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Note that Netflix's Basic plan is no longer available. If you are already subscribed to this option, you can continue to use it until you cancel or switch plans. With Basic, you are limited to watching Netflix on one device at a time.
As noted in the pricing breakdown, the Standard plan limits you to downloading Netflix content on two devices at once. With a Premium plan, you can download Netflix shows and movies on up to six devices at once. If you have the Standard with ads plan, you can't download at all.
While you can be signed into Netflix on multiple devices, you can only actively watch a stream on the number of screens included in your plan. This means that if you have the two-screen plan, you can still have three people signed into your account on various devices, as long as they aren't all watching at the same time.
The message should show you which devices are streaming Netflix with your account, and what they're watching. Ask these people to stop (via texting them or whatever is easiest) and you'll be clear to stream on your own once they stop. If you think someone is using your Netflix account without your knowledge, we've shown how to find out who is using your Netflix account if it's not immediately apparent.
Separate from the number of screens that you can watch Netflix on at a time, you can also create multiple profiles on your Netflix account. This allows each person that uses the account to have their own personalized recommendations, list of titles they want to watch, subtitle appearances, and similar.
Every Netflix account can have up to five profiles. This doesn't mean that you can watch on each of those profiles at the same time, though. Profiles are a handy way to keep each user's preferences distinct, but the amount of people that can watch Netflix at the same time is still bound by your Netflix plan's screen limit.
It was once common practice to share your Netflix password with other people, allowing everyone to save some money on the service. However, in 2023, Netflix started cracking down on password sharing. Now, the company has restrictions on people outside of your home using your account, so sharing your password with friends or faraway family isn't really an option. Your account is only intended for devices in your home to access the service.
Instead, Netflix now allows you to add an extra member for an additional fee. On the Standard and Premium plans, you can pay $7.99/month per person to add one extra person (Standard) or up to two extra people (Premium). While extra members get their own login information, the account owner pays for their cost. Extra members can only have one Netflix profile, and are limited to watching and downloading on one device at a time.
Consider whether you should share your Netflix account in this way carefully. While it might be cheaper to add a friend to your account, there are potential drawbacks compared to them signing up on their own.
Now you know how many devices can watch Netflix at the same time. In addition to watching on more screens at a time, a higher-tier account provides higher-resolution streaming. Consider upgrading if you have many people in your home who want to watch Netflix at once.
What is in the nature of Wi-Fi is the request to provide guest Wi-Fi. For some, this is a very dreaded request and usually met with angst and hand wringing. Guest are notorious for having wonky devices that are out of date and unwilling to admit that they need to pony up and purchase a new device that is up to some type of current standards. A great write up about that came from Lee Badman over at @wirednot and if so inclined, he offers a decent insight to the thinking of the Wi-fi administrator who is met with this request.
This seems like a pretty simple step so I boiled down my question to this. Can having Netflix users on your guest Wi-Fi negatively affect the WLAN environment, and in turn, congest the system to the point that mission critical and/or life saving devices can no longer function, in turn leading to loss of life and/or revenue?
Most of this is anecdotal at best, this I will admit. A quick search of Netflix and Wi-Fi will turn up numerous hits about how important these two items are, especially in the world of hospitality. My best suggestion to prove this yourself is get a couple of Wi-Fi architects, engineers, and administrators in a room and just ask the question about how Netflix impacts the corporate WLAN. You better pack a lunch because you are going to be a while.
While heavy downloading can and will have a negative impact on a WLAN environment, my belief is that all operators of guest Wi-Fi networks greatly over-exaggerate the amount of this heavy downloading, and in turn, make changes and insert devices or mechanisms to throttle this activity in an attempt to prevent the negative impact from happening.
My hypothesis is that this very act of trying to limit the impact of these devices is instead creating a greater impact on the overall health of the network, sometimes to the detriment of the corporate wired and wireless network.
