Internet Bandwidth Question?

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The problem is your connection from your computer to your ISP. The name for this is "the party line effect". There are two related problems that combine. First, cable broadband (and wireless links) are a bottleneck in the flow of data. The reason is the ISP access point itself. Think of this like push to talk walkie talkies. When you want to talk, you first listen and if the line is clear, push to talk and send data. No problem. If the line is busy, you wait for the line to clear and then push to talk and send data. Again, no problem. TYhe problem arises when someone else is waiting as you are. You both push to talk and interfere with each other, and neither gets through. You wait for a reply that acknowledges receipt, and after a while not getting one, you do it again, and so does the other guy, and you collide again, and again, and again, until one of you keys up and the other is listening and is forced to wait again for the line to clear. Do you see the problem? Dead time, with NO data moving. Second, transmitters. Each user has one, including your ISP. The transmitter at your ISP can only talk to ONE user at a time. If there are 99 of your neighbors on cable with you, you can only talk to the ISP for 1% of the time. The ISP transmitter is "on" all the time, but only talking to one user at a time. Both of these effects combine to become "the party line effect". Your connect SPEED does not change since that is determined by the radio frequencies used. What suffers is THROUGHPUT, which is the amount of data moved per unit time. Essentially you talk in very fast bursts of data, which get spaced further and further apart as the number of users rises, which slows your apparent speed. There is NOTHING that you can do about it as far as the cable is concerned. A new router will do NOTHING to improve the situation. There is only ONE thing that YOU can do, run as few computers and applications as possible to reduce the number of collisions. The ideal is one computer with one application. The data pipe to your ISP is like a one lane bridge that alternates the direction of data flow to and from your ISP. With more than one application, the capacity of the bridge is shared and divided among all who want to USE the bridge. Think of the data as a railroad train. Two trains must merge to become one train twice as long. Since the speed the train crosses the bridge is fixed by your ISP, the twice as long train takes twice as long to cross the bridge. So, do you see why that with more than one computer and one application, you are your own worst enemy? Because you have to DIVIDE the bandwidth of your link to your ISP? Do NOT try fooling around with bandwidth in your home network. THAT is an "expert" level task that is beyond the scope of anyone not qualified as a Microsoft Certified System Engineer. You can really screw things up and not realize it, until your network literally STOPS completely. If you are using wireless, this is a party line within the cable party line with the exact same problems. The only difference is one uses wire to carry the radio signals. Wire can use higher frequencies, so the connect SPEED is higher than for wireless. With wireless, all transmitters count. If you have neighbors using wireless, just like with cable, you have to wait for the line to clear before you can talk, and then you have to put up with the same sort of traffic jams. The more transmitters, the more users, the slower every user goes as the bandwidth is shared.

Bottom line: Your BEST performance is achieved by using wire instead of wireless links to your router AND the minimum number of applications and computers online at the same time on your home network. The ideal case being one computer running one application, with NO others even connected on your network. Avoid "peak use" hours such as after school and after dinner when the most kids are online. In other words, reduce the competition for bandwidth as much as possible to maximize ONE connection to your ISP. By the way, DSL does NOT suffer as cable broadband does since DSL is a private line from a port on your router to a port on the router at your ISP. It still IS a one lane bridge however with all the problems that brings to limiting traffic flow. You CAN alleviate some of the party line effect simply by getting a faster connection. But all that means is you shorten the time it takes for a traffic jam to clear. The problems still exist, they just clear up faster, which improves throughput accordingly. With DSL the SPEED and THROUGHPUT you get is guaranteed since you do not share the link to your ISP, but with cable, the speed and throughput is a theoretical MAXIMUM, and NOT guaranteed. Again, do NOT go fooling around with any network bandwidth settings (as suggested by another) unless you are being directed by a certified network engineer who KNOWS exactly what they are doing and HOW it will affect your network!