Managed switch advise please

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Hi,

I have a home network connected to a BT ADSL (up to 20MB) phone line. I also have 10 devices connected to the ADSL via a Netgear ProSafe 16 port switch. The problem is, when my sons go on their Xbox and PS3 I am unable to load a basic web page, never mind do anything else.

I have seen a Netgear 24 10/100 Mbps Managed Stackable Switch, which I was thinking of getting, to enable me to manage the bandwidth to all the connected devices.

Have I found the correct hardware to do what I want it to do.

Many Thanks,
Dave.

 

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A few questions:

1. Are your boys gaming on the local lan or on-line, i.e is the gaming traffic going up the ADSL line or is it remaining local.

2. What are your other 10 machines doing on the local lan?, what sort of traffic are they generating onto the switch?

3. What sort of router do you currently have connected to your ADSL?

Cheers

Joe

 

Hi Joe,

1A. They are gaming on-line, and playing different games. They also use their computers for on-line gaming as well.

2A. Three are used for on-line gaming, and the others are used for general web browsing.

3A. BT 2700HGV Hub.

All of the devices are NOT used at the same time for on-line gaming. They are either using the Xbox360 AND the PS3, or one or two of the computers for on-line gaming.

Thanks
Dave.

 

Hi Dave,

Been going a bit of digging around, the on-line gaming from hat I have read does not take up more than 80/100Kbps of throughput on the dsl line. Although you say that as soon as they start playing you are getting problems but they are not having any issues themselves, although have you tried to have 3 machines playing on-line games going across the dsl, what happens then?

Cheers

Joe

 

I think it may have something to do with them also using Skype to communicate with other online gamers, at the same time. I will try what you suggested and let you know what I find.

Thanks
Dave.

 

hiya,

sounds like you either need to control the bandwidth using your switch or get a leased line mate!

If you can't achieve it using the prosafe, something like tomato on a linksys should do the trick.

Let us know how you get on.

 

How would i do it using my switch.

Thanks
Dave.

 

If the tomato software can do it bandwidth management then give it a go.

I am trying to think why it is that gaming traffic would be fine and HTTP web traffic would suffer. Boycie, do you know if gaming traffic uses UDP, if it does it would go some way to explaining why the web traffic is being choked out.

When TCP (The transport protocol used by HTTP) drops a segment is implements flow control which reduces the number of TCP segments sent, this reduction in throughput would allow UDP based connections to now use the freed up capacity. The more segments that TCP losses the smaller the window size in flow control the more capacity is freed up, TCP cannot recover back to original rate since all the capacity is being taken by the UDP sessions. Skype will probably not be affected in the same manner, but if you try to put too much traffic down the pipe you will notice packets being dropped it's just that TCP takes more drastic action when a segment is lost whereas UDP based applications (Real time traffic) will just keep on transmitting.

I suspect to install the tomato software will be going via the same upgrade procedure as installing the normal router software on the router, if you log into the router GUI and find the button marked upgrade.

Joe