IOS – Idle iPhone and iPad hog upload bandwidth

internetiosiphone

There are 2 iPhones and 2 iPads in our house and every now and then, when no one is using them, they will consume all of the available upload bandwidth of our internet connection for quite a long period of time.

I normally just turn them off or kick them from the wifi when this starts because I don't believe they're doing anything important, I have no idea what could require them to upload so much data.

  • The iPhones are both running iOS 11.2.6
  • iCloud backup is turned off on all devices
  • they upload both when they are plugged into a charger and when they are not.

I have a router running LuCI lede-17.01 branch (git-17.152.82987-7f6fc16) / LEDE Reboot 17.01.2 r3435-65eec8bd5f.

This is a huge problem because once anything is being uploaded all other internet drops (we don't have a great connection), e.g. pings and download speeds for every other device worsen considerably.

I want to prevent the deterioration of internet access for all other devices.

Best Answer

For iCloud, try Settings/ Accounts & Passwords. iCloud might be shown there as an Account. If so, select it, and iCloud Backup should be on the list that comes up, showing whether it is on or off. Other apps that share with iCloud are also listed.