Newbie question: Router speed distribution

Got a question for ya experts, let's say that my internet connection
speed is 512kb/s. If four of us sharing the same line via a router, how
would the connection be distributed? Is it true that each of us will
get 512k/4 speed, no more, no less, even tho one guy out of the four is
downloading something big from the net?

Does the internet usage of one person on the line affect the others?
What I observed when I'm playing online FPS games is that, when someone
else is downloading using bittorrent on the same line, the ping will
suddenly increase.

Pls advice.

Okay I went thru some of the posts here, and found out (it seems) that
the router allocates the bw to each computer based on the usage. The
person with heavier usage got more bw.

What if one guy out of four on the line is constantly downloading using
bittorrent? When the other guy wants to open up a web page, do they
immediately share the bw together?


holhoss wrote:
> Got a question for ya experts, let's say that my internet connection
> speed is 512kb/s. If four of us sharing the same line via a router, how
> would the connection be distributed? Is it true that each of us will
> get 512k/4 speed, no more, no less, even tho one guy out of the four is
> downloading something big from the net?
>
> Does the internet usage of one person on the line affect the others?
> What I observed when I'm playing online FPS games is that, when someone
> else is downloading using bittorrent on the same line, the ping will
> suddenly increase.
>
> Pls advice.

On 10 Aug 2006 02:31:44 -0700, "holhoss" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>Okay I went thru some of the posts here, and found out (it seems) that
>the router allocates the bw to each computer based on the usage. The
>person with heavier usage got more bw.
>
>What if one guy out of four on the line is constantly downloading using
>bittorrent? When the other guy wants to open up a web page, do they
>immediately share the bw together?

They would share it basically. You may want to look at a router that
supports some type of QoS where you can reserve bandwidth according to
service (ftp, voip, torrents) or user.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qos


Grog

I see. I think I didn't get the answer that I wanted yet :-). I need to
rephrase.

Have a router with 2 ports.
First guy downloading continuously.
Second guy surfing the web.

Would the bw distributed equally between 2 of em? In that case, if the
best dl speed the connection can get is 20kb/s, the first guy would
have all of it (20kb/s) when the 2nd guy is not loading any page - and
when he does click at some link, both of them will have 10kb/s speed,
correct? The speed for the first guy is capped. So, it doesn't matter
at what speed the first guy is downloading initially, it will get
divided for two of them when the 2nd guy is loading a page, am I right?
(forgive my phrases and wordings, they suck)

Please advice.

Grog wrote:
> On 10 Aug 2006 02:31:44 -0700, "holhoss" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>
> >Okay I went thru some of the posts here, and found out (it seems) that
> >the router allocates the bw to each computer based on the usage. The
> >person with heavier usage got more bw.
> >
> >What if one guy out of four on the line is constantly downloading using
> >bittorrent? When the other guy wants to open up a web page, do they
> >immediately share the bw together?
>
> They would share it basically. You may want to look at a router that
> supports some type of QoS where you can reserve bandwidth according to
> service (ftp, voip, torrents) or user.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qos
>
>
> Grog

On 10 Aug 2006 07:28:26 -0700, "holhoss" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>I see. I think I didn't get the answer that I wanted yet :-). I need to
>rephrase.
>
>Have a router with 2 ports.
>First guy downloading continuously.
>Second guy surfing the web.
>
>Would the bw distributed equally between 2 of em? In that case, if the
>best dl speed the connection can get is 20kb/s, the first guy would
>have all of it (20kb/s) when the 2nd guy is not loading any page - and
>when he does click at some link, both of them will have 10kb/s speed,
>correct? The speed for the first guy is capped. So, it doesn't matter
>at what speed the first guy is downloading initially, it will get
>divided for two of them when the 2nd guy is loading a page, am I right?
>(forgive my phrases and wordings, they suck)
>
>Please advice.
>

The second guy would get the bandwidth as needed. It wouldn't be
divided equally like you are saying. If the second guy pulls a page
and the web site sends a burst at 12kb/s, then the downloader would
see a temporary hit as his bandwidth dropped.

So no, the bandwidth won't automatically be divided evenly between
active users. You can use a proxy server program like ccproxy to
limit bandwidth between the users.

http://www.youngzsoft.com/en/ccproxy/index.html

You might be able to find free proxys out there that have this
bandwidth limiting feature.


I hope that answers your question.


Grog

What I thought is that if 4 users are connected, it doesn't mean that
the bandwidth is distributed between them. The allocation depends on
the request, let say, if only one person is accessing a webpage, while
the others left their computers idle (but still connected to the net),
the bandwidth will be allocated totally to the person accessing the
page, but still depends on how much he requested - whilst there's no or
little bandwidth allocated to the other three. Is that correct?

I did some browsing on the Bittorrent "bandwidth hogging" issue, and
found out that it seems while surfing websites or using instant
messenger the computer usually opens one connection, and as I know when
using P2P applications such as Bittorrent the computer opens multiple
connections and this will tamper with the D-Link router table which
leads to inequal bandwidth distribution - the person running Bittorrent
will have the most bandwidth. Could you please confirm whether this is
right or wrong?

Is there any configuration in the D-Link router to set that the users
will ALWAYS share the bandwidth no matter what as long as they're
connected?

