Hi all. I live in a large house with 5 other people. We have a 50Mb Virgin connection but the fight for any usable bandwidth is horrendous. especially if one person decides to download. Signal strength is excellent. That's about it though, browsing is even poor when it works. We were discussing getting a router that allocates bandwidth evenly and fairly for everyone. I think a VPN router is the way to go but I'm not sure what to go for if even one of those. We currently are using a D-Link Dir 615. Oh and everyone connects wirelessly. Any help or advice would appreciate.
Wireless connections are shared bandwidth (a bit like the old days with hubs). There's nothing you can do about it apart from giving everyone their own access point & network.
You can use stuff on your router to limit speed of all the computers, so no one can take all the bandwidth at once QOS it may be called. Have a look at your router manual to see if it has it
Assuming you've tried changing the channel (in case there's interference from neighbours' wireless) & made sure that you've secured the connection (in case it's neighbours using it that's the cause)... ...oh, & also made sure that you're all using half decent wireless adapters... ...another option would be to buy 5 licenses of something like NetLimiter (US$ 84.75 for the lite version & 124.75 for the pro for all 5) & set speed rules on each machine. it's then more than possible, from my experience at least, that it's not the download speed which is the actual cause of the issues, but the upload speed - well, whilst i use wired connections with my 50MB, if i try & upload at ~max speed possible for a reasonable duration (rather than just a brief peak when sending an email or something) then the download speed will suffer noticeably... ...&, similarly, if you fall foul of the fair usage limitation for uploads (6000MB between 3-8pm) then they are then lowered for, if memory serves, 5 hours afterwards - so i add a different upload rule for those hours. Okay, it'd be nice to have something that dynamically allocated bandwidth for all machines within whatever overall rules you set & (naturally) the 5 of you will need to know how to adjust the settings if they're the only person in the house - well, there's no point in limiting the person staying in if the other 4 have gone out for the night - but, providing the 5 of you all have the thing running, there's no reason why it wouldn't do the job. i thought that QOS was just a method for prioritising different types of traffic over a network rather than a way to set rules for specific machines(?). Though, according to this, the VM Superhub doesn't have QOS.
According to http://shop.virginmedia.com/the-legal-stuff/acceptable-use-policy.html So the AUP comes into force between 9AM and 9PM. There are no other times mentioned in their AUP, and they don't actually specify what level of downloads is considered unfair usage in the AUP. Of course, they are a large corporation, so they could have put the info anywhere on their site and not made it obvious, so you think you have a better deal than you have If the limit between those hours is 6GB, I'm not sure why they think people pay for connections that fast
they have a different traffic management policy for file sharing and downloanding http://shop.virginmedia.com/help/traffic-management/traffic-management-policy.html edit: just realised the 50mb package isnt managed by any of their tables. Detailed there. You should get a router that does bandwidth management. MY housemates used to drive me mad with their constant downloading throughout the day, and thus my virgin connection constantly being throttled. So I got a draytek 2830n - and now, I have a firewall filter set up to block all bit torrent traffic during virgin's defined peak hours I have quality of service set up so that bit torrent traffic is the lowest priority during hours when people want to actually use the internet. And then if everyone really annoys me, I reduce their bandwidth to 200/200 tx/rx haha. Im such a massive jerk. Also this router has absolutely amazing wireless performance, I still get full signal when Im the furhtest point diagonally from the router in my house.
This. I have five other housemates and two of us are on homeplugs. We never have bandwidth issues and we all download.
I propose something different: I had this exact problem at Uni. It basically made playing games impossible, downloads were slow if someone else was downloading etc etc etc. We started by allocating everyone a part of the day where they could download (as all BT clients should have a scheduler). That worked ok, but then I lived with 3 other people who were very reasonable about it. However the answer nowadays is the Synology DS211J. Its a NAS box with a windows like web interface (though built on linux I believe) which is accessible through a browser, that includes a built in BT client with a scheduler. From there, anyone that wants to log onto the box from their web browser, and add torrents to the BT client. its super easy. Mine runs every night from 1am until 8am. This means that during the day everyone can do whatever they want on the net at super high speed, and then, late at night, when the networks are quieter (and virgin don't mind you downloading loads of GB) the BT client runs. By the time you wake up it'll all be done. This has the added advantage that a) anything that is downloaded will be accessibly to anyone in the house over the network (though streaming HD content over wireless is sometimes a challenge - for that you'll need homeplug). b)it'll save you loads on power bills as instead of having 5 computers running, you have one tiny low power box. The disadvantages to this method is that you'll have to teach everyone how to add files (Though it really is easy and takes about 5 seconds), and they won't download straight away (you'll have to wait til the next morning). It depends on how reasonable your flatmates are, if you have one person that just sacks it off and downloads whenever, then it renders the whole idea pointless since that one persons BT connection will rape everyones. It sounds like at the moment, the system you have is benefiting no one, and a lot of living with housies is about compromise, so they should understand.