The stated purpose of these tests are to discover the impact to both the wired and wireless network a single user has on a WLAN system. As such, I set up a test to measure what would happen as rate limits were applied in different increments. My testing set up is as follows:
All of the graphs you are going to see were pulled from a pfSense firewall that acted as my firewall and all Layer 3 functions on my private VLAN. Also, these graphs are updated about every 1 or 2 seconds so they could update as fast as I wanted them to. Unfortunately, none of my other tools updated that much, so the resolution was much less. This does call into questions about what these graphs are showing, so let me walk you though it before we continue.
The X Axis of the graph is showing the minutes and seconds pulled from the firewall system clock. What you are seeing is not hours and minutes, but minute and seconds of the day. The time of this test was actually 06:13:39, not 1:39 PM. This will also indicate that this graph only shows 2 minutes of time. If you see a graph that starts, peaks, and then falls off all within the display, it means that event took 2 minutes or less of actual clock time.
Speaking of the table on the right, this shows the current LAN traffic and the client IP involved. Depending on the direction of the traffic, upload or download, it will show the current speed of that traffic. This table is not historical, it only shows active traffic. If there is no traffic, that table will be blank. In those cases, I have removed the table in some instances so the graph can display bigger.
As you can see, the Y Axis has adjusted to match the rate limit, the time to download the file is now longer, and as proof of the bug I mentioned earlier on the Y Axis, you can see the actual rate that the client is getting at that second on the right side, not the smaller number on the Y Axis. However, we still get to see the spikes in the throughput that we like to see in a well performing network. This is critical later, so remember this.
As you can see, the graph gets really flat, and the length of time to download movies gets longer. Due to the linear path of the testing, I felt like this was a waste of my time, and my graph of the data backs me up. At least I think it backs me up:
For the download testing, the premise was end users were going to ask their device to pull a full video file from a remote server to store on their device so they could view that content at a later date. You remember, the underground cave scenario.
As you look through the three graphs, you can see the time move as I watched the movie. The other thing I found interesting that I will point out on the first graph is what I call the setup period. This is where the device is pulling the first bit of content down to the device to buffer. The set up data and then the first pull of data was interesting, and then it settled down to a routine pattern. Every 20 seconds or so, as the buffer on the device was depleted by playing the video on the screen, the device would go back to the well, so to speak, to top of.
YouTube streaming is such a different beast than Netflix. Content can be a mix of professionally edited, HD videos and amateur cell phone clips. The graph above shows a random video that was suggested by YouTube. More spikes, a little bit wider, and not as much data transferred per buffer refill. 5 Mbps compared to the 50 to 80 Mbps seen in Netflix streaming with no rate limit. Less data transferred (rate x time) means more time going back to the resource.
At 2.5 Mbps of rate limit, we see the same thing as Netflix. An almost constant demand on the time resource, all the while still not pulling a ton of data on each request. Add in a second user streaming Youtube and you can imagine how those white spaces representing time just go away, meaning that a third user would then start to aggregate the speed needed to serve the three clients.
Now, at your house or Small to Medium size Business (SMB), this may not be of a great concern. What I need you to do next is to extrapolate this with me to a much larger client count that you may see at large public venues or hospitality or healthcare.
From Certified Wireless Network Professionals (CWNP) Certified Wireless Network Administrator (CWNA) training, and demonstrated by Joel Crane at Wireless LAN Professionals Conference (WLPC) in 2018, Wi-Fi is still half duplex.
Thanks to Peter for allowing me to use this chart. If you have never seen it, this is what is required for any one device to send a frame on a channel. The AP is treated as a device on the channel, so it has to play this game as well. Remember my comment about the way AT&T TV has their buffering running from earlier?
Between 802.11 inherent limits, remote server capabilities, half duplex, and DCF, there are already mechanisms in place that keeps end users from claiming all of the resource and not allowing that critical piece of life saving equipment to get their one frame through.
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