Router Question.

I have one of those common linksys routers or whatever in the dorm. We have four people using it, it's connected to one ethernet port. It works fine, but when someone is downloading a large file, and constant bandwidth is being used, the internet connection is slow for EVERYONE.

I tried playing with all of the different settings of the router, and nothing helped.

Any ideas?

Do you think it's because of the bandwidth limitations the school gives us?

Last year I was able to see 3 MB/s ... now I only get 300 KB/s ... I saw 3 MB/s once ...for a little, then it went back to 300 KB/s. Do you think there's a limitation per ethernet port?

Thanks.

Flash dd-wrt on the router. Use QoS for bandwidth priority/limitations.

If your router is using default settings (i.e. not using some QoS or other bandwidth throttling mechanism), then any bandwidth caps are implemented by your provider and not in the router.

If someone else is hogging the bandwidth by downloading or whatever, then of course everyone else is going to slow down. You don't get infinite bandwidth across a router, you're bottlenecked by the bandwidth of the WAN connection. The more somebody uses, the less others get.

If you own the router that everyone else is using, then you might consider what Daggoth suggested. By configuring QoS on the router you can limit the bandwidth for each port, or for certain protocols.

Alright, thanks, I'll see what I can do.

Also, what may have caused me to see a 3 MB/s peak for about 30 minutes on a random day last semester?