Sharing Bandwidth on Local Network

Cadrach

I have a network with 45 people all sharing one 4Mb DSL line. Nobody is downloading or bittorrenting or any of that, so generally there is enough bandwidth to go around. That is until a couple of weeks ago... now the connection grinds almost to a halt at times. I believe this is mostly caused at the ISP's end, but it has made me look into ways of improving the local side of things, in order to rule out all of the factors that I have control over.

The local network goes through a switch into the standard DSL router, which does not do QOS or any advanced features. I'm wondering if, for example, somebody on the network starts to download a large email, would this disrupt everybody else on the network? If so, can somebody recommend a solution, such as a piece of hardware that goes between the switch and the DSL router that would ensure that the bandwidth is correctly shared among the users? Please let me know if you think there is a better way to approach it.

degsie

Have a look at netlimiter and see if that comes close to what u want.