Does AirDrop use up Bandwidth

airdrop

I recently used AirDrop for the first time to send about 30GB of videos to a friend while we were both connected to my internet. Two days later I got an e-mail from my internet provider saying I was over 50% of my monthly bandwidth at 50.31GB, and this was only a couple days into the "new month". I haven't downloaded anything these first few days of the month, nor have I been browsing/streaming much over my network.

I'm wondering if AirDrop is the reason why I've burned through a bunch of data.

Best Answer

AirDrop creates a direct connection to another Mac through it's wireless card and therefor does not transfer across your LANs wired network or wireless network and most certainly does not effect your internet bandwidth.

Here are 4 possible reasons for the high bandwidth.

  1. You are unaware of software on your Mac because someone else has installed it on your behalf. Perhaps Online Backup Software or you may have installed it yourself and not been aware of the repercussions. i.e. Crashplan/Dropbox etc.

  2. Your network has been compromised by a Neighbour via wireless. Reset your wireless routers password and make sure it is set to use a secure protocol i.e. WPA2

  3. You have another device on your network to do with streaming Movies to your TV like Netflix.

  4. You have signed up for iTunes Match and have synced Music and Movies to all your Mac devices.

Related Question