Is Someone Stealing My Wifi? Full Guide to Limit Internet Speed on Wifi Users

Is someone stealing my wifi?

How to limit internet speed on wifi users?

Have you ever asked these questions when been in the situation: your internet is frequently utilized by your neighbors, and you can't say no? 

Even someone can steal your Wifi bandwidth without your awareness.

Instead of directly blocking individuals from connecting to your WiFi network, you can limit their bandwidth and lower their internet speed.  

Keep reading and you will never meet stealing Wifi anymore.

Is someone stealing my bandwidth?

How can someone steal your Wifi bandwidth?

Wifi network allows all your devices to connect to the Internet easily.

However, it also means that everyone ( every device) can use your Wifi connection.

This is a fact truth since the earliest days of this type of connection. 

Wireless hacking became common in the early days of Wi-Fi when security protocols were lax and most people were familiar with the technology. 

Despite the fact that most wireless routers have security features enabled by default, many network attacks begin with a hacker driving through a neighborhood looking for network vulnerabilities (often still using a cantenna).

Basically, there are 2 things people can depend on them to hack your Wifi connection:

• Access point

• Client

People can hack wifi in 2 ways

An access point, as the name implies, is a device that allows other Wi-Fi devices to connect to a wired network. 

As an example, consider your home router or a friend's mobile hotspot. Clients, on the other hand, are Wi-Fi devices that connect to the access point.

The 4-way handshake is a type of encrypted communication that occurs between these two devices.

When a client connects to an access point, it first shares the passwords in an encrypted form.

Let's say your password is 12345678; the client will encrypt it into something like 8B53D81E2E43080D5F62896068D6D325.

Then it sends the encryption line to the access point, which will decrypt it and determine whether it matches or not, and then proceed accordingly. So this is how the connection is made.

Although the client sends the password to the access point each time it connects, we still can intervene and capture the encrypted password.

How to check if someone is stealing your wifi?

Stealing your Wifi not only slows down your connection but also takes your personal data.

It’s too dangerous.

If you’re suspecting someone is stealing your connection, let’s check it out.

Check the lights router

Most routers have a series of indicator lights that indicate whether the router is turned on or connected to the internet. 

It should also include a light that indicates wireless activity. 

Turn off all wireless devices and check to see if the light is still blinking to see if you have freeloaders. 

If it is, it means that there might be wifi thieves.

Check the lights router

If you have a lot of devices in your house, this method isn't very practical—everything from your phone to your fridge could be attempting to connect. 

However, if your computer is the only device connected to the internet, this is an easy way to catch Wi-Fi thieves in the act.

Use a checking app

Who's stealing my wifi?

You also consider using a checking app.

There are plenty of apps for both mobile and desktop devices that help you detect spot intruders.

Some reliable wifi users detection tools are Wifi Thief Detector, Wifi Guard ( mobile devices), or Wireless Network Watcher for desktop devices.

For example, when you launch the Wireless Network Watcher on your laptop, you'll see your computer's nicknames as well as the manufacturer brands of the connected devices. 

Wireless Network Watcher

Who connected my wifi?

If you're still perplexed (perhaps because you have so many devices), you can turn them all off and watch as they vanish from the list. 

If you turn off all of your WiFi devices and still see active devices, you're one step closer to identifying “someone is using my wifi”.

Simply change the password if you can't identify a device on your network. 

Of course, you'll need to reauthorize all of your WiFi devices with the new password, but this is the quickest and easiest way to resecure your network.

Check wireless client list

Aside from using a checking app to see how many devices are connecting to your Wifi, you can check it in your router’s settings.

How to see who's using my wifi? Follow these steps below.

Step 1: Log into your router by typing the IP address of your router in a browser address bar.

Step 2: Look for “Attached devices” or ‘client list”. Double-click it and you will see a similar list as the checking app.

DHCP Client list

If you didn't find anything when checking the active client list but still believe someone has been gaining access to your network, check the router logs. 

History logs can be accessed from the same menu in your router settings as your current wireless clients.

However, this way is a bit of a needle in a haystack. 

You will need to look at tons of numbers and determine each doesn’t belong.

How to limit internet speed on wifi users?

After determining whether someone is stealing your Wifi whether his purpose is just to access the Internet, you still should kick them off your network. 

The first important step but super easy is to change your Wifi’s name and strong password.

Besides, to speed up your downloads, you should limit the internet speed of Wifi users.