I have a file server with a BT client - I have set this up on all of my housemates computers, yet they all seem to not want to use it - and all download the same things even though most of the time its already on the file server. Why do they do this? You tell me! blows my mind.
These are 2 completely different things - You have an updated traffic management policy here which will apply 'if' the area has generally been upgraded - & this is what i was specifically referring to... ...whereas the AUP, irl, is what Virgin term "detrimental usage of your broadband connection" - & basically the 'detrimental usage team' will periodically (i believe no sooner than a ~3 month rotation) look at areas where the are issues during the 9am-9pm period & then write to high bandwidth users during this period & threaten disconnection unless they stop. Unfortunately, their measuring methods are incredibly simplistic (not actually proving that there was any detrimental use based on what i have been told) &, if you fall into this situation, they will not tell you what level you can actually use (no matter how many times you send messages & ask in various ways) which makes it impossible to guaranty they you will comply (& not get another letter) without uploading or downloading nothing during this period... ...yeah, i'm already past my 2nd (of 3) letters based on my upload (rather than download) usage - &, whilst i had limited it during the 3-8pm period, then also sticking a lower (but not that low) upload limitation from 9am-9pm didn't appear to help... ...& had no response to my last message. Whilst not good, it's largely the problem in (my area of Sheffield at least) of inheriting a slightly shonky network from Telewest - & can only cross my fingers that they do the 100MB upgrade work soon as this will add capacity.
I don't know how tech savy you are, but if you look at pfsense (or monowall) and install it on a spare PC, you can do everything you need. You can inspect traffic at layer 7 and apply policies etc etc. You can allocate bandwidth to individual devices, monitor use and even route to a 2nd gateway for certain traffic types (as well as bonding together multiple gateways) Highly recommended!
Do what I did, have the router in your room wired in. Tell people that all torrents should be scheduled for the hours people are asleep/not in. If you go to play a game at 9pm and it is slow, change the wireless password while you game then change back! But more seriously, just ask them if you can all download at like 2am-9am so you can all use it properly and if they need to urgently get something they just ask if people are playing Xbox or similar.
We've got a virgin 50MB connection shared between four people and while there is a noticable affect if we all download at once, it's generally fine. We went for the 'drape wires up the stairs' approach, combined with a £15 GB switch to reduce the number of wires going places.
Get your own broadband on ADSL and let them fight among themselves, I reccomend these guys for broadband http://www.pulse8.co.uk/ £20 (LLU) a month for 100gb (unmanaged) and no contracts either, you can leave when you want.
Not sure if they do Northern Ireland.... thanks for the advice. None of my housemates are tangible at all when it comes to this. You suggest an alternative it's about what they're going to loose if they agree. And any that would are technophobes so the idea of having to queue uploads on a NAS is nightmarish for them. English is not their first language either so it's hard communicating anything technically verbally. The connection is taken care of by the landlord. So i don't have much say over rights or anything or have access to change anything on the wireles router (DIR-615) nor does the landlord occupy the building. Someone earlier in the thread suggested homeplugs. Would this method stop me getting tramped over wirelessly?? My connection wirelessly is 4 bars and I'm running a netgear N-300 so the connection to the router is good... just bandwidth troubles.
wired connection is the only way. spend £10 on ebay for a 30m cable and just wire everyone up. or buy 2 or 3 routers, make sure you are not on the same wi-fi network as heavy downloaders. shared bandwidth medium like wifi or homeplugs really isn't the answer for high bandwidth activities such as streaming and downloading. QoS will only resolve bandwidth problem IF the problem is due to slow external speed. but in your case, 50Mbps should be more than fast enough for 5 people. however, QoS can be used to limit people's speed by setting maximum QoS speed to something like 40Mbps. so what i'd suggest is multiple Wi-fi network. one for heavy downloaders one for yourself. use QoS on heavy downloaders with maximum bandwidth set to 40Mbps (very straight forward on Linksys or DD-WRT). EDIT: oh yeah, didn't read your last reply. i still think multiple wi-fi is the best way: Internet -> SuperHub -> QoS router -> heavy downloaders while you connect straight to SuperHub. set maximum connection speed of QoS router to 40Mbps. you and everyone else in your house will have at least 10Mbps of connection. while downloaders should all get more responsive webpage because they have QoS router. everyone get better wi-fi speed because it's been split into two different channels.
1 - Call the police and report them for illegal downloads. 2 - Watch them get deported and have connection all to yourself. 3 - Profit?
