Take control of bandwidth with the Nebula app
Kevin Drinkall, EMEA Market Development Manager at Zyxel, explains why the new feature of Zyxel’s Nebula smartphone app will really make a difference to home users and managed services providers.
Take control of bandwidth with the Nebula app
With everyone working, studying and using entertainment services from home at the moment, network bandwidth can be put under a lot of strain. One reason for this is that in home and small business networks no particular priority given to any of network traffic or users. It is simply a matter of ‘first-come, first served’.
But at the moment there may be many more users on the home WiFi network, and if too many people are trying to do too many bandwidth-intensive things at the same time, performance is bound to be impacted to some degree.
Nebula, our cloud-based management platform, has always given you the ability to set limits on the amount of bandwidth that a particular access point or switch port can take-up. But until now, it has only been possible to access this functionality through the main Nebula web console, so you’d need to be on a desktop PC or a laptop to make use of it.
Access all areas
But with the latest update to the app, you can now do this on your smartphone just as easily. This means you can set limits for individual users, simply from your handheld device.
You could, for example, give someone who is working from home access to more of the available bandwidth, while limiting the amount that someone playing a game or watching TV can use. You could also change the settings at any given time from with the app if you need to adjust accordingly, so that more bandwidth is available for entertainment services in the evening, for instance.
This will be especially useful for the many people and families who are – at the present time – confined to the home and are having to make use of their home WiFi and broadband for work, study and entertainment of all kinds. While some members of the family may be trying take part in a video conference, others may be trying to download a game or a film. Clearly, being able to limit the impact that the latter could have on the former would be useful – and now, that can be done on your smartphone.
Freedom and flexibility
We have designed the smartphone functionality so that it is really easy to use. Within the Mobile app you simply use an on-screen slider to control how much bandwidth you want to allocate to them. In fact, it is hard to imagine how it could be easier. We are delighted to get this functionality up and running on the app – and we know our users and managed services partners will be pleased to have it as well. It gives them more freedom and flexibility and puts them firmly in control of their available bandwidth. This feature is available to use on smartphone app right now!
