We have a D-link wireless router at home. 2 Pcs are connected to it using wires and 1 laptop using Wi-fi. On 1 computer when im downloading things or using apps or playing online games (which require a lot of internet speed) does it slow down the internet speed of other computers?
It depends how much bandwidth is required by the other computers. The total bandwidth is shared, yes, so if you have a 8Mb connection, and one computer is downloading torrents at 800Kb.sec, then yes, the other two computers will be less responsive when trying to access the internet. If all three machines are just web browsing, or playing games, then probably not, as online gaming doesn't require a great deal of absolute bandwidth... just good ping times. So it's not about speed, it's about how much of the bandwidth is being used. It also depends on how much bandwidth you have available. If all you have a 500Kb connection, then you'll notice a shared connection far more than if you have a 20Mb connection.
we have 3 laptops in our house 1 mine two are my mates, and they all link of my internet (greedy gits) Only time i notice a slow down is when i'm downloading something and my mate is loading is pics to facebook i can see the speed slow down. but apart from that there is no difference. What is you internet speed, if its 8mb or more there shouldnt be a drama.
Good point: Saturating the uplink will have a massive effect on the other machines, and as most ADSL connections have much narrower uplink bandwidth, if anyone regularly uploads to you tube, this will hit the other machines hard.
Online gaming doesn't actually require a lot of bandwidth, not as much as you'd think. Its more about the speed to the server itself, than the amount sent. If you had 64k, I'd worry about sharing it between more than one person, but at 512k you'll be fine, as long as no-one is trying to download or use Youtube or something while you play games, which probably would interfere.
That is pretty slow -1/2 a megabit. When you download, I expect that you will use this up. It will mean that the other PCs have to compete, and any access to the Internet will indeed be slower. Online gaming and other apps probably won't make much of a problem for the other machines however..
According to a Blizzard official on the WoW forums (I guess WoW is a good gague of online bandwidth usage?) I can only imagine an FPS would use a fair bit more but I've never bothered to monitor it.
