[Zubir]

Ok, to the point. I have a Motorola WR850G wireless router, with the latest firmware. On the network are one Mac with a Motorola wireless PCI card, and my roommate's 2 PC's running WXP, one having a Linksys PCI wireless card, and one hardwired. The problem is I'm getting **** bandwidth. One of the PC's is running as a Teamspeak server. After poking around on my roommate's computers, I find that the one running Teamspeak is running SP1, has no kind of virus software, and he's poked holes in the router's firewall for Teamspeak. He's got to have it, so he can talk to his brother while playing WoW. The roommate claims it's the Motorola router, but I used it before on a 50/kbs connection with another computer, and had no problems. I've had problems with multiple computers not wanting to play nice with bandwidth on Linksys routers also, but I'm not a network specialist, so I have no idea why, or what to do about it. I'm basically sick of paying for a 300/kbs connection that's slow as dial-up.

Any advice on steps to take to find the bandwidth hog on this network?

[f1000]

Originally posted by Zubir:
Any advice on steps to take to find the bandwidth hog on this network?

Your roommate might be saturating the upload bandwidth using his chat software, thereby killing download speeds. Upload/download speeds are usually asymmetrical, so you'll have to figure out a way to throttle uploads if this is the case.

[ginoledesma]

Some routers have QoS which allows you to define priority for certain ports or services. If I recall correctly, the Linksys routers have them in the advanced settings. As these are "home appliances" I wouldn't expect much from this, but try and see if that's a workable implementation for both of you.

I'm not familiar with TeamSpeak, but looking at its codec page, it shouldn't be eating too much of your bandwidth. Can you ask your roommate what settings he's using?

One way to find out if TeamSpeak is indeed the culprit to your low bandwidth problem is to test your Internet connection when TeamSpeak is in use and when it isn't. A simple test with http://www.dslreports.com/stest should give you a good idea.

[Zubir]

The Teamspeak server has been stopped, and everything's normal now. Go figure.

[ghporter]

What little I've been able to find on running a Teamspeak server says that the admin can regulate the bandwidth alloted to the server...it's just not clear how easy that is, or whether it comes with a preset limitation. My feeling is that your roomie had the thing going full blast, which sucked up all the bandwidth.

I'm glad you no longer have the bandwidth/connectivity problems, but keep an eye on the holes in the network firewall, and keep your Mac's software firewall active. It never hurts to be vigilant.