be at a disadvantage because a Netflix video stream will draw no more than a certain rate of water (up to about 3 megabits per second for HD video), whereas a torrent file transfer can potentially go as fast as the pipe will allow. Depending on how torrent is set up, it is possible to slow down Netflix more than Netflix slows down torrent.

If you have login access to your router/gateway, then you can configure it to give preference to your traffic over your brother's.