wireless internet connection blues
 

the way i used to have my internet connection set up was this:

my computer was connected directly to the cable modem, and i had a peer-to-peer wireless connection with my roommate so we could both internet at the same time. the only problem, is that whenever i was using the internet for ANYTHING (but most especially torrenting) my roommate's connection would slow to "dial-up speeds". So, thinking it was just that the computer that had the modem directly connected got the lions share of bandwidth, and feeling generous, i switched the configuration around- the modem's connected to roommate's computer, and i'm connecting to that thru a peer-to-peer connection.

Didn't work. My connection was still going thru perfectly fine, and my roommate's connection would still turn into grandpa city when i was doing shit. So I finally got around to figuring out how to set up the wireless router, thinking there was some sort of configuration problem on my computer or on roommates computer, and that having us both connect to the router instead of doing a peer-to-peer connection would even things out-

didn't work. my connection still has zero hiccups, roommate's connection still goes all 56k when i look at website.com. i've not been able to find a similar enough problem on google, but maybe someone else has similar experiance/better googly eyes than i do atm HALP :(

I couldn't explain why you looking at a website would cause a problem, but I often have to kick the guys I live with off the network because they're running torrents with an uncapped upload.
Because ISPs are so mean with their upload bandwidth it maxes out really quickly and brings everyone else's connection to a standstill.

Might be worth looking into, especially if you regularly leave torrents seeding.

it doesn't matter what i cap the upload to- even if it's 5k the connection tanks :(

it's like as long as i have ANY active connection the other computer's internet basically dies

What kind of router are you using and are you both connecting via wireless?

currently the router is directly connected to the roommate's computer and i connect to it wirelessly; it's an Airlink 101 AR315w (but as i said before, when we were directly connected it was doing the exact same thing, so i doubt the router enters into the equation)

The thing is as far as I'm aware there isn't really any mechanism through which the router could give your computer preference in Internet bandwidth and I certainly wouldn't expect random HTTP requests to max out the available bandwidth.

I think the next thing to do would be to identify which machine is actually the problem by adding a third device to the network and identifying if it causes the effect on your house mate's machine, or duplicates it.
Perhaps you could ask a friend to bring a laptop over or something (even a wi-fi phone might work).

well coincidentally i am currently working on devirusing my cousin's laptop, maybe after i get done fixing it i can do some tests

just a thought: i've got peerguardian and zonealarm running, could one of those be screwing things up :( i've noticed that when peerguardian is on it's constantly blocking shit from 192.168.1.*, anyways

edit: oh it's not BLOCKING it but it is registering connections to and from that address, still i'm gonna try disabling pg for a while and see if it helps

Try updating the firmware on the router, sounds like the problem is there.

Also, you can get a program called "Ethereal" and monitor all data going across your network (including your roommate's). Might shed some light into what is going on, or it might just confuse you.

i dont mean to sound like a jerk but i've already ruled out the router because it was doing the same shit when it was peer-to-peer and the router wasnt even plugged in

Did you ever add another device to the network?

There is only ultimately one line, so the network has to prioritize traffic. I think you might have an issue where one network card is getting priority over another.

Your cable modem might prioritize by MAC address. Therefore, when you both try to use the network, you end up getting all of the bandwidth. Of course, you don't use all the bandwidth available, so he will get some every now and then.

I am not sure how your cable modem makes routing decisions, so I can't help you further in that regard. If it can get a firmware update, then you might want to try that.

If you want to see if the problem is associated with a certain network card, you could try to exchange the cards. They have a MAC address assosciated with them that is unique.

I really think Ethereal could help here. You can monitor all network traffic and see if it gives you priority. Just look for packets coming from and going to your IP address and the other IP address. You can put it on the other computer too and look at the traffic when only it is on the network.

A standard modem/router wouldn't prioritise anything, they're not clever enough.

As each packet arrives at the router the header is inspected and the packet is forwarded to the correct address by the internal switch. They arrive in series.

My apologies, you are right that the IP layer would not do any prioritizing. I was thinking of the scenario when both computers attempt to send a transmission at the same time and a collision occurs. As you know, the packets are processed in series, but they might not always arrive in series if two terminals try to start a connection at the same time. In that case, the IP layer will have to make a decision about who will go first, and I don't know how that decision is made. So I was calling that "prioritizing", but really that refers to something else... my bad.

Regardless, it doesn't make sense for one person to get more bandwidth than the other in the scenario that is described. I think the next thing we should do to diagnose this problem is to look at the network traffic. A network analyzer would work really well here.

I mentioned Ethereal before, but it has actually changed names to Wireshark. He can use that to capture packets on his network, and then maybe we can determine what is going on. What do you think, MetalMilitia?