Grog wrote:
> On 10 Aug 2006 07:28:26 -0700, "holhoss" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>
> >I see. I think I didn't get the answer that I wanted yet :-). I need to
> >rephrase.
> >
> >Have a router with 2 ports.
> >First guy downloading continuously.
> >Second guy surfing the web.
> >
> >Would the bw distributed equally between 2 of em? In that case, if the
> >best dl speed the connection can get is 20kb/s, the first guy would
> >have all of it (20kb/s) when the 2nd guy is not loading any page - and
> >when he does click at some link, both of them will have 10kb/s speed,
> >correct? The speed for the first guy is capped. So, it doesn't matter
> >at what speed the first guy is downloading initially, it will get
> >divided for two of them when the 2nd guy is loading a page, am I right?
> >(forgive my phrases and wordings, they suck)
> >
> >Please advice.
> >
>
> The second guy would get the bandwidth as needed. It wouldn't be
> divided equally like you are saying. If the second guy pulls a page
> and the web site sends a burst at 12kb/s, then the downloader would
> see a temporary hit as his bandwidth dropped.
>
> So no, the bandwidth won't automatically be divided evenly between
> active users. You can use a proxy server program like ccproxy to
> limit bandwidth between the users.
>
> http://www.youngzsoft.com/en/ccproxy/index.html
>
> You might be able to find free proxys out there that have this
> bandwidth limiting feature.
>
>
> I hope that answers your question.
>
>
> Grog

Here is how it works:

I am going to say you are connecting to the exact same server, and you had
what could be described as guaranteed 20kbps access to it, as well as a
20kbps dsl connection so the pipes are fully clear and the same size to the
server.

If john were downloading setup.exe from ftp://www.server.com at a speed of
20kb per second, then andrew came along and started to download install.exe,
they in theory would each share the speed at 10kbps. Once andrew had
finished downloading, john's speed would then go back up to 20kbps. It does
take a few seconds for the speed to go from 20/0 to 10/10, and then back up
to 20/0

Now andrew decided to visit www.google.com and was downloading the webpage.
Because it takes a few seconds to get the speed down to 10/10, and the
google page only took 1.2 seconds to download and therefore the speed ratio
only went to 18/02 and then back up to 20/0.

The network administrator then came along and turned on QOS. (quality of
service)
He gave ftp traffic a priority of 3/5 (lower) and http got a priority of 1/5
(higher)
John was downloading a file through ftp, and andrew was downloading one
through http. Because http gets the higher priority, it would have a ratio
of 0/20.
Now if the http server was busy at the time, and could only guarantee
15kbps, john, with his ftp next in the priority queue, would get the
remaining 5kbps so the ratio would be 5/15

There are all sorts of factors that go into it such as what type of router
you have, any bandwidth shaping by your isp (similar to qos such as low
speeds for bittorrent and fast speeds for http), how busy servers are etc.
The ratios will never work out as you would expect. I am in New Zealand with
a 3mb/512 DSL connection and no one has a problem with it because we never
seem to notice. We have a dedicated server at home running 24/7 for our
torrent downloads and then on the other computers we usually just surf or
check emails so its not like we notice an impact at all.

Thanks for the info. I see, well if QoS is used to allocate bandwidth
between the applications, is there any way to constantly divide the
bandwidth between users then? I know that it's useless to make it that
way, cause it's better to use up an idle user's bandwidth but someone I
know claimed that just by getting connected to a router, the router
will always distribute the bandwidth equally, e.g. 4 persons connected,
each get 1/4 bandwidth all the time. Does all router do that or is
there any settings in the common home router like D-Link that does that?

Ray Taylor wrote:
> Here is how it works:
>
> I am going to say you are connecting to the exact same server, and you had
> what could be described as guaranteed 20kbps access to it, as well as a
> 20kbps dsl connection so the pipes are fully clear and the same size to the
> server.
>
> If john were downloading setup.exe from ftp://www.server.com at a speed of
> 20kb per second, then andrew came along and started to download install.exe,
> they in theory would each share the speed at 10kbps. Once andrew had
> finished downloading, john's speed would then go back up to 20kbps. It does
> take a few seconds for the speed to go from 20/0 to 10/10, and then back up
> to 20/0
>
> Now andrew decided to visit www.google.com and was downloading the webpage.
> Because it takes a few seconds to get the speed down to 10/10, and the
> google page only took 1.2 seconds to download and therefore the speed ratio
> only went to 18/02 and then back up to 20/0.
>
> The network administrator then came along and turned on QOS. (quality of
> service)
> He gave ftp traffic a priority of 3/5 (lower) and http got a priority of 1/5
> (higher)
> John was downloading a file through ftp, and andrew was downloading one
> through http. Because http gets the higher priority, it would have a ratio
> of 0/20.
> Now if the http server was busy at the time, and could only guarantee
> 15kbps, john, with his ftp next in the priority queue, would get the
> remaining 5kbps so the ratio would be 5/15
>
> There are all sorts of factors that go into it such as what type of router
> you have, any bandwidth shaping by your isp (similar to qos such as low
> speeds for bittorrent and fast speeds for http), how busy servers are etc.
> The ratios will never work out as you would expect. I am in New Zealand with
> a 3mb/512 DSL connection and no one has a problem with it because we never
> seem to notice. We have a dedicated server at home running 24/7 for our
> torrent downloads and then on the other computers we usually just surf or
> check emails so its not like we notice an impact at all.

Nice explanation indeed, Ray! I love it!
The aspect of QoS was also covered here.

Thanks.


--
Raqueeb Hassan
Bangladesh