Communal Wireless

[liaecc1]

Quick question:

6 people in my house, one of us has his pc plugged directly into the hub, and is online gaming and skyping all day. Does this hog the bandwidth, or effect it at all for the rest of using wireless?

Cheers folks

[paul9]

Skype (and video streaming) could well get prioritised if the router has a QoS (Quality of Service) function. Otherwise, the hardwire should simply get a lower ping/latency than wireless connections. If there are 5 or more wireless devices on the router, those wireless devices will contend and congest each other, though. If you think there are bandwidth issues, cut down the wireless connections. Use more wired, if possible.

[Nude_Lewd_Man]

All users on your W/LAN will share the bandwidth, regardless of how they connect to the gateway.

[GroundZero3]

It will tie up the internet connection and slow down surfing. If you are running 802.11 B/G its a hub like technology so with every person that connects wireless your wireless connection will be cut in half.

So a 54 Mbps 802.11B/G network is actually half of that, so say 32 Mbps. If you have 5 wireless clients that cuts down your wireless connection speeds to about 6 Mbps per client which is still usable. Large file transfers willl affect all the clients or heavy bandwidth usage.