Abnormal wireless connection in Windows 7

Question

I live in an apartment with an ADSL connection shared by four people. We all use wireless and recently have experienced extremely slow Internet; we cannot even open web pages.

One of the flatmates noticed that from his computer, the "Received" value in the "Wireless Network Connection Status" will jump up to an extremely large amount like "190,871,937,887", which happens after he turns on his computer. He did not do any large downloading.

We previously assumed that the value indicated the traffic for the whole network, but from monitoring my computer for almost a week (my girlfriend and I share one computer, another guy is not using the network too much), I never saw such a large figure.

From the following question:

What does "Received" mean in the Windows 7 Wireless Connection Status dialog?

it seems that the value is only for one computer, not the whole network for our apartment.

Here is a screenshot of what the Connection Status screen looks like sometimes:

Does anyone have any ideas how can we fix the slow speed of the network?

Answer 1

The 'Received' is only for one computer. If you think someone is using too much bandwidth(due to virus or sth), you guys can try one computer at a time to see if it helps.

You can also reset the router or try wired connection. The way I debug a network problem is always to start with the minimum (1 router, wired connection, 1 computer), then add more components to it.

Answer 2

Just remember that the "Received" amount is not necessarily internet traffic. It could be file sharing between computers on the network, or any other type of communication between the local devices.

Answer 3

I would suggest that you try disabling your flatmate's wireless connection temporarily and see if that restores your Internet connectivity back to a normal state. If it does, I would advise you to perform a full scan (virus, malware, spyware, etc) on your flatmate's computer, preferably offline.

The received number for your flatmate is very high, unless he has not switched off his computer for a very very long time.