Sharing bandwidth

slipd

slipd

slipd

Soldato
Joined
26 Feb 2004
Posts
4,789
Location
Hampshire, England.
Hi guys,

A friend is complaining that her two teenage sons are hammering their 19MB fibre connection with all of their downloading and streaming so much so that sometimes she is unable to even check her email on her phone!

Since what they're doing isn't the issue and blocking ports etc. on their current set up won't be necessary, I'm actually after suggestions for some new hardware :) Their current router is a basic Netgear thingy that I installed nearly 7 years ago so I'm looking for something a bit more up to date, ideally with some QoS functionally or bandwidth sharing options.

If it makes any difference, most of the clients are wireless; Xbox, PS4, Chromecast & 2x Laptops.

Any thoughts?

Thanks.
 
Depends a bit what it is that is causing the slowdown - its not always the bandwidth throughput, sometimes its the varied size of packets and trying to fit it all in and sometimes its coz of high frequency connection cycling from torrent clients.

One of the better routers I've found for QoS is the Asus N66U and similar/newer models but it is still far from ideal.

Another option I've found quite useful is managed switches that have rate limiting and other features that can be used to manage bandwidth - the Netgear ProSafe GS105E has worked quite well in some situations (note the E as the non-E model is unmanaged and lacks support for management features) - doesn't have much in the way of traffic prioritisation features though but seems to do bandwidth management better than most routers. (EDIT: Won't help much with wireless clients though).

Sometimes its enough just to have upload QoS meaning that no one application can use more than 90% of the available upload - the older FTTC modems had it enabled by default and I find it quite useful to leave on so get better shared connection quality on connections with multiple users.
 
Last edited:
see my other thread on subnet .. ideally in this situation, whereas you have 2 networks and allocate bandwidth each one.

I have 3 subnets, development, kids, mine and with a 150 MB BB connection I have allocated a percentage of bandwidth to each subnet

me = 60%
kids = 35 %
dev = 5 %

all above done on ddwrt routers.
 
I'd recommend a Cisco 871W (non W = not wireless).

It's a discontinued Cisco router but it's great and very cheap these days of E-Bay. Has stuff like..

-QoS
-VPN Encyption
-NAC
-IPS

It also has it's own managed switch built it. I use it for my Cisco labs. It's an amazing piece of kit. Seen one on ebay for £75 but could prob get one much cheaper.
 
Thanks guys! It is not a bit odd that no domestic kit manufacturer had brought something out that covers just this kind of scenario, out of the box?

I've been digging around online and I can't find anything... I seem to recall a friend at Uni setting up a new router at the time, about £100 it was, and from a well know high-street IT shop, for his student house. Each person had a static ip and depending on who was logged in at the time they got an even share of the bandwidth. So if only two of them were on it was 50/50. 4 of them and it was 25/25/25/25 - you get the idea :D

I was hoping for something like that to be mainstream in top end kit by now?
 
The Cisco 870 series tops out at 12.5Mbps. I also wouldn't recommend anything running IOS to someone who had to come to someone else to ask about QoS.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom