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Am I crazy?

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My buddy and his brother are on a home network. They get broadband internet from ****. From the modem provided by ****, we've connected a router. From that router, ethernet is fed to both my buddy's and his brother's computers. All Kosher so far, yea?

His brother claims that when my buddy downloads large files, it slows his computer down.

Am I crazy for having never heard of a situation like this? It made me wonder whether they share ethernet bandwidth? Like if **** ethernet provides like 350kb/s... Do they share that? If they both download the same file at the same time, is it 175kb/s each? It disgusts me to think that this is the case, as I've always understood routers to simply multiply the access points. Whatever they're called these days - gateways or routers or hubs or whatever.

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if your ISP provides a 350Kb/s connection then that will be shared between all devices that are requesting internet access at that time.

However, PCa could connect at 200Kb/s and PCb at 150Kb/s. It will not necessarily divide it in half.

As Emerald states, that broadband access is a shared resource among all users behind the router. The ISP is NOT providing individual bandwidth to each user. In fact, that's the whole point of the router, to "share" or "split" access to the single connection provided by the ISP.

But it gets even worse. Many ppl don’t realize that their local wireless connections are shared as well. IOW, anytime someone is communicating w/ their wireless router, anyone else wanting wireless access at the same time must WAIT! Your wireless router can only communicate w/ one wireless client at any given time. Most of the time you don’t notice it given the relatively light loading placed on the router. But if those same users are downloading large files at the same time over wireless, each of their respective wireless connections will see their effective throughput cut in HALF. That’s why wireless is not a panacea, it has serious limitations and why whenever possible, you should use a wired connection (which unlike wireless, is NOT shared).

Think of it like your plumbing in the house. If one person is taking a shower then all's good. Now install a T fitting into the pipe and you can connect an additional shower. One shower can be used at a time with no problem. When two people take a shower if the water heater is too small, then both showers will suffer.

The internet connection is the bottleneck in your communications, and the service agreement with the service provider is for a specific rate (typically not guarenteed either) if your downloading two files at a time, no matter if they are on the same computer or different ones, the speed of each individual transfer will slow down because the connection between the modem and the outside world is still the same speed.
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350kb/s<---------------- Thats theoritical ehich means it will never be achieved. ISPs assign more bandwith than what they have. How is the internet fed to each others computers? what PCs are they using. What software what OS that all got influence on the speeds


I am shocked. How have I never known that? They both just bought new computers... Both have windows 7 ultimate 64bit. In fact, I just built both of them their computers and I never even knew about that whole bandwidth splitting thing. Sad. :o 
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