This may be in the wrong forum so my apologies if so... feel free to move it if needed.

After a long hiatus, I've recently started using BOINC again on 2 laptops that sit unused most of the time. They are connected via WiFi along with the typical multitude of other devices in the house. I have Gigabit service (typically only get 800 or so both ways though.. not complaining). However, I've noticed lag on streaming video lately (HD dropping to SD) and am wondering if it could be related to these laptops not having any caps set in the BOINC network settings. Admittedly, I have not had the time to dive right in and do a lot of testing, though it does appear that suspending the tasks will alleviate the streaming. It could be a red herring though so I'm keeping an open mind.

I'm wondering if anyone else has noticed this with any project (but mainly SETI) and if so, what throttling (if any) have you set on your networking settings to alleviate the issue?

Not noticed any problems when uploads or downloads are going though recently I have scheduled them to happen while I am asleep. Prior to doing that the only issue was a tenant who was into mmrpg gaming would get killed when an upload started. None of our subsequent tenants have been gamers but last one who used to skype/facetime boyfriend in Oz didn't notice any problems.

Seti only uses the network intermittently - three sets of connections for each task. First is to get a task, typically ~700kb, second is the report and finally to upload the result, the last two are only a couple of tens of kb each. You should be able to work out how many tasks you do an hour and so how much data is transferred, but most laptops won't be doing more than a handful of tasks per hour, so not that much data being moved when compared to the average video streaming.
However, processing a task will use a CPU core, and depending on your computer that may, or may not, be noticeable as a loss of keyboard/video/mouse responsiveness.
For specific help with SETI, rather than general comments, you would be wise to head over the the SETI forum either the help desk https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_help_desk.php or number crunching https://setiathome.berkeley.edu/forum_forum.php?id=10

Non SETI related but LHC does use a fair amount of network bandwidth while it crunches. Rob Smith likely has your answer. You might look at the settings to suspend work while the computer is in use or suspend if over a given CPU use percent, or suspend GPU when computer is in use.

However if your issue is streaming video to say a TV, then the issue is elsewhere.

I use several clients over WIFI, both Folding at home rigs, and Chinese media player thin clients.
So far I have not noticed any network issues. My TV plays back netflix quite fine 1080p; and we have a 25 mbits network, that actually only provides half the advertised speed.