How do you limit the speed of a device on a Xiaomi router? 192.168.31.1 and the Mijia App—I managed my brother's gaming laptop perfectly

incident started when my mom called for three days to complain, "The WiFi at home is so bad I can't watch TV dramas." I remotely logged into the Mi Home app and saw that my brother's gaming laptop was downloading Steam games in the background, with real-time internet speeds up to 700 to 800 Mbps—the home broadband was only 1 gigabit, and this machine had already eaten all the family's food. Insulting people is useless; they have their reasons for downloading. My only method is: limit the speed of their machine. Limit it to 100MB, and when he downloads the game, my mom's videos go smoothly instantly. This article clearly explains the two entry points for Xiaomi router speed limits, the appropriate limit, and how to check if the limit doesn't take effect.

think carefully: do you really need speed limits or not

make a judgment before you start, because speed limit isn't a cure-all, my family has already taken a detour. There was a period when my home internet was slow, and my first reaction was to limit the speed—I tried the TV and phone one by one, but it didn't work at all. Later, I used Xiaomi's built-in speed test and found that the broadband only reached 300 Mbps (reported as gigabits), which was a line issue and had nothing to do with the device competing for bandwidth. In this situation, speed limiting is a pointless effort; what should be investigated is the approach to troubleshooting broadband speed test standards that do not meet standards.

the two situations where speed limiting is truly needed: first someone at home has a device running high-traffic for a long time, downloading, syncing cloud drives, and streaming streams, crowding others into a place where they can't eat; Second, broadband itself isn't very (like 100Mbps or 200Mbps), and whenever a device moves, others get lagging. If your home has gigabit broadband, only five or six devices, and no one is doing high data, then there's no need for speed limits—focus on other areas first.

there's another concept to clarify: speed limit means "sharing food for you," while banning means "kicking you out the door" . Speed-limited devices can still access the internet, but not fast; Disabling (blocking) devices will be disconnected from the internet immediately. Unfamiliar devices for freeloading are disabled, speed limits for family members—don't get it backwards—I started by treating the TV as a freeloading device and banned it. My mom would cut it off halfway through watching dramas and got scolded for half the night.

Entry 1: 192.168.31.1 Web backend, the most comprehensive feature

web backend is the main battleground for speed limiting, with the finest parameters you can set. Connect your phone or computer to the Xiaomi router's WiFi, open your browser at 192.168.31.1, and enter the management password (not the WiFi password; if you forgot, check my previous article on to retrieve the backend password and don't rush to reset it).

after logging in, the homepage shows a list of devices, making it clear who is online. Find the device you want to limit the speed—if you can't tell whose it is, click in to check the console name and MAC address, then check the connection time. : My brother's gaming laptop has a string of letters. I checked and it went online every afternoon at 6 PM, which was exactly when he got home from school, so I locked it in instantly. If you're unsure about your device, let it disconnect from WiFi and check the list of those who have disappeared. It's a simple method but works well.

click into the device details page and scroll down to find the "Speed Limit" setting. upload and download are two separate boxes, with units of Mbps, and by default, there are no restrictions. Here's a cave in my head: don't fill only one of the two boxes. The first time, I only restricted downloads, but my brother had the cloud drive auto-backing up, uploads were maxed out, and FamilyMart video calls still got stuck like slideshows—upload bandwidth was small (usually 30-50 Mbps), and being fully occupied was even more frustrating than having downloads fully occupied.

what is appropriate to fill in, my actual test numbers are here:

set it up and click save; no need to restart the router, it takes effect immediately. After setting the speed limit on my gaming laptop, I had my mom turn on the video on the spot to test it. Within two minutes, it went from spinning smoothly to smooth.

