Reclaiming Bandwidth on a LAN

daveyjoe

I'm living in a student village and as part of the accomodation we all have free shared Broadband (512/128 between 14 houses AFAIK) through a LAN port. The problem is that if more than one person is downloading then the speed goes to ****e. For example one person might be downloading an album or something like that and during that time, the Internet crawls along and sometimes it times out when connecting to websites.

Is there any way that I can reclaim some of the bandwidth for myself when someone is downloading off the net, because it can be impossible to get stuff done and it is really pissing me off now.

Mutant_Fruit

Set yourself up as the resident "administrator" and install some proper bandiwdth shaping tools on a linux box to sort out the problem. I know there are programs that dynamically allocate bandwidth, so it can be done. Check back on old threads for the relevant info.

Other than that, install net-limiter secretly on all the computers, and limit them to uberslow speeds, but they might notice that

daveyjoe

Mutant_Fruit wrote:

Set yourself up as the resident "administrator" and install some proper bandiwdth shaping tools on a linux box to sort out the problem. I know there are programs that dynamically allocate bandwidth, so it can be done. Check back on old threads for the relevant info.

Other than that, install net-limiter secretly on all the computers, and limit them to uberslow speeds, but they might notice that

I don't think I'd get away with that. What I was really wondering is... Why do they get preference on bandwidth over me, Is there anyway that I can get preference?

Mutant_Fruit

Unless there is a server with packetshaping installed, no-one has preference. It all depends on who's downloading hte most things at once. I.e. if you started 20 download threads, you'd find you'd get a hell of a lot more bandwidth than with just one download thread.

For browsing, you're screwed, unless they stop their downloading.

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

look for a program called net limiter or something similar, and ask the student village administration to see that it is installed on any machine connected to the network, and limited to a fair share of bandwith per person.

might work..

daveyjoe

Mutant_Fruit wrote:

Unless there is a server with packetshaping installed, no-one has preference. It all depends on who's downloading hte most things at once. I.e. if you started 20 download threads, you'd find you'd get a hell of a lot more bandwidth than with just one download thread.

For browsing, you're screwed, unless they stop their downloading.

Ok, if I make my browser open more connections to websites will it help?

Mutant_Fruit

daveyjoe wrote:

Ok, if I make my browser open more connections to websites will it help?

Maybe, but i doubt it. With downloads you have a permanent connection (until the file finishes) so you will gradually grab more and more bandwidth, BUT with browsing the connection opens and closes, and so you don't have a permanent connection, which means it'll probably be quite slow no matter what you do.

IE uses 2 "connections" when downloading data from a server, i believe Firefox uses 8, and can be set easily enough to use whatever number you specify.

Stormfox1020

512K to 14 different houses ouch! I thought having 16 compters on a 2mb line in school was bad.

daveyjoe

Stormfox1020 wrote:

512K to 14 different houses ouch! I thought having 16 compters on a 2mb line in school was bad.

Yeah but most of the people in the houses don't have computers, still though at peak times the internet slows to a crawl.

StRiKeR

no server no control, you need to setup a server to control the banwidth sharing limit! unless if you have an more advance ADSL Router which allow you to set bandwidth to the ip's, other than that no!