General guide

In reality, it depends on the router you're using. 

Although most routers offer a bandwidth control feature, they also enable you to regulate the speed of all connected devices at the same time.

>> Login to your router 

>> Check for Bandwidth Control Option 

>> Enable and set bandwidth.

Limit internet speed on Wifi users

How to limit wifi speed of wifi users with a TP-Link router?

To go to the router settings, go to your browser and enter the router IP address. 

You will have complete control of the router after you log in as an admin.

Go to advanced options. 

There is a feature called Quality of Service that you will discover there. 

The QoS service allows you to customize your router's behavior. 

Also, if your router supports NAT Boost, you won't be able to use both of them at the same time.

Limit wifi speed on TP-Link router.

After that, you may put a restriction on the router's upload and download bandwidth. 

Because we're utilizing a Gigabit router, we've set the upload and download speeds to 1000. 

This is where you begin to manage bandwidth.

You may also use the QoS rule list to acquire finder controls. 

Some routers come pre-configured with a rule set, which you may use to your advantage. 

In each of the rule lists, click the add button and then allocate the devices accordingly. 

By clicking advanced, you may also modify the percentage.

Limit wifi speed on TP-Link router.

Let's walk through the process of adding devices or applications to the list.

Step 1: On any of your available lists, click Add.

Adding devices or applications to the list.

Step 2: Now type in the device's name as well as its MAC address.

You may see what devices are already connected to the network and add them as needed.

You may also use another option to limit WiFi speed to certain applications. 

When you click it, you'll be presented with a list of application names to choose from.

How to test your Wi-Fi home network speed?

Use a Wifi internet speed test to check your network connection and then find ways to increase Internet speed.

After limiting internet speed, is there something that changed?

Pick one of the best reliable speed test tools below to conduct the test:

Speedtest Ookla

The quickest and easiest way to determine your Wi-Fi speed is to utilize a free, browser-based test, such as the one provided by Internet metrics firm OOKLA at Speedtest.net.

OOKLA has more data to back up speed comparisons than any other tester on the market, having completed about 8 billion tests. 

Speedtest and other browser-based tools function by downloading and uploading a tiny amount of data, then assessing the transfer speed—as easy as that.

Speedtest.net

MySpeed

The second one for testing your wifi speed is MySpeed. 

MySpeed provides a simple internet speed test that allows you to check internet speed at any time and from any location.

You can receive upload, download, and ping speed figures with only one click and a few seconds of waiting. 

A complete image of your network connection will be displayed as a result.

MySpeed

What is the difference between wifi and high speed internet?

What is the difference between wifi and high speed internet? If you want to have a fast connection with less downloading time, you should consider high-speed internet.

In many cases, your online demand in your house is high because of a large number of connecting devices and users, Wifi is not enough. 

High-speed internet is as simple as it sounds: super-fast Wi-Fi.

Although both Wi-Fi and high-speed Internet connections may be open for many users, the two techniques function in quite different ways.

Let’s see the difference between High speed internet vs wifi

High-speed internet vs wifi

Security

Unless you authorize a Wi-Fi connection with a particular password, an unsecured connection is essentially an open channel for anybody to pick up the communication traveling back and forth. 

Wi-Fi is hardly protected from hacking, viruses, or data interception for those who use it for sensitive information transfer. 

A free high-speed Internet connection is typically an Ethernet-connected terminal point running on a wired network, but this is not always the case. 

It can be comparable to a modem system in some ways, with a coded access permission mechanism that prohibits non-approved users.

Transfer Speed

Wi-Fi speed is determined by how well the signal travels between the Wi-Fi router and the user.

If the signal is poor, the user will notice much-reduced data transmission speed, as well as delays on particularly large volumes of data. Text-based data will continue to move quickly.

High-speed Internet service is typically used in conjunction with an Ethernet connection linked to a DSL, broadband, or T1 line (not always). 

Depending on the throughput and the number of users on the system at the same time, data transfer can be nearly instantaneous, even with enormous data files. 

Availability and Location

Many companies and public institutions now provide Wi-Fi as a free facility to their customers and visitors. 

This benefit is provided primarily in metropolitan or densely populated areas. 

Wi-Fi will not be widely available in rural regions.

Because high-speed internet service is based on a physical network, it is only possible where terminal connections exist. 

As a result, consumers are restricted to their provider's physical location in order to profit from the service.

If possible, let’s register for high-speed internet service.