Entry Two: Mijia App, Limiting

if you're at the office or home and call to complain about your internet speed, you don't have to wait until you get home to turn on your computer— Mijia App's remote management can still limit your speed. After linking the router to Mijia, open the app and go to the router device. On the homepage, you'll see real-time network speed and a list of online devices. Click on the device that takes up bandwidth to go to the details page, where the speed limiter switch is inside. The parameters are exactly the same as in the webpage backend.

the value of this entry point lies in its "instant response": if elderly or children at home are blocked and can't watch videos, you can handle it within two minutes from thousands of miles away. My current habit is to install Mi Home on all my family phones, teaching them to check the device list—at least when they get stuck and can see who's grabbing the phone, so I don't have to guess.

some operations on Mijia can't be done, like changing broadband dial-up settings or changing LAN port IPs—sensitive items like those aren't available on the app side, so you still have to return to the web backend. This is also Xiaomi's design philosophy: daily operations are handled by the app, while deep settings are left to the background.

speed limit but no effect? The three most common reasons

first, dual-frequency integrated machine, the device shows two record in the list. Xiaomi's WiFi5/WiFi6 devices automatically combine 2.4G and 5G into one WiFi name, and the phone automatically switches between the two bands. After switching, the background shows two connection records. If you limit it to the 5G cable, it moves to the 2.4G channel, and the speed limit becomes just a decoration. Solution: Either limit both records, or simply separate dual-band in WiFi settings and connect the main device to the 5G name. I have written about this operation in detail in the of the signal troubleshooting section, so I won't repeat it here.

second, the random MAC address of the device . For privacy, phones use randomly generated MACs by default when connected to WiFi, and some systems even switch to another one each time you reconnect. If you limit the speed according to the MAC at the time, it will replace it with a new MAC, and the router will treat it as a new device, so the speed limit will naturally fail. Solution: In your phone's WiFi settings, find this network, turn off "Random MAC/Private Addresses" and switch to a device MAC, or directly limit the device by hostname in the Xiaomi backend and check if the MAC has changed. For households with many smart devices, I suggest fixing this pitfall—turn off random MACs for all devices, which also helps manage devices that prevent from getting caught online. The list is much cleaner.

third, the unit misread . The unit for the speed limit box is Mbps (megabits per second), not MB/s (megabytes per second), so the difference is eight times. Some people tried to limit it to "10 Mbps" and filled in 10, but the actual speed was only 10Mbps, which translates to a download speed of 1.25MB/s, which is much stricter than expected. The device owner immediately protested. On the other hand, if you want to limit yourself a bit harder, I might fill in 100 Mbps and think it's small, but actually 100Mbps is already enough bandwidth for 4K.

speed limits, there are two more effective tricks

to be honest, speed limits are perfect for situations where "family members are too embarrassed to fall out." If the problem is more specific, there are more targeted solutions:

First, QoS priority . Instead of limiting the system to every device, it's better to tell the router "who gets priority." Phones for TV and video calls are given high priority, download devices are set to low priority, and routers automatically protect the former when bandwidth is tight—when bandwidth is free, the downloader runs at full speed, smarter than a one-size-fits-all speed limit. Find options related to QoS or Smart Speed Limiting in the "Advanced Settings" section of the Xiaomi backend. The entry point varies slightly depending on the firmware version, so if you're unsure, just use Ctrl+F in your browser to search for "QoS" on the settings page.

Second, your child's device during the off-internet period. If you're worried about your child staying up late playing on tablets, speed limiting won't solve the problem—games don't require high bandwidth, so they can play without limits. Mijia allows you to set internet time slots based on your device: it automatically disconnects at 11 PM and resumes at 7 AM. I wrote a comprehensive setup in my article about children's internet control which is much more effective than speed limiting.

as for unfamiliar devices freeloading online, don't limit speed—just disable blacklisting and get it done in one step. Speed limits are meant to leave a way for 'insiders,' not for 'outsiders.'

Ending: My entire sequence of operations

finally organized my practical steps into a table. Following them makes it easy to miss something:

my final specs were three: gaming laptop limited to 100MB, TV box limited to 50MB, and my mom's phone was given the highest priority. After three months, I haven't received another complaint call about the "WiFi card." Ultimately, speed limiting is a matter of household bandwidth allocation. technically, it can be set up in one minute. The hard part is negotiating with family members to reach a number everyone recognizes which I can't help with.