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Sharing DSL line...hub or dsl router?

J

jvang125

Senior member
Currently my roommates and I are sharing two computers (soon to be three) with one DSL line. We are using a simple 5 port hub after the dsl modem. Each computer is connected directly to the internet and therefore has its own unique ip. the thing that fustrates me is when my roommate does some heavy downloading, it hogs up the entire bandwidth and i'm left with only 23-25kbs (tested with online bandwidth test meter when he is downloading). We ususally get around 500-700kbps of total bandwidth. I do a lot of surfing and when he is downloading, it takes 3-4 minutes for one page to load up. I have no patience for this since a web page usually loads up in 2-5 seconds when he isnt hogging up the bandwidth. What i was wondering is, would going with a dsl router handle the bandwidth sharing a lot better than the hub? I thought i read somewhere where you can control how much bandwidth each computer gets at idle and under a full load. this would be nice so i can limit how much he is using and still leave a considerable amount of bandwidth for me to do my surfing. so anyone who can give me some info on this, i'll appreciate it...i'm starting to get to the point where i just want to tell him to quit downloading so much or snip his cat5 cable.
 
Ask your ISP to rate limit each IP. 🙂 They MIGHT be able and willing to do so on their side.

Are you paying extra for the multiple IPs? Setting up a FreeSCO machine would let you use NAT without any extra costs.

I did find this, rshaper, for linux if you want to compile it and integrate it. I can't remember if FreeSCO has such a capability though the page JackMDS linked seems to imply it does.
 
You can limit his bandwidth by setting his NIC to 10 Meg half duplex while leaving yours at 100 Meg full duplex. A free good compromise for the two of you, he would not notice the difference surfing, it would only limit the amount of data he gets during continous downloading.
 
And exactly how is making his port 10Mbps going to "limit" him with a 700Kbps DSL line? He's still going to be able to pull that full DSL bandwidth through, and the 100Mbps from the other machine isn't going to "flood out" the 10Mbps.

Incidentally, you can't set ports to different speeds on a hub.
 
politely ask them to limit their uploads to 1 and downloads to 3-4.

this compromise works great for my roomates and I.

we all switch to heavy downloads late at night 4-8 on 3 pc's.

we get more bandwidth too though, usually 1250/300 = @ 150KB/s
 
Originally posted by: Lord Evermore
And exactly how is making his port 10Mbps going to "limit" him with a 700Kbps DSL line? He's still going to be able to pull that full DSL bandwidth through, and the 100Mbps from the other machine isn't going to "flood out" the 10Mbps.

Incidentally, you can't set ports to different speeds on a hub.
Click to expand...

You'd be surprised, it does make a difference. There is a latency and lag time putting the NIC in half duplex mode. Knocking it down to 10 Meg plus overhead squeezes it some too. Try it and see for yourself.

You're not changing the speed at the hub, your changing the settings of the NIC on the machine the NIC is in.
 
Yes but the hub's port then runs in 10Mb half-duplex mode, which forces all other ports to run at the same speed. Hubs don't support different speeds on each port like a switch. You certainly can't turn the NIC to one speed and have the hub's port run at some other speed just because it's higher than the NIC.
 
dmcowen: Your suggestion would not do anything, except limit the speed of the rest of the connections.
A managed switch would do the trick. Or an ISA server if you run NT based servers.
 
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