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WiFi/Ethernet bandwidth division on typical router

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  • 26-05-2016 12:50pm
    #1
    Escapees
    Registered Users Posts: 617 ✭✭✭


    Scenario: Take a typical WiFi router with several ethernet ports. If one user is connected via a cable to a port and say 10 users are connected via WiFi, is the bandwidth allocation generally split evenly between all 11 users? Or is it split 50/50 between the 10 wireless user and the one lucky wired user?


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    #2
    Cuddlesworth
    Registered Users Posts: 13,995 ✭✭✭✭Cuddlesworth


    Its a bit more complicated then that.

    You have 4 factors,

    Wireless
    Switching
    Routing
    The client itself

    Wireless is a half duplex shared medium that runs at different speeds, depending on the slowest user. There are so many factors into calculating how much bandwidth 10 clients could get, its pointless going into it here.

    Switching would usually be shared 50/50 between the wireless clients and the switch port because the wireless radio would interact as a switch port.

    Routing would usually balance out between all IP's, assuming all IP's had the ability to scale to its share of the overall bandwidth. Eg if a wireless client can only manage 1mb, but its a 100mb line, clearly it wouldn't be able to scale to roughly 10mb.

    The client itself could be really aggressive, open multiple connections and subsume a greater portion of what's available. This would counteract the logic above.


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    #3
    ED E
    Registered Users Posts: 36,167 ✭✭✭✭ED E


    Cuddles is pretty bang on here, but to throw in a sort-of not really rule of thumb:

    If the internet connection is FAST (80Mb+) then Wifi will be the limiting factor for wireless clients.

    If the internet connection is SLOW then the biggest decider is connections. Your gateway will most likely service connections *roughly* equally so a P2P download will decimate a one connection youtube stream (with HTML5 player it might not be one anymore).

    If you want fine control of how this works you need a much more expensive router, QoS on SOHO grade stuff just doesn't cut it.


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