Home networking causing arguements!

[xhomiex]

Hi im having serious problems at home, the wife keeps arguing about the network saying im getting all the bandwith because my desktop pc is wired into the netgear wireless router dg834g and my wifes desktop is wireless 54mps belkin network pci adapter, our isp provider only provides 0.5mb even though it should be 2-4mb ( AOL )WE BOTH HAVE OLD PENTIUM 4'S, mine is a INTEL CELERON 1.6 WITH 1.5GB RAM with ati x1950 and the wifes is a celeron 2.4 with 768mb ram with onboard graphics both using intel pro 100ve networking, i have my pc upstairs and i do alot of gaming and downloading , this is where the wife complains! saying that when ever i download or game she doesnt get any bandwith to shop online (webpages freezing up) is there a solution to this? or will i have to divorce her or better still bury her? will upgrading packages help? or a gigabit switch? please help! im at the end of my tether....ty

 

[Jamsan]

at 500 kiloBITS per second of bandwidth, you're easily sucking it down when you game or download. I haven't seen that little bandwidth in the past 5 years except in rural areas. Aside from getting more bandwidth, you can get something like NetLimiter to limit the bandwidth on your PC to say about 60-70%, and give her the rest to surf the web.

 

[NickOlsen8390]

If your ISP's advertised speeds are 2-4Mb/s then give them a call. 500Kb/s is bad. Raise hell, do what ever you have to. You are the customer speak with your money. If they don't fix it move to a different ISP.
Just make sure you know what speeds you SHOULD get and what you DO get. Otherwise your going to make a ass of yourself.
ISP's can be evil. My ISP here in central Florida advertises 7Mb/s but they only guarantee 1Mb/s. Unless your a business customer paying for 15/2, then they do what you say but the speed is more then advertised anyways. That's just what they say.

Also, look into a router that can implement QOS, if yours does, then enable it. if configured correctly it can make a world of difference.

 

[xhomiex]

Thankyou guys for your responses, so i take it having old pro ve 100 adapters isnt the problem? just that some people have mentioned to me to get a switch thingy majig gigabit etc i dont know what there going on about

 

[skyking]

No, the network adaptes are not at all the problem. The bottleneck in almost every case is the internet provider.

 

[NickOlsen8390]

Your network is going to be 10 times faster then your ISP almost every time. well for wired, with some of the internet connections now a days wireless can be slower then it. but in your case wireless and wired is going to be faster then your internet connection. intel pro ve 100 adapters are fine. A gigabit switch is only going to make the connection from one computer to another faster. not to the internet.

 

[JackMDS]

Welcome to AnandTech's Networking Forum.

Do not look for the Holly Grail, leave it to Monty Python they are doing it better.

Get NetLimter (as mentioned above), install it on your computer and set it so that there is decent bandwidth left for you wife.

http://www.netlimiter.com

P.S. You can try to optimize the TCP/IP Stack in both computers.

Optimizing the TCP/IP Stack - http://www.ezlan.net/Internet_Speed.html

 

[xhomiex]

My wife says your a god send jack lol ty...hope she doesnt want to run off(please)

 

[xhomiex]

Ok to anyone who can help, ive done as you recommended the net limiter works a treat but we came across something else, the speedtest showed us to be downloading at 476kb/s and upload at 230 kb/s and when i download from microsoft sites and others the maximum i reach is 67kbs, is there any solution to speed this up? is this something to do with bt protocol? or is it something to do with settings with my torrent site?

 

[RadiclDreamer]

you are looking at kb and KB as the same thing. kb is kiloBITS and KB is kiloBYTES. 67KB = 536kb

Simply put, speed tests show you in thousands of bits per second while IE shows in thousands of bytes per second. 1byte=8bit

 

[xhomiex]

so in terms of me getting 2-4mb ps im only recieving 0.5mb? which is down to my service provider, i think its time my wife got angry over the phone ISP providers want shooting i say the amount of bullcrap that comes out of there mouths to sell you there service is unreal ! (AOL HELL)

 

[xhomiex]

Would it be best just to hard wire both pc's to the router instead and also play hell with my service provider?

 

[JackMDS]

Measure by file transfer the speed between the two PCs, if it is exceeding your Internet bandwidth, then wire or wireless makes No difference.