Sharing bandwidth

You could try something like this....http://www.softperfect.com/products/bandwidth/

or if your router is capable of it you could set it up to control directly.

If you are more inclined to not spend money to solve your problem I would recommend using Bit Comet's Download Management tool to set download bandwith speeds. That would be the easiest solution I would think if you are not to familiar with messing with a router or intrested in spending dough. Also a great program for resuming broken downloads if you have that problem often.

I tried the NETLIMITER program but it only seems to control bandwidth on my computer and not the other one. Is there something i need to do for it to limit download and upload speeds for the other computer? My main problem is that i play games on my computer quite often and my brother downloads a lot on his computer, but whenever hes downloading something, i can hardly browse the web on my computer it gets so bad. Im not too great with computers or routers, but how would i know if im able to do anything with my router regarding this situation? Its a Zonet router but it doesnt have any kind of software associated with it that i know of. I also own a D-link router if that helps. Thanks for your help!

Who owns/pays for your Internet connection?

Do you think your brother might get upset if you limit his bandwidth?

Neither of us owns or pays for it, its payed for by our parents. As for him getting upset, its possible, however if hes taking up about 90% of the bandwidth when hes downloading, thats not quite fair. Our connection is 6mb down and 512kb up, so im looking to do something like limiting both of our connections to use half of that while were both online, and when one of us isnt online then the other will have the complete bandwidth.

Well, what you are asking is really more like traffic shapping, which is a bit more complex than band with limiting.  Traffic shapping is a combination of limting bandwidth and at the same time guaranteeing a minimum amount of bandwidth for all computers.

Limiting bandwidth limits it ALL the time, not just some of the time.  In order to implment traffic shapping you need a very complex setup.  Too complex.  It requires reding the network in a way that requires your comptuers to be conencted to one switch, then a computer that has two NIC's and then another switch/router that is then connected to the Cable/ADSL modem.

Anyway the way IP works each computer will use all the bandwidth it can get.  If both of you are online and each of were downloading a file, then each of you would get 50% of the bandwidth, assuming that the servers you were connected to had enough bandwidth on their side to drive your connection to 100%.

If your brother is downloading and you "click" to go to a new page, you may see a lag as he has data queued up coming in and it may take a second or two for your traffic to get in.  Even with traffic shapping this really won't change.

Do you have more information about the type of router that you're using? The kind of bandwidth throttling is available under some of the Quality of Service settings in many routers - like D-Link. If you're connecting wirelessly, then investigate WISH.

The only information i have on the routers are: D-link Airplus Xtreme G wireless router, model DI-624 (although i dont use the wireless on it) and for the Zonet, model ZFS3008.

I do suspect you need a smart router if you want to get your bandwidth shared fairly. Anyways it has to be some network device which will be costly. To give you an idea: how its done on cisco: http://ist.uwaterloo.ca/cn/shaping.html

PC software will only help you limit it to a certain level, I suggest you use netlimiter (http://www.netlimiter.com/) to limit the per connection bandwidth rate, so normal single download does not effect the other one, when you know you need to use extra bandwidth, you can simply increase number of connections by starting multiple downloads / or changing the settings.something built on mutual understanding, you shouldn't start inter-galactic wars over bandwidth issues though :)

I believe that we need to be careful here.  Please note that:

This is not the person that owns the Internet connection.

This person may not even be an adult.

Attempting to implement anything we may suggest they could get them in trouble with their parents as it could severly impair their Internet connection.

There have been two suggestions to use netlimiter, which does work, but will require the installation of said software on his brother's computer.  Which could cause other family issues.

Spec42, it not that I am suggesting we do not help, but we need to be very careful.  Attempting into implement anything we suggest could get you in big trouble.

Curious... have you addressed this problem with mom & dad?

My personal feelings are "whats good for the goose..."
... If you expect your brother to be limited, you should be limited yourself.

But, I definitely agree a tricky situation.

To clarify a few things, yes i am an adult, as is my brother. The situation has been discussed with him already and he is fine with the idea. If you read one of my previous posts then you would see that i wish to limit each of us to use no more than half of the bandwidth so that it is equal. As far as a solution goes, i didnt expect it to be this complicated. As mentioned above, it seems like netlimiter would be the best choice of action, so im going to look into that. Im not great with computers overall, which is why im posting a question here, so im not looking to change any major settings with my router or connection. I was under the impression that a situation like this was somewhat common and there would be a simpler solution, but i guess not.

Actually netlimiter may not be the best solution.  The issue is that it is on each computer and limits that computer to a specific amount of bandwidth ALL of the time.

So if you set netlimiter to 1/2 of your bandwidth, you are limited to that ALL of the time.  Even if only one of you is on.  You would have to talk to each other and basically enable/disable the bandwidth throttling based on both of you being on or not being on.

The situation is sort of quite common in the business world.  However there is either already a single box, or one can be installed, between the Internet and all of the computers wanting to use the Internet can be setup to shape the traffic to allow all equal access as needed.

In a home environment, or a small business environment, there is no such "box in the middle".

If your brother uses FTP to download files, he may want to look at a FTP client such as FTP Voyager.  This client allows you to configure it so that it limits the amount of bandwidth it uses to do the downloads.  He would have to use it to download all files.

Without installing a "middle" box or looking at what functions your D-Link router has, there is really no easy way to limit traffic when both are on and give you "unlimited" when only one is on.

Again, though, for the most part, IP does treat everybody equal and so if both of you are on, both of you will get 1/2 of the bandwidth.

Just forgot to add this one. If you are able to get a 3rd computer and set it as a server
(a little less complicated than configuring a cisco machine)
$30 for upto 10 user:http://bandwidthcontroller.com/
so next month you can share your internet with the neighbors

"so next month you can share your internet with the neighbors"

--> Before they take you to heart, arkoak...

That would likely violate acceptable-use policy on the Internet account (chances are there is resale restriction).

If you get a 3rd computer you could install Linux and use ipcop to do bandwidth shaping for free.  ipcop was originally setup for firewall, but it also does bandwidth shaping.

3rd computer can be pretty cheap second hand one ,just to add to the above comment, linux will be pretty good on it, you just need to worry about the space to put it in and a little bit of playin around the linux box, I have one of those machines without a monitor & keyboard ( I use telnet & ftp) and it acts as my router.

and just forgot to comment on dragonjim's comment, though i was kidding, but ...well, it depends on the policy really, some ISP's just sell you bandwidth and you can possible do anything with it. Setup a wireless router and bingo.. your private ISP. (be sure to consult local laws before doing anything like that)