[Weezer]

Hey guys,

I am staying in a sublet for the summer, and the internet is driving me crazy. It is comcast cable connection in Boston, being shared by 4 people. It ranges from crazy fast (25+ Mbit) to painfully slow, and I can't figure out why. It could just be that comcast sucks, but these fluctions keep happening all the time. Also, right after I restart the router, it is really fast again. It could just be that it is kicking off people...

What could be going on here? How can I diagnose the problem? Could someone on the network have a virus or something that is eating bandwidth?

[OreoCookie]

Sounds like the router could be the source of the problem. There was a similar thread on this quite recently and it turned out that there were too many concurrent connections for the small router to handle. Bittorrent can be one of the culprits here (when the router is restarted, all the connections are severed and the speed is ok as long as not too many of the connections have been reestablished).

One thing you can try is to ask your house mates to shut down all torrent clients, etc.

Another possible problem might be a faulty cable (if you use one).

[ghporter]

I agree with Oreo on the router being a suspect. Here's the issue: there's only so much computing power in that little box, and it has to keep track of a lot of data. With FOUR people sharing the same connection, you could easily overload the router's capacity with just a couple of them doing stuff like running torrents (or playing WoW for that matter).

Networks do NOT have viruses. Viruses are software that runs on computers. And despite the fact that your network hardware is actually a series of microcomputers, it is infeasible to infect them because they are all embedded systems; it takes a lot of effort sometimes to update their firmware, so adding a program that would hose them up would be VERY difficult to do.

It would be very good to know how many addresses Comcast will provide through your connection. If it's one, get your roommates together and get a semi-pro router ($400 for a decent Cisco router would be kind of dear, but would probably clear up the problem).

If they provide several IPs, there's another route to choose. Get a small switch and install it right after the modem. Now, buy enough more inexpensive routers so that you have one for every allowed IP address. Viola! Now each router will handle a lot less traffic and should not get overloaded. Routers that would work for this are as inexpensive as $40 most of the time.

[Weezer]

Thanks for the replies guys!

More info: Just came back to deathly slow internet. Restarted the router, boom, speedy. I started trying to fix this issue several days ago. The router in question is a new Apple Airport N router. I had heard they have some issues, so I swapped in a crappy little trendnet router I had, and things were great. It appears to have just been a coincidence though.

I am hard wired to the router, while 3 other people are connected using wireless. It seems unlikely to me that 4 people could be overwhelming the router...

I had suspected the apple router, and the current way I have things setup is the comcast cable going into the trendnet (with wireless turned off), and then the apple router and myself connected to the router on the trendnet. This was working great for awhile, but is now tanking (probably again a coincidence).

I find it hard to believe that the router can't handle 3 wireless and 1 wired connection...can this be the case?

Thanks! (also, it is just a summer sublet for a job I got in Boston for the summer, so I will not be investing in an expensive router!)

[OreoCookie]

In the thread I referred two, two people where `overwhelming' the router. Bittorrent (among other things) can do this to your router. If you take a look at the specs of expensive routers, you'll be in for a surprise: even the `expensive' Cisco routers run on something like 50 MHz cpus (I know, MHz is not everything, but it gives you an idea how powerful these cpus really are) and perhaps 32 MB RAM. Scale that down to your $50-$80 router: you get the idea.

[Weezer]

Is there any way I can throttle the bandwidth that everyone can use? So even if someone is using bit torrent they can't completely take over the router? QOS or something right?

[Weezer]

Also, arnt I "sharing the load" right now by splitting up between two routers?

[ghporter]

Originally Posted by Weezer 

Also, arnt I "sharing the load" right now by splitting up between two routers?

It is very UNlikely that even all of your housemates and you could suck the life out of a connection that gets up to 25Mbps during good periods, but your router is almost certainly the weak link that's giving you the problems you report. So, you would indeed be sharing that same bandwidth among all your users, but the routers themselves wouldn't be bogged down because each would have far fewer connections to keep track of-which means less likelihood of any router getting overwhelmed.

[Weezer]

Right thats exactly my point. Right now I have the cable modem plugged into the trendnet, to which I am directly connected to as well, and then I have the airport extreme chained into the trendnet to broadcast the wireless signal to everyone else.

Im using 2 routers instead of just the airport extreme alone. This should be helping the situation yes?

[Big Mac]

Sounds like a good idea to me. I'm always skeptical of Airport. Tell me, though, where can I get a 25Mb connection?

[Weezer]

It is comcast cable in Brookline, MA. I can post fast and slow screenshots from speakeasy speedtest when I get home from work.

So, if my 2 linked router solution isnt fixing my problem, is there anything I CAN do other than buying new hardware? The cable modem has a usb port on it, is that live when the ethernet is live too? or is it one or the other.

[OreoCookie]

It won't help if you connect via something else. The only thing I can think of is telling your house mates to limit their clients (if they happen to use bittorrent, for example): you can usually limit the number of connections and limit up- and downstream.

[ghporter]

Originally Posted by Weezer 

Right thats exactly my point. Right now I have the cable modem plugged into the trendnet, to which I am directly connected to as well, and then I have the airport extreme chained into the trendnet to broadcast the wireless signal to everyone else.

Im using 2 routers instead of just the airport extreme alone. This should be helping the situation yes?

What you have NOW is one device chained through the other-that means that a lot of stuff is being handled by the AirPort device and ALL of it is going through the Trendnet router. My suggestion was to use a switch (which is too simple for your traffic to overwhelm) to effectively SPLIT the cable modem connection. This way you can plug the Trendnet router into one switch port, the AirPort Extreme into another and the Trendnet router will have much less traffic going through it. While the AirPort Extreme will probably still have the same amount of traffic as before, it won't be connected to the Trendnet router, so it won't overwhelm it.

The big problem (one of 'em anyway) is the "chaining" of the AirPort Extreme (a full-blown router in itself) through the Trendnet router. Not only does this tend to cause interesting issues (two layers of NAT can be a major problem), but it guarantees that ALL the traffic for everybody goes through your Trendnet router. Not good! It is possible to tell an AirPort Extreme to simply bridge between wired and wireless networks, but even if you do that, with your current configuration all of the traffic STILL goes through the Trendnet box.