Hello Rosemary,
Great question, glad you brought it here. This software comes with most Dell computers, summing it up this is what the software is supposed to do.
SmartByte is an application that comes preinstalled on many modern Dell machines, which prioritizes data packets to speed up entertainment and communication applications and services such as streaming video, web browsing, and video chat.
General consensus is to remove the software, doing so may give you better bandwidth to the internet.
To remove SmartByte you can do the following:
1. Right-click Start and click Apps and Features.
2. Scroll until you find any application with SmartByte in the list.
3. Click each SmartByte entry and then click uninstall, follow the prompts to uninstall